9B: Luxor to Aswan: Cars, Boats, Feet: 12/26/22

Greetings from Aswan –

Set out this morning for Aswan — a four-hour drive from Luxor, mostly along a pretty bad road that goes through numerous tiny desert villages and agricultural land. Abdul was there to meet us, with his cousin. Turns out his cousin would be the one to drive us, which is fine. His name is Allah. His father and Abdul’s father are brothers.

As is the tradition in Egypt, all of Allah’s father’s sons (there are 5) live with their parents, along with wives and children. The married daughters (there are two) live with their respective husband’s families. Allah’s wife works; she is a teacher as is one of his sisters. He has two young children, one of whom is in primary school. The drive is slow because of the road condition and because you are required to stop periodically at police checkpoints (of which there were about a dozen over the 100+-mile drive. Not sure what the police are looking for, but the trunk must get opened and Allah shows some papers. 

Along the way, we stopped to see Edfu Temple (I’m beginning to get templed out). Edfu is one of the best-preserved temples in all of Egypt. It was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC. And then we changed from the smaller road to “the highway” where we could go about 40 MPH. Apparently tourists are not allowed on the highway. Not clear as to why, but Allah explained that he had black curtains on the windows and at a certain time we needed to cover the windows with these black curtains. If he were to get stopped (and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t happen) he would “talk” to the cop (most likely he would know him already) and then everything would be good. I think that meant a little cash would change hands.

We made it just fine on the highway and none of us are in jail. Along the way, we crossed over the “old dam” that was built by the Brits and could see the much larger Awan Dam in the distance. We had received an email from the hotel BenBen Hotel, telling us to call them 30 minutes before our arrival so that they could send the boat for us?? We had not idea the hotel was located on a small island (so much for being prepared!). Allah took us to the place where the boat would dock.. It was pretty rocky with very very uneven steps down to the “harbor.” Within minutes a boat arrived (open-air motor driven flat boat) and we boarded (rather clumsily as the boat was moving and it took very large steps to get on and off the boat. No life preservers on the boat, as far as we could tell. Really don’t want to end up in the Nile.

We then took the 15-minute ride to Ben Ben… which is pretty fantastic, from what we’ve seen thus far. It’s only one year old. All the rooms have private Jacuzzis on the decks (too bad we don’t have bathing suits). The hotel sits about 40’ atop what look like boulders and the siting is pretty amazing with commanding views of the Nile. More on the hotel tomorrow and also on our dinner tonight and late night trip by boat in the dark (no lights on the boat) to get into town for dinner.

All good. We only have about 40 hours in Aswan, so unfortunately I don’t think we’ll have much time to enjoy BenBen.. Tomorrow we head to a Nubian Village—and to our favorite place.. the souk (market).

Take care