Aswan is a city on the Nile, and very interesting, especially if you like extremes. Did you know that Aswan is one of the driest places on earth?

Aswan High Dam

If you like extremes, you’ll really like the Aswan High Dam, one of the greatest engineering projects of all time. This dam created one of the largest lakes in the world, Lake Nasser.

Looks pretty and peaceful, doesn’t it? But did you know this lake is full of crocodiles? And that one of those crocodiles can eat 150 kilos of fish every day?!

To create Lake Nasser, almost 100 000 people had to move. Abu Simbel had to be moved, too. That’s one of the most famous Egyptian temples. My sister got up at 3am to catch the bus from Aswan to Abu Simbel.

With kids in Aswan

I was only 6 when we were there, so mum thought it would be more fun for me to stay in Aswan. We spent the morning walking around, dodging hawkers (mum says lah, shukran in a firm voice), eating street food and just hanging around the fountains and the playgrounds.

Horses

We also rode in a caleche, a horse-driven carriage. Mum thought they drove too fast in the crazy Egyptian traffic, but I didn’t mind.

The unfinished obelisk

When the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids and temples and obelisks, they used stones from the quarries here in Aswan. The unfinished obelisk is still here. Archaeologists think this was going to be Hatshepsut’s obelisk. She was a pharaoh we heard lots about in Karnak. It wasn’t easy being a woman pharaoh in those days.

This pretty puppy slept in the shade of the unfinished obelisk:

From the unfinished obelisk, we could see almost all of Aswan:

Nile boats

There are so many boats sailing up and down the Nile, they sometimes double- and triple park. To get to our boat, we had to walk through two others.

On the river

We sailed in a felucca on the Nile and saw lots of people in tiny, little boats.

Here’s the Old Cataract hotel where we had afternoon tea.

Elephantine Island

In the Nile, there are several islands. There’s Kitchener Island with a botanical garden which is nice and cool. Then there’s Elephantine Island, where people still speak an ancient language called Nubian. On Elephantine, I saw baby crocodiles, which I loved.

Philae

In the evening, we took a small boat across Lake Nasser (which is full of crocodiles, remember), to Philae, where we saw a cool sound and light show about Isis and Osiris, two of the most important gods for the ancient Egyptians.

So there was lots to do in Aswan and I wouldn’t mind going back now that I’m older.

For more travel photos, hop over to this week’s Travel Photo Thursday.

Things to do with your kids in Aswan is a post from Sophie's World

A few years ago, the kids and I sailed up the Nile, from Luxor to Aswan and then back down again. It was eight days packed with experiences, impressions, sights and smells, meandering through present-day Egypt as much as the past. Alex was studying archaeology at the time and learned heaps.

In earlier posts, I’ve talked about Egyptian traffic and having high tea at the Old Cataract hotel (of Agatha Christie fame), about boating up the Nile, and about Elephantine, the quirky and delightful Nubian island in the river. We left off at Karnak, the largest ancient religious site in the world.

Picking up where we left, our little … well, smallish, boat continued towards Edfu. These are my notes:

No wake-up call this morning. During the night, we passed the locks at Esna and sadly missed that, but we’re going back down river later, so no worries. There was talk of hustlers in boats throwing their wares on board at Esna. Cat, my youngest, is excitedly anticipating that on the return trip. After a wonderfully lazy morning, we’ve gone ashore at Edfu.

Up river from Luxor, about 100 km, is Edfu Temple, the best preserved in Egypt, perhaps in all of antiquity. Edfu Temple is from the Ptolemaic period, a mere 2200 years old or so – hardly any age at all in this land. In fact, this large temple is built on the site of an older temple, from the New Kingdom.

The pylon is impressive; 56 metres high, taller than the one at Karnak but not as wide. It’s difficult to imagine this temple covered almost to the ceiling with sand, as it was when discovered in the mid-1800s. It must have been stuffy, claustrophobic. The ceilings of the hypostyle hall (a hall with a roof supported by columns) are decorated with astronomical motifs. But people through the ages have sought refuge from the weather in here and the ceiling has been damaged by smoke from their cooking fires.

Horus at Edfu Temple

Edfu Temple is dedicated to Horus, the falcon-headed god. Horus, in case you’ve forgotten, is one of the most important Egyptian deities. He’s god of the sun, god of war and protector of Egypt. Horus is also son of Isis and Osiris. When Osiris is killed by Set, his widow asks their son to protect Egypt from this vicious creature.

