How Doth the Little Crocodile...
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 11 ~ January 30 ~ Aswan
The famous dam and some more temples are on the agenda for today.
Another early start.
Still a bit brisk after breakfast, but the sun is shining.
It's hard to get a real sense of scale to the dam when you're actually on it.
It's not hard to guess how significant hydropower is.
I think it's a great pity that we can't actually visit any of the generator plant, though I may be alone in this regret.
This is the monument of Arab-Soviet friendship, a stylised lotus flower.
We're not quite sure exactly how friendly the Arabs and the modern-day Russians are, but back in the 1950s, initial military aid from the Soviet Union grew into substantial economic and political links between the two states. So soon after the devastation of the Second World War, few Western countries were in any position to offer much aid to Egypt, and while the US could, politics ultimately destroyed any chance of a good relationship.
President Nasser originally looked to Britain and the US for help constructing the Aswan High Dam, but after initial negotiations appeared favourable, the deal collapsed for reasons which are still somewhat unclear. It seems to have been a bad political mistake for whatever reason, turning Nasser towards the Soviet Union from then on. Almost immediately after the withdrawal of the Anglo-American offer, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, calculating (correctly, initially) that Western outrage would not translate into real action. The Soviets, initially fairly non-committal, began to support Egypt against Western pressure. The aftermath of the subsequent Suez Crisis left Egypt much more closely associated with the Soviet Union and dissociated from the West.
In 1958 the Soviets offered assistance to build the dam, and in 1960 work began.
All you want to know - probably a lot more than you want to know! - can be found in this Master's degree thesis, which I have condensed above from about 300 pages into a few dozen words! Egypt and the Soviet Union, 1953-1970
[Oh, I suppose I should say for the sake of the younger folks: President Nasser was an army officer who led (behind a figurehead 'leader') the coup that overthrew King Farouk in 1952. It was supposed to be a democratic revolution, but you know how these things go... And Rawya says that Farouk was nothing like as bad as he's generally made out to be in the West, where he was seen as little more than a decadent playboy. Nasser, it's probably fair to say, is best described as a relatively benevolent dictator. But this is all more than fifty years in the past now, and as they say, "recollections may differ".]
The circle is a walkway that one can pay to ascend, but none of us do. In all honesty, I don't think the view from here will be that impressive.
Time to catch a boat to (not) Philae Island, location of more resited temples.
Not fellow tourists, a couple of enterprising locals jump aboard and spread out an array of alluring
The temple complex is still called Philae even though that former island is now underwater. This island we are on is actually called Agilkia, but I only know that because I've looked it up long after our visit.
Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair, but the cut-and-paste job here really doesn't seem to be as well done as at Abu Simbel. At that latter site, although you know intellectually it's a reassembled jigsaw, it doesn't feel like that.
Who's she?
I've no idea, but her sole purpose in visiting the temple appears to be so that she can pose and her companion (can we say "ugly friend" in 2024? I suppose not) can take pictures of her on her phone. I suppose she must be - or at least want to be - some sort of social media influencer or something.
[To be clear, I'm not doing the old-fogey-doesn't-understand-youth-culture thing here: presenting a heavily curated 'perfect' life on Instagram or TikTok or whatever is actually an awful lot of hard work and I fully recognise that. It's not my thing, but then neither is watching Premier League football or being a quantity surveyor, or many other things that different folks choose.]
But all that said, I think it's sad that she's not paying more attention to her surroundings. If you just want a picture, stay at home, use a green-screen and photoshop the perfect background in.
I told you of the family history and our reason for travelling here in the intro. Amanda has brought a copy of her favourite picture of her parents when they were both still healthy. Although they can't visit Egypt in person, they can in spirit, much as the ancient Egyptians themselves would have understood. We've learnt that the paintings and carvings of the kings and queens reflect not how they looked at the time of their death, but how they would want to be resurrected. [This has always been a brushed-under-the-carpet aspect of the Christian concept of the resurrection.]
Getting ready for a spot of lunch.
Sophie has decided she needs a Sobek statue - well a girl needs a crocodile god, doesn't she? There are a few to be had, but relatively rare and even here where the vendor has a few, you can see that it's mostly pyramids and sphinxes (and Rameses). But she finds a suitable example at a suitable price, and doesn't take so long that the rest of us are sitting there tapping our watches, so all is good.
So we've seen what the Egyptians built, now for some of what they didn't build? Err?
This is the Aswan quarry where the largest known ancient obelisk wasn't actually excavated.
Here it is, mostly cut out of the surrounding rock.
But it fatally cracked, so was abandoned.
Gosh it's the whole crew, photo taken by one of the site staff. Just to remind everyone, from left to right,
Amanda, Lynda, Steve, Rawya, Rob, Janet, Sophie, Duncan
After this, we take a walk through the city, or at least the more photogenic bits of it...
Into the shopping mall. Yes, it's about as chaotic as it looks here, but it does vary a bit,
Not just 'spices' as we think of them, they have incense and 'soap' as well as our ideas of edible items.
The name "Nubian Oasis" sounds so much like the kind of hotel we've been staying at. But that's where the resemblance ends here!
A little hard to see in, but it's a bakery right on the street in the middle of the shopping mall.
This pile of lentils or whatever seems unnaturally steep. I'm sceptical that it can have been achieved without some sort of glue-like binder, but even more concerned that the stallholder clearly hasn't sold any lately.
We haven't done much buying of souvenirs this trip, but we like some of the paintings on papyrus and buy a couple here. Obviously lots of haggling is called for.
Our last hotel. As I mentioned, it's the same place Rawya and I came to find an ATM a couple of nights ago.
It's maybe not quite as grand as it superficially appears, but it's undeniably a nice place for our last stay.
The rooms are stylish and elegant.
I briefly mentioned it earlier, but here is the iconic Egyptian beer which we have enjoyed on our voyage. This Stella "since 1897" is, as I said, completely unrelated to the Belgian brand "Stella Artois" which was first brewed nearly three decades later, in 1926. Copycats! (And of course, the version we get in the UK is probably not the same thing anyway.)
As a local guide website says, "Stella is (in our humble opinion) our favorite local beer. It’s not heavy at all, but not too light that you feel like you’re drinking something watered down."
It's a fine brew and I can't disagree.
I don't really have any worthwhile pictures of our last night dinner, for the same reason I don't have many great shots of previous dinners: like, I'm being part of the action, not photographing it. In this particular case, though, I'm even less detached, because I take/have given to me - I'm not quite sure which - the job of thanking Rawya on everyone's behalf. It's not a difficult job: she has been absolutely amazing! Amanda and I have been to an awful lot of places around the world and had an awful lot of guides, and we've never had one better; and few enough half as good! [Rawya: yes, I'm sure you're blushing as you read this, but do tell me if I've got anything wrong and I'll correct it!]
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