Monday,
28 January 2013
I
woke up a few times in the night and once to use the toilet. It was a good
thing we didn’t share the car with any Chinese tourists; the next car was full
of them and their toilets stank to high heavens. I’m not being racist – not
when I’m forever mistaken as one myself - but merely stating the fact. And because
I couldn’t sleep again, I decided to get up at 5 to use the toilet before
performing ablutions.
Well,
I got stuck this time around and was trapped in there for about 5 minutes. It
was noisy and even though someone heard me from outside and vice-versa, I
couldn’t make out what was said to me and I’m sure s/he couldn’t understand
what I was trying to say either. I finally managed to escape after struggling
with the lock and praying hard. Good thing the toilet didn’t stink too strongly.
We
pulled into Aswan station at 1030 and our local guide, Ahmed, was already
waiting for us. The Nubians are natives in Aswan and our guide was dark
himself. He’s not a Nubian though (Nubians are darker). Aswan is Egypt’s
hottest, driest city and indeed, it is one of the driest inhabited towns in the
world. You can go through a year or two without rain and yet it rained that
morning before we arrived.
Aswan
is rich in granite – it enabled the ancient Egyptians to build their pyramids,
obelisks and sarcophaguses - and we were immediately taken to the unfinished
obelisk. I could sense that the guide would be a very friendly informative chap
the minute we had settled in the bus as he pointed out the river, the
Elephantine Island, the Coptic Church, the military hospital and the cemetery
(conveniently located diagonally across the hospital!). The unfinished obelisk
is the largest known ancient obelisk in the world, claimed to be constructed by
the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (she was one of only two female pharaohs; the
other one being Cleopatra). It was abandoned though when cracks appeared in the
granite. Granite is a hard material and only a certain stone could cut it out.
We spent about 30 minutes there.
We
then went to the pier where our ship was docked but not before a brief stop to
enable our two colleagues to change money and buy some provisions. Our ship was
called La Bohème and
was supposedly an upgrade. However, we faced check-in problems and while we had
our rooms assigned quickly and ready for us, we could not get in until the
problems were resolved in Cairo. It wasn’t until after we had finished
performing prayers (the ship manager kindly allocated a room for us to perform
ablutions and prayers) that our check-in problems were resolved finally. We had
a lovely comfortable five-star hotel boat room (cabin?) with a bathroom and a balcony (although it
was too chilly to sit outside). We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring
the deck with its swimming pool and loungers
and
resting. Just like lunch, dinner was had on board.
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Bullet The Blue Sky
An early morning start today as we wanted to go on
a trip to Abu Simbel. We left the ship at 5 and performed prayers in the van.
For security reasons, we also had to travel in convoy to Abu Simbel and
gathered near the unfinished obelisk before setting off for Abu Simbel. Abu
Simbel is 280 km from Aswan and is near to the border with Sudan. It took us
2.5 hours to get there (including an unscheduled pit-stop at a rudimentary
hospital (clinic?) to use the WC). It was a good thing we stopped too for the
queue for the WC at Abu Simbel was oh too long.
There are two massive rock temples at Abu Simbel:
the temples of Ramesses II and Nefertari, his most beloved of many wives. The
first and much larger temple features four large statues of Ramesses II in the
façade in varying age. The second statues have the statues of the pharaoh and
his wife. Our guide spent a lot of time at all the temples we stopped at
explaining about the pharaohs, the gods they worshipped (Ra, Amun, Amun-Ra,
Hathor. Then there are the other gods: Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys. And
just as you began to grasp them, there were yet other gods like Horus, Anubis, Thoth...),
the double crowns they wore (symbolising Upper and Lower Egypt), the wives of
the pharaohs, how to tell between a pharaoh’s mother and his wife, how to
tell between a god and a pharaoh, the scenes on any one temple reliefs,
the significance of the scenes, the ankh, the scarab, the holy of holies, the cartouches and difference
between a god’s cartouche and a pharaoh’s, the difference between an Egyptian
temple and a Graeco-Roman temple... like I
said, he’s very informative. It’s clear he loves his heritage, the history of
his country and all that makes up the history and he wants to share them all
with us. Oh and by the way, the Abu Simbel temples were relocated to their present sites
when they were under threat of the rising Nile following the construction of
the Aswan High Dam.