The famous battle between Horus and his arch enemy is depicted along the walls here, as a conflict between a hippo and a crocodile. And how do we know that’s what it means? Because of the Edfu Project at the Archaeological Institute at the University of Hamburg, who has taken on the task of translating the hieroglyphs.

I really enjoyed visiting Edfu Temple. It’s less overwhelming than Karnak and much more intimate. Even though – or perhaps because – it was afternoon, our little group had the grounds mostly to ourselves. We had plenty of time to amble about on our own, touching the ancient walls and carved drawings, imagining those that inscribed them. And deciphering a few hieroglyphs of our own.

Have you visited the sights of Ancient Egypt? If so, which was your favourite?

Want to see more photos from near and afar? Hop over to Travel Photo Thursday.

Exploring the temple at Edfu is a post from Sophie's World

From the Nile, the Old Cataract Hotel looks grand, perched on the granite bluff above. If you’ve seen Death on the Nile, it will also look familiar. My oldest daughter enjoys sipping tea in old world hotels, preferably while wearing a big hat, looking mysterious.

Uniformed guards at the gate inform us we have to pay 85 Egyptian pounds to enter. They obviously don’t want any riff-raff hanging about. However, the entrance fee can be applied to anything you buy while here, and we are having tea. To spend the full amount, we even have Royal Tea. We’re shown to the lower terraces. The grand terrace where there’s a band, plush, comfortable sofas and, not least, a roof over our heads, is for residents only.

Agatha Christie was once a resident of the Old Cataract. Do I ever want to be one? Well, I’m not so sure I like the attitude here.

Then again, I probably will…

Have a look at DeliciousBaby for more fun photos.

High Tea at the Old Cataract in Aswan is a post from Sophie's World

A: Age of first international trip: At 11, I went to New Orleans with my mum and brother to visit our aunt. It was a long, arduous journey, involving 4 planes and 5 airports each way. We had heaps of fun though. And unlimited sodas.

B: Best (foreign) beer: I’m hardly a beer connoisseur, not even that keen, actually. Maybe I had too many, too strong German beers on my first parent-free holiday at 15. Sick for days. I prefer light beers, like Corona, with a bit of lime in it.

C: Cuisine (favourite): Arabic (fondly remembering a summer in Jordan more than 20 years ago).

D: Destinations, favourite, least favourite and why: So many faves: London, Australia and our once temporary home in New Zealand are just a few. Heaps of beauty spots at home in Norway, too. And the Middle East continues to fascinate me.

Our backyard in Takapuna, NZ

I don’t really have any least favourites: But if someone held a gun to my head, forcing me to choose, I might say I can probably live happily even if I never saw Belarus again. I was in Minsk in 1994. It was a short business trip, just a few days, with very little time to explore the city, let alone the country. And yet…

E: Event experienced abroad that made you say “wow”: Frau Greber’s cooking. When I was 15, I spent a summer in Bregenz. Even though much of that summer was spent experimenting with too strong German beer (see above), I still remember my Austrian host mother’s cooking. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the best cook in the world. She could make a gourmet meal of anything. And she made a cherry yogurt I still dream about now and then.

F: Favourite mode of transportation: My cool, quick little Citroën, boats and trains. (Considering the somewhat tedious train journey I take every day, I’m surprising myself). And boats? I dream of taking the Royal Mail ship to St Helena, a 31-day journey from Britain. Now, to get the kids to come along.

G: Greatest feeling while travelling: Being completely free to let the day – and fate – be my guide.

H: Hottest place travelled to: June 1992, Cairo, 45 C. Still remember. So does my oldest daughter, then 4.

I: Incredible service experienced and where: Aggie Grey’s in Apia, Samoa, one of my favourite hotels.

Aggie Grey’s

J: Journey that took the longest: Oslo to Auckland always seems to take a while.

K: Keepsake from travels: I’ve lugged around ridiculously heavy souvenirs too many times to count. But I do like that Malawi chair. And the huge wall hanging from Jaipur. And the curtains from Windhoek. Even the bird cage from Lucca.

L: Let-down sight, why and where: None. Not a place’s fault if I have faulty expectations.

