Abu Simbel

Our 3am morning call woke us up and started a very long but exciting day of visiting Abu Simbel and the philae temple. Abu Simbel is about 3 hours away south of Aswan and land journey must be accompanied by police convoy. so all the tour buses pretty much gather together in the middle of the night and marched south like a caravan. As we traveled through the seemingly endless desert we saw the sun gradually rising above the horizon. so beautiful! even more amazing is the desert mirage we saw on the return trip back to Aswan. I swear i saw a lake! :)

Abu Simbel is a must see. i honestly had a greater time here than the great pyramid of Giza (waaaaay too touristy!). It was designed by Ramses II as show of strength, to set the tone for any boats that sail up the Nile. Imagine you travel up the Nile and suddenly you see these gigantic statues of Ramses II looking down on you! Even after thousads of years, when I looked at it i felt like such a pathetic dwarf! the splendor of the temple doesn't stop at the exterior, the interior is equally stunning, if not more. It's filled with hierographs and stone cravings. the sun cast a magial light over the long corridor of the temple. it is said that on certain days of the year (2/22 and 10/22), the sunrise penetrate the temple, reach the innermost chamber and illuminate the four gods of the temple.

the project to move Abu Simbel is just as equally impressive as the monument itself. In the 1960s, when the building of high dam was drawn up, UNESCO set out to save as much monuments as possible from being flooded. During 4 years of time, they moved Abu Simbel from the original site to the current location, stone by stone. every detail, from the orientation to the landscape, was carefully mapped out to put it together in its original form. what a great international effort!