I’m sure the pharaohs all had this
Ahmed
had told us to meet at the restaurant near the exit at 0945 but I found my
colleagues at the shops instead. Shopping, what else? I bought some postcards
and that was enough for me. We finally left after 10 am and drove back to our
ship.
The
ship was scheduled to depart Aswan at 1330 but because the Chinese group on our
ship returned late, we only set off an hour later (yes, I took note of the
time). I spent the afternoon in our room, resting and reading.
We
docked at Kom Ombo, Ahmed’s hometown, at 5.30 pm. It was dusk when we walked up
to Kom Ombo temple, a double temple built during the Ptolemaic dynasty. The
southern half of the temple was dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek (yet
another name to confuse us!) while the northern half was dedicated to the
falcon god Horus. It was a pity that the night was falling fast because I would
have loved to explore the temple more. We were given only 20 minutes or so
before we were to meet at the nearby crocodile museum before returning to our
ship.
The
ship left Kom Ombo and sailed into the night.
Wednesday,
30 January 2013
♪♫ I
can feel the devil walking next to me ♪♫
I
dreamt I was back at boarding school for a brief while. In the next scene, I
was leaving the office just before 7 pm (there was a clock in my dream!). I then went to queue at the ATM which
was located up a water tank but abandoned my queue and walked along the street
instead. Across the street, some boys were playing baseball. A cat came up to
me and brushed against my feet and suddenly I started to jog and the cat
trotted along next to me. As I passed the boys, someone said Tommy’s name - in
full, no less - and I remembered thinking ‘Oh come on’. Then I entered another
building and climbed up. Somehow I knew the building was haunted (so why did I
enter it?) and asked a cleaning lady what time her shift ended. She looked at
me to reply but was shocked by something next to me. The ghost! It was standing
next to me, I could feel it. I started reciting al-Kursi and then I felt the
ghost reaching out to me and grasping my left hand. I could feel her strong
hold, it seemed so real. I repeated my recital twice more so loudly that I woke
up myself and my mate. Phew! It was a nightmare after all. Maybe the ghosts
haunting Kom Ombo or any of the two temples at Abu Simbel decided to haunt me.
And of course you still have to haunt my dreams don’t you. Really, we have got
to stop meeting in my dreams like this. And I hope, I hope that I still haunt
your dreams, more often than you do mine, and I hope I leave you gasping awake
when you get up. Every time.
Back
to the present world: we had reached Edfu and I saw the town when I looked out.
We headed out at 7 am and rode horse-pulled carriages to Edfu Temple. It had
rained the night before and the streets were wet and muddy. Dedicated to the
falcon god Horus, Edfu Temple was built in the Ptolemaic period. Our guide led
us to the temple and began explaining to us about its history, about the scenes
on the reliefs, the holy of holies... He even assigned roles to us to make us
understand better (not sure if it worked but I really appreciated his time and
effort in educating us). He then gave us free time to explore the temple.
We
met at the coffee shop before riding the carriages back to our respective ship.
I do hope the boy who handled our horse-carriage would receive payment as I had
no small change to give him (and we were already warned not to give any money
to them. But still...).
We
set off for Luxor. There was no more pit-stop today until we reach Luxor. I
spent the day reading and then joining the rest to see the ship go through the
lock at Esna. Oh, and there were the boat vendors too along the way to the
lock, chasing our ship and urging us to buy their wares. That was a nice
entertainment and it reminded me of other persistent vendors in other places.
Mohamed who’s buddy with the ship manager took us for a brief visit to the captain this afternoon. He had his young son with him as it was holiday time. The son would one day take over the ship.
After
dinner tonight, we walked across the other ships docked alongside ours to the
pier and explored the area. There wasn’t much to see although I did manage to
buy another bottle of cough syrup.
To
be continued
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