Dream big and wake up to pharaohs
By Chen Fen, TODAY | Posted: 21 August 2008 1329 hrs

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EGYPT: It seemed rather narrow, almost too diminutive for a river that had nourished a great civilisation for thousands of years. From the deck of our riverboat docked at Luxor, it felt like we could reach right across to the other bank of the Nile.

The river at this point may be narrow but there was no mistaking the immensity of the monuments that dotted the landscape everywhere we turned in Egypt. There is no better way to come face to face with this magnificence than to sail up river in a floating hotel, making stops for excursions along the way.

Our cruise started at Luxor near where we had our first encounter with the jaw-dropping wonders of Egypt’s ancient past. Picture this. It takes six people with arms outstretched to encircle each of the 134 stone pillars in the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Amun in Karnak, a town 2km north of Luxor.

Size seems to be every thing in Egypt. From the vast expanse of the Valley of the Kings on the west bank across from Luxor to the 18m tall Colossi of Memnon and the majestic memorial temple of Hatshepsut the female pharaoh, everything is larger than life.

Even the afterlife is catered to on a grand scale. When the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922, it was crammed with all manner of treasure, from jewellery and furniture to statues and chariots.

The tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley are mostly empty now, echoing with the chatter of tourists gawking at the carvings on the walls. Tutankhamun is still there though, his mummy the focus of hushed wonder as we filed past his sarcophagus deep beneath the desert sand.

At the end of a day of sightseeing, dinner on board and an overnight sailing were a welcome relief from the desert heat. To me, this is the beauty of a Nile cruise; after a good night’s sleep in your hotel room, you wake up to find yourself in a different town and you are rested and ready for another day’s adventures.

At other times, sailing in the afternoon is a relaxing way to watch rural Egypt float by while you enjoy a cup of tea and the sultry river breeze on the top deck of the boat. Every now and then a farmer in traditional garb would go riding by on his donkey with a basket on either side of the animal. At the water’s edge, women would tend to their laundry as reeds swayed gently in the breeze. If you looked hard enough down that little holdover from the past, you might even believe you could see the little reed basket of the biblical baby Moses bobbing among the papyrus.

Then as dusk set in and the moon began its ascent, we spied tiny dots of twinkling light from the Ptolemaic Temple of Kom Ombo. The temple stood on a promontory overlooking the Nile 170km south of Luxor, its ever-brighter lights drawing our boat into their warm glow.

Some say the best way to arrive at the Temple is by boat. Then you can truly appreciate the relationship of the Temple to its surroundings. The lights, for all their magical sparkle, are just a bonus.

So too the sunrise in the desert, a reward for sacrificing sleep for the early morning bus ride from Aswan to Abu Simbel. Our boat had docked at Aswan for a visit to the High Dam, that engineering wonder of modern Egypt. But it was Abu Simbel, a few hours’ drive away that we really wanted to see.

Like the Dam, the temples of Abu Simbel are a feat of engineering ingenuity, only doubly so. The ancients had poured their genius into the original construction. Then when the Dam threatened to inundate the temples, they were taken apart and reassembled piece by piece in their present location out of harm’s way.

Aswan and Abu Simbel were the final stops on our cruise up the Nile. Our next destination was the delta of that great river where the wonders of Giza awaited us. The overnight train to Cairo was about to depart. - TODAY/sh

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