Day 105
Sleeping location: Temple car park, Abu Simbel, Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 11 / 8206
Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 59100
Weight of temple moved: 31,000 tons
Day in three words: Bye bye Egypt
We spent the morning chilling around the hotel, with me doing some catching up on this here blog. The midday call to prayer was quite something, it went on for AGES and contained a lot of very angry sounding praying; we were right next to the mosque so we got the full intensity of the holiness. This is maybe because it was Friday (the holiest day) and near the the Prophet’s Birthday. After coffees and a crossword (app) we headed over to the temples. Egypt had one last* kick in the teeth for us, with the price being a mighty 240, which was how much last night’s meal cost for the two of us. Rebecca balked at this and stayed outside whilst I went in.
The temples were pretty impressive, but the more impressive aspect was that they were moved, in full, in the 1960s. The creation of Lake Nasser meant that they were going to be flooded so UNESCO collected a load of donations from various countries to save them**. There was a visitor’s centre detailing the project, which was fascinating. The attention to detail and precision was incredible and you honestly couldn’t tell that they were cut into pieces, aside from the blocky nature of the fake hills they are now set into. They even oriented them the exact same way as before, so the sunlight came in at a particular angle and lit particular statues. Similar to Hebu in Luxor, there were some comic book style carvings of a Ramesses laying the smackdown, this time from version III to the Hittites in Syria. Weirdly the temples also contained loads of graffiti from the 1800s.
Back in town we experienced a couple more attempted ripoffs, including a woman asking for 50 (£2.50) for a small melon, then immediately dropping to 10 when she saw my look of pure disdain. For dinner we went to a fish restaurant and accidentally haggled the price upwards as we were talking about the price for one person, and they meant the price for two. I can’t wait to leave this culture of haggling, it’s so much effort. We camped in the temple car park as it’s permitted by the police, quiet and close to the boat across the lake. My Egyptian SIM card had run out of data a few days earlier but was somehow still running, so I abused it to maximum effect and downloaded loads of podcasts. There’s a lot of desert ahead.
*Or so we thought
**Which makes it all the more of a pisstake that Egypt now charges a load for people to visit them
Distance (km today/total): 11 / 8206
Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 59100
Weight of temple moved: 31,000 tons
Day in three words: Bye bye Egypt
We spent the morning chilling around the hotel, with me doing some catching up on this here blog. The midday call to prayer was quite something, it went on for AGES and contained a lot of very angry sounding praying; we were right next to the mosque so we got the full intensity of the holiness. This is maybe because it was Friday (the holiest day) and near the the Prophet’s Birthday. After coffees and a crossword (app) we headed over to the temples. Egypt had one last* kick in the teeth for us, with the price being a mighty 240, which was how much last night’s meal cost for the two of us. Rebecca balked at this and stayed outside whilst I went in.
The temples were pretty impressive, but the more impressive aspect was that they were moved, in full, in the 1960s. The creation of Lake Nasser meant that they were going to be flooded so UNESCO collected a load of donations from various countries to save them**. There was a visitor’s centre detailing the project, which was fascinating. The attention to detail and precision was incredible and you honestly couldn’t tell that they were cut into pieces, aside from the blocky nature of the fake hills they are now set into. They even oriented them the exact same way as before, so the sunlight came in at a particular angle and lit particular statues. Similar to Hebu in Luxor, there were some comic book style carvings of a Ramesses laying the smackdown, this time from version III to the Hittites in Syria. Weirdly the temples also contained loads of graffiti from the 1800s.
Back in town we experienced a couple more attempted ripoffs, including a woman asking for 50 (£2.50) for a small melon, then immediately dropping to 10 when she saw my look of pure disdain. For dinner we went to a fish restaurant and accidentally haggled the price upwards as we were talking about the price for one person, and they meant the price for two. I can’t wait to leave this culture of haggling, it’s so much effort. We camped in the temple car park as it’s permitted by the police, quiet and close to the boat across the lake. My Egyptian SIM card had run out of data a few days earlier but was somehow still running, so I abused it to maximum effect and downloaded loads of podcasts. There’s a lot of desert ahead.
*Or so we thought
**Which makes it all the more of a pisstake that Egypt now charges a load for people to visit them
Comments
Post a Comment