Lovely, Lovely, Lovely!!!!!

Can I just say right now I am having a FABULOUS time in Egypt? I know it's only been 3 days but yeah...

Here's the scoop:

7 April 2006 -
What a Fantastic introduction to Cairo! Met an expat (she's from the SF bay area/just finished doctorate's from Cal) and her partner from Barcelona waiting for the bus. Ended up catching a taxi to the proposed hotel. Hit if off wonderfully! As we where driving into the city from the airport, I just kept mentally thanking the gods and goddesses for how clean and not noisy (relatively speaking, of course) Cairo seemed to be. At 20+ million people, I was really dreading it! But it's NOTHING compared to India!

At the hotel, met a girl from SoCal trying to see if she can make it to a year of being a Cairene. We spent the afternoon hanging out, with her showing me around the downtown area and providing me with some tips about Cairo. Also got some great tips from these two older Brits (Dudley) about where to hit in Egypt, places to stay, what to watch out for, etc. Wonderfully kind gentlemen! Later that night, I met up again with the SoCal girl along with 2 other long-term visitors (a Swiss-Italian and another SF bay arean-NBayer), and 3 locals. We all went to the Cairo Jazz Club, hung out, danced a bit, and talked a lot. One of the local guys had a car so he ended up taking a me and the Swiss-Italian for a quick drive-through of central Cairo after dropping everyone else off. Finally got in around 4 a.m. extremely tired (I had to get up at 4 a.m. 24-hours earlier to catch my flight from Mumbai to Cairo) but excited and happy.

8 April 2006 -
Slept in some. Spent the day re-orienting myself to central Cairo. In the evening I met some more people (2 UCSF med school grads and 3 Brits). We went to Khan al-Khalili (pronouced kan ahl-kahleelee), an area of town in east Cairo - had some Egyptian pancakes, toured around the marketplace a bit, had some mint tea and sheesha at Fishawi (pronounced fee-show (as in ow)-wee) Coffeehouse. Afterwards we took a long walk (through smog and exhaust that you can literally see at night!) to grab a quick drink at the After Eight Club before grabbing our bags to catch the midnight train to Aswan.

9 April 2006 -
Long train ride but it was nice...very different from that of India. In Aswan, I am staying in a room that has a balcony. Consequently, I have a beautiful view of the Nile, the feluccas and other boats that traverses it and of the west bank of Aswan. (I can see some ruined tombs, Tombs of the Nobles. It really is quite spectacular.) After settling in, I took a public ferry to the largest of the islands between the east and west banks of Aswan called Elephantine Island. I took a quiet and pleasant walk through the two Nubian villages there, Siou and Koti. Heading back to the east bank, I made my way to the Nubian Museum where I met this taxi driver. After realizing that he wasn't going to get a paid trip from me, we got to talking in earnest. He ended up taking me around the southern tip of Aswan and to the Nubian House Restaurant (lol - all for free!) where we had a very pleasant time talking and enjoying the sunsent over the city and the river.

10 April 2006 -
Okay...I am not getting enough sleep! I got up to be ready for a 3:30 a.m. (yes, A.M.!) pick-up to sojourn down south to Abu Simbel (roughly a 4-hour ride each way). Because there is concern that the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel may still be fraught with potential violence, all the tour buses had to wait so that a police convoy could be made. I counted about 60 tour buses ranging from our size (a microbus with max capacity of 14 persons) to luxury double-deckered vacation buses that made up the tourist portion of the convoy! The caused me to be concerned that if someone really wanted to make a statement by targeting tourists we would have, as a convoy, been the perfect target!! Anyhow, because it's rather peaceful lately we didn't have to stop but still had to drive through several checkpoints where there were at least a dozen of armed soldiers at each. Licenses of the buses were noted down and permitted passage as we were accompanied by more armed soldiers. (BTW, Abu Simbel is the temple that has the 4 images of Ramses (with one being damaged) on the outside...it's shown in "The Mummy" movie.)

Anyhow.

W.O.W.!!!

Wow. I'm speechless. Even if I had a camera, it wouldn't do the Great Temple of Ramses II and the Temple of Hathor justice. I wish I could have you all here with me so that we could share in the grandeur and enormous scope of it all!!! Lake Nasser (the largest man-made body of water of the world) is right there as well. It's such a grand combination of a herculean work of artistry of an ancient past and the indescribable beauty and splendor of nature...absolutely gorgeous! To get there and back we drove over the Aswan Dam. In the afternoon we went to check out the High Dam. Afterwards, we took a ferry ride to Philae (pronounced fee-lay) Island to visit the Temple of Isis. I need a thesaurus to come up with more words to describe what I'm actually seeing with my own eyes! I hit it off with 3 of the people that was in the microbus with me (two Londoners and a Japanese from Osaka) which added even more to the experience. Having not eaten pretty much all day, I ran off after the tour to one of the restaurants along the Nile and had a huge, delicious meal of kofta and kabab (halal-style). Afterwards I met another lovely Brit and chatted away the late afternoon and evening.

Anyhow, here's a link to a website I found with some great shots of Abu Simbel:
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/abus.htm

and of Philae:
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/philae.htm

and of Aswan (very generally):
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/aswan.htm

Tomorrow I'm off to sail up the Nile on a felucca (those sailboats in the picture of Aswan) to Edfu. Should be interesting!