M: Moment where you fell in love with travel: Bente, a school mate, always travelled everywhere and brought home the most exotic souvenirs. Exotic through the eyes of a kid during the 70s, at least. I was madly envious – and spent many happy hours playing with her plastic Venetian gondola and munching on tangerines from Costa del Sol with leaves still on them…

N: Nicest hotel you’ve stayed in: One that springs to mind is the Polana in Maputo, Mozambique.

O: Obsession—what are you obsessed with taking pictures of while traveling?: Everything: animals, people, buildings, parks, trees, sculptures, landscapes, details…

P: Passport stamps, how many and from where? Over the years, there’s been a gazillion stamps from more than 100 countries. When I first began travelling, we were given passport stamps even in Europe. Not anymore, sadly.

Q: Quirkiest attraction you’ve visited and where: The dead monks in Kiev’s Persch-Lavra, maybe…

R: Recommended sight, event or experience: Any memorial or museum to human cruelty is worth seeing, to solidify our stand against it, for when it next occurs and we’re given an opportunity to make a difference.

S: Splurge; something you have no problem forking over money for while traveling: Transportation. Also, sometimes I can spend an indecent amount of money on a hotel room, if it’s quirky or interesting enough. I’m so staying at the Pera Palace next time in Istanbul.

T: Touristy thing done:

Nuff said.

U: Unforgettable travel memory: Hmm…, probably riding a camel through the Great Rann of Kucth in the Indian province of Gujarat, more or less scotch-guarded by camel pee, with no toilets and no showers for days, sleeping in hay in a shed and waking up next to newborn lambs on Christmas Day.

V: Visas, how many and for where? I’m lucky – Norwegian citizens can get around most of the world hassle-free and without visas. But I do have a few, several US student visas among them. My favourite is the Chinese visa I was given to go to Fujian to get my youngest daughter.

W: Wine, best glass of wine while traveling and where? Visciola, under the trees in Giovanni Giusti’s vineyard in Marche.

X: eXcellent view and from where?: Seeing the misty and mysterious Faroes appear before me from the deck of M/S Norrøna was pure magic. I can just imagine how the Vikings must have felt, when first setting eyes on those ancient isles.

Iguazu Falls are a close second. I hung back after closing hours and had a few minutes all to myself before I was spotted and very politely told to leave. Imagine just coming upon such a sight (and sound), completely unaware it was there, as the first visitors must have been, thousands of years ago.

Y: Years spent traveling?: Decades!

Z: Zealous sports fans and where: The annual cross country races at Oslo’s Holmenkollen, especially the 50 km. Norwegians are absolutely mad about cross country skiing, doing and watching.

Passing the baton to you,

• Jeremy of Living the Dream
• Mariana of Travel Thirst
• Monique of Mo Travels
• Thomas of Top Backpacking Destinations
• Laurence of Finding the Universe

The travel ABC of Sophie’s World is a post from Sophie's World

One of these is the Rosetta Stone, a stele from 196 BC. It belongs, if not in Rosetta, at least in Egypt. I think it would be marvellous in Alexandria, in the new Biblioteca Alexandrina.

Discovered 212 years ago in the present-day town of el-Rashid (near Alexandria) by Napoleon’s soldiers, the black granite stone was surrendered to Britain after his defeat. The British Museum has been its home since 1802.

The Rosetta Stone transgresses the boundaries of time and promotes human understanding.

When French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion translated the text, he solved one of the world’s great mysteries: how to read the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians.

The Rosetta Stone, you see, is written in three scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic and classical Greek. Why? Well, hieroglyphic was the script of kings, demotic the everyday script and Greek the administrative language of the time.

The stele relates a decree issued during the reign of 13-year-old king Ptolemy V. The full translation of the demotic text of the Rosetta Stone is here (be warned, it’s a bit long).

I always end up spending forever in front of this stone, wondering who might have carved it. Would he have known the significance of his work?

Just think how much less we would have known today, had it not been for this single rock.

Head over to DeliciousBaby and Budget Travelers Sandbox for more fun photos.

Alexandria

What is your favourite museum piece?

Reading the past with the Rosetta Stone is a post from Sophie's World

Karnak is a place of records: everything here seems to be the biggest and tallest. Its scale defies description. The first pylon (gate) alone is 42 metres high (like a 14-storey building) and 118 metres wide. Ancient Egypt must have been in awe of its builders. But I don’t suppose these dogs care one bit.

