Sallah, I said NO camels! That’s FIVE camels; can’t you count?
Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Sunday evening in Cairo we hopped on a sleeper train to head south to Aswan. This was an efficient use of our crunched time. We were served supper and breakfast and had a nice clickity-clackity sleep on board.
Arriving Monday morning in Aswan, we hopped on our new bus for another day of adventures. Our first stop was an ancient granite quarry. Stones were cut here and floated down the Nile to wherever they would be used. An unfinished obelisk was left in the quarry because it had cracked. It was pretty far along. I image it was a bad day for the laborers when it cracked. It was time to start over.
Our third mode of transportation that day was by boat, heading to the island of Philae to see a Greek Egyptian temple (more on that next time). The Nile was the highway of ancient Egypt. It carried people and goods (like food or cut stones) up and down it. Even modern roads and rails follow its snaking path.
After lunch we hopped on another boat to take us across the Nile to our fourth mode of transportation for the day: camels. We each hopped on a camel and were guided by a group of Bedouin to St. Simeon’s monastery not far away. Camels are strange creatures, hobbling along with their large humps.
After exploring the monastery we took our camels back to the boat, which took us farther upstream to a Nubian village, where we were welcomed into a local home and entertained for over an hour. These people live in simple mud brick homes. We got to see their pet crocodiles. The village musician entertained us with his music and singing, asking our names and incorporating them into his songs. This provided a small window into village life today. On top of that, in this slow changing culture, one gets a feeling of what people have lived like for thousands of years.
As we rode our boat back toward our hotel, I gazed at the stars and moon and reflected on how exciting the day had been. On top of all we had seen, we had ridden in four modes of transportation: train, bus, boat, and camel. This trip was not just about seeing ancient ruins that we had learned about in class, but also experiencing the land. Egypt is a living, active story.