The Great Hypostyle Hall (hall of columns) is the largest of its kind in Egypt, with more than 130 columns in 16 rows, once decorated with multicoloured paintings and reliefs. The reliefs, although no longer multicoloured, are still clearly visible. Tourists through the ages have added to the décor. It’s desecration really, yet I can’t help but be fascinated by the Victorian Era vandals.

19th century vandalism

Circumcision
The men cringe at the sight of the circumcision chair, essentially a flat stone with a sunken bowl to collect blood, another flat stone mounted on top as a seat, and a long track clearly indicating where to put the relevant body part. According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians adopted circumcision in their search for cleanliness. It may also have been a rite of passage for teenage boys, no longer children.

Circumcision chair

Hatshepsut, female pharaoh
Pharaoh Hatshepsut was one of the most prolific builders in ancient Egypt and she liked obelisks. Only at Karnak, she had six of them raised. Sadly, only one remains. Almost 30 metres high, it’s the tallest surviving ancient obelisk on earth, and its tip is said to have been covered in gold. Must have looked brilliant. The obelisk is my first glimpse of this mysterious female pharaoh. I look forward to getting to know her better.

Hatshepsut’s stepson, Thutmose III, wasn’t very keen to keep her memory alive, to say the least. He had a wall built around the obelisk, presumably to hide it. Much of the wall is still visible today.

Meanwhile, my youngest heads towards a huge sacred scarab beetle. Walk around it three times for luck, five times to get married, seven times if you’re tired of the spouse you have and want a new one… Something for everyone! Or so we’re told.

Luxor

The largest ancient religious site in the world is a post from Sophie's World

Most long-distance transport in Egypt seems to be in convoy, often with more than 100 busses, one after the other. So is our journey from Hurghada to Luxor. We break twice during the four hours.

At a convoy stop

As we drive through the Red Sea Mountains, darkness descends. The driver doesn’t switch the headlamps on – except every once in a while, to check the road and oncoming traffic, presumably. Afterwards, he switches the lights off again. An effort to save energy, perhaps?

Road safety isn’t high on the priorities list, it appears. We’re told traffic lights have been installed in Luxor, but no one really cares. So the authorities optimistically put up countdown clocks, politely saying Could you kindly wait just 16 more seconds until the light turns green?

Egyptian traffic is a story all on its own.

Pedestrians, cars, busses, lorries, donkeys and caleches (horse-drawn carriages) just keep on, disregarding the lights. The largest vehicles seem to have the right-of-way – and it’s every man, woman, child, donkey and stray for himself. It’s a tough world – and totally opposite of how things work home in Scandinavia, where pedestrians always come first – even when jaywalking.

Caroline, a Swedish expat, tells us a driving licence is relatively easy to obtain in Egypt. You make an appointment to take a driving test. When there, you’re asked to drive slalom between a row of cones; then do the same in reverse. That’s mostly it! If you manage without hitting too many cones, the licence is yours. Of course, if you’re a man (or, I suppose, a woman) of means, you don’t have to go through the cone test. You simply buy a licence – or often four – to have a little something to go on, in case some are revoked.

It’s a bit of an eerie feeling, travelling in complete darkness along the edge of the desert. But we get to Luxor in one piece, so the driver probably knows what he’s doing.

How’s traffic in your part of the world?

For some long forgotten reason, I didn’t photograph Luxor’s chaotic traffic. Thus, I’ve lifted two photos off flickr’s Creative Commons for illustrative purposes. Photo of Luxor traffic light is by tericee, and Luxor traffic jam photo is by almost witty.

Hurghada

On the road in Egypt is a post from Sophie's World

Our Nile ship is the M/S Helio, a medium-sized vessel. According to my book Up the Nile – a photographic excursion 1839 – 1898, Lloyd’s guidebook advised that “life on a Nile bark has a charm which seldom fails to operate even on the most inert mind.” It has that! Despite air condition and mobile phones, it feels like we have been transported to another era.

In the 1800s, there were three basic modes of transport on the Nile: the sailing boat known as a dahabiya, the smaller sail boat cange and the steamer. If time was of the essence, the steamer was the answer. Travellers with time and money (luxurious creatures they must have been) sailed by dahabiya.

Dahabiya and steamer

Looking up, I spot a dahabiya. I expect it has more mod-cons than the one pictured in my book. The old photo of the inside of a dahabiyah in 1879 looks irresistibly romantic. To hire one, Lloyd’s recommended securing the services of a respectable dragoman, “charging him with the responsibility of providing everything needed, such as a cook, a man servant, and an assistant to wash and clean the travelers’ apartments”.

Back in the present – 129 years later – Agatha has joined me on deck. I’ve never spoken with her. Gnarled with arthritis, she has white hair, white clothes, white shoes, white handbag. Only in my mind do I call her Agatha. Seems appropriate. The Nile continues to be fertile grounds for the imagination. Impudently, I stare as she gazes at the meandering river. What’s her story, I wonder? I know she’s German and she looks 85 – 90. I picture her as a young girl during the war, with high wavy hair, a dress, shoes and socks. Her features indicate she must have been very pretty.

Ida is next on deck. She’s a sprightly 80-something Dane who has visited Egypt more than 40 times. Normally, she travels with a friend. But this friend has decided to limit her travels to once a year and that simply will not do! Recently, Ida hired a car and drove through all of Egypt by herself. She is fiercely independent and really cool. My kids adore her!

More and more people mill out on deck. We’re a multifarious lot. A sweet Swedish couple has brought their son and granddaughter along. She’s 13, but looks 18: blonde, heavily made-up eye lids, yet so shy, she can barely whisper her name in introduction. Apart from my daughters, she is the only other kid onboard. Daddy is about 35, big, bald, tattooed and wears a jacket saying “See you in hell”. Two middle-aged Danish couples are rowdy and annoying. “To beer or not to beer”, they repeat to the joy of no one but themselves. Then there’s Yvonne, also travelling on her own. Her birthday was yesterday and she had to endure drums and off-key singing from the crew at dinner.

Can’t see anyone who’d likely commit a murder on board, though. No Mia Farrow or Simon MacCorkindale. Just as well. There’s no Hercule Poirot either, ready to solve a murder mystery. No one seems destined to end up in the pool, face down.

One evening, there’s a galabiyah-party on board. For me, a black galabiyah-ish top suffices as fancy dress. The girls are dressed up in silken skirts with all sorts of jingly bits. Alex even sports a black close skull cap with even more jingle-jangle.

Cat is the youngest on board and everyone’s pet. For most of the journey, she is the only child on board. The crew adore waiting on her: she is always served first and they play and joke with her all the time. And she adores the attention. At the evening’s tombola raffle, the crew makes sure she wins a prize – a stuffed little camel singing an annoying tune. After the raffle and group photography, it’s time for rowdier games. Good thing Cat’s tired. Those things can be a bit of an embarrassment and it’s nice to have an excuse to back out. Who said travelling with children was inconvenient?

Meanwhile, the Nile flows by in the ancient landscape. As she has done for thousands of years.

Boating up the Nile – in the 1800s and today is a post from Sophie's World

By Aswan in the River Nile is Elephantine Island. It houses temple ruins (including the ruins of a step pyramid), two nilometers (structures measuring the water level during flooding season) and a luxury Mövenpick hotel. Most interestingly, though, Elephantine has a considerable Nubian population, living in three villages on the island.

Nubia is a really great name, isn’t it, conjuring up romantic visions of wild, warring tribes, courageously fighting pharaonic imperialism. Once Nubia was an independent kingdom. Today, the name Nubia is no longer in use, at least not officially. The former region of Nubia is now divided between Egypt and the Sudan.

Two years ago when sailing up the Nile, we got a Nubian, Mohammad, to show us his village on Elephantine. In a very halting English interspersed with Arabic and Nubian, he told of Nubian life in present-day Egypt. The gist of it was that it’s a bit of a challenge preserving the Nubian way of life. Same goes for the language. Nubian is a very complex language and it does not exist in written form. As if that isn’t enough, dialects vary so much, they’re not mutually understood and Arabic is used instead. Sad, somehow.

After strolling through the village, we stopped by someone’s home and were given tea. My then 6-year-old immediately spotted a glass cage with four live baby crocs. She loved them instantly and wanted to take them home. They didn’t have a lot of space, poor creatures.

This post is part of DeliciousBaby’s PhotoFriday series. Have a look at other great photos here.

Aswan

Elephantine and Nubians is a post from Sophie's World