Spending the Night in the Middle of the Nile in a Felucca Cruise boat | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 4 (Part 30) 03D19

Felucca Sailing Cruise on the Nile Under Stars – Part 1 | Aswan

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

On Day 4, we were to spend most of our day and night on the felucca. A felucca is a traditional Egyptian (also widely used the Mediterranean region) wooden boat with a canvas sail, without motors and powered by the wind. Feluccas come in different shapes, sizes and colors. Aswan is the boarding point for most felucca cruises in Egypt.

After breakfast at the Basma Hotel (see previous post), our tour mates all gathered in the lobby and our guide picked us up in a van to head towards the felucca port. I took some videos of the hotel lobby before leaving.

We were driving through Aswan city, in what looked like its downtown or main street. I recorded roadside scenes for most of the part. The road ran along the Nile River. This side of the Nile is a bustling city, but the other side looked very different with mountains and sand dunes.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, which looked like a docking place for lots of motorized ferries and traditional feluccas.

There were various types of ferries and feluccas. Some of them were huge and some of them were mid-sized to small. Some had several decks and some had just one.

We were directed towards our feluccas. I saw a gate-like structure, but the roof or shed was made of bamboo or some kind of plant that looked really good.

And then I saw our designated felucca, which I will describe in the next post in detail.

At The Basma Hotel, Aswan | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 3 (Part 29) 02D19

One Night and Dinner in The Basma Hotel | Aswan

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

After arriving at the Basma Hotel, our tour guide handed over our keys and room numbers. Something I loved about being with a tour group is that the tour company pre-arranged everything and I didn’t even have to go through the hassle of checking in while in a foreign country.

Basma Hotel is located on very high ground, possibly the highest point of Aswan. Basma Hotel is a huge hotel complex with 200 rooms and a very big swimming pool. I saw a huge piece of artwork hanging on the entrance door wall that looked like it was made of mosaic or marble. The front of the hotel gives access to amazing views overlooking the beautiful greenery, the city of Aswan, mountains, yellow sand dunes and the amazing Nile River.

Basma Hotel, Aswan, Egypt

It looked like rooms can have 2 different types of views. Rooms on one side will have the Nile view and on the other side will have the city view. Regardless, you get to see the surrounding mountains and yellow sand dunes.

My room got the city mountain view. The problem with this hotel was that it was too old and crying for a renovation. My room had 2 beds. Ultimately, I was OK with my room. It felt clean and tidy, except everything was old. The bathroom was nothing fancy, but acceptable.

I even had a balcony, but a weird thing made my balcony and views feel weird. It looked like square blocks of concrete structures on the floor level outside my balcony. I was not sure what those were or why they were in front. They could be structures to support the building or something else. They were not directly blocking any views because they came up from the ground up to my balcony floor level. But if I looked from my high floor to the ground, then they block the view. The presence of these concrete blocks made me not like my room as much as I could otherwise. So, I didn’t get to enjoy the balcony and full city view with the mountains beyond.

In the evening, some of my tour members went for an extra tour to the Nubian village, which I skipped. Instead, I took a stroll around the hotel vicinity. I took my time to walk the whole complex and took some pictures and videos. I even exited the hotel boundary to mingle in the local busy streets and browse the shops right next to the hotel, but didn’t stay outside the hotel for too long.

In the evening, I had my coffee inside my suite. I used the hotel-provided instant coffee, although I had my own backup coffee. After coffee, I took some time to write down my travel details and back up SD cards to my portable hard drive. I had been taking notes of my travel details daily to help me write later on.

At night, I headed for dinner at the hotel restaurant. I had a beef curry with rice. The price was 150 LE, which would be $12 CAD. I found the food here was good and they were more attentive than the Oasis Hotel in Giza. The prices were cheaper also with greater quantity. 

The next day we would spend the night in the middle of the Nile in a Felucca Cruise boat.

At the Temples of Philae | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 3 (Part 28) 02D19

Philae Temple – The Temple of Isis at Philae | Aswan

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

When we approached the Philae temple complex, the first things I noticed were two large and tall majestic wall-like sandstone façade structures and a small entrance door. The temple complex was dedicated to the goddess Isis, but also the gods Horus and Osiris.

The enormous facade had carved images of the god Horus. There were lots of long columns inside the complex. Every inch of the columns, walls, and any other flat surface seemed to be covered with hieroglyphs.

These hieroglyphs cover the large carvings of the gods of Ancient Egypt and the last to be written by the Ancient Egyptians. These ornate pictorial alphabet inscriptions tell the stories of the gods and civilisations.

These inscriptions have been officially declared as the last written Egyptian hieroglyphs. They were meant for the Ancient Egyptians because these temples were built by the last of the Egyptian pharaohs, Nectanebo II.

The Philae temple complex was built in stages and some parts were built by the Greeks in Egyptian styles. So, the new Macedonian or Greek dynasty wanted to replicate Egyptian elements. They worshipped the Egyptian gods, dressed like Egyptians, and built temples, monuments, and structures in the Egyptian style to convince the locals the Greeks were the chosen rulers of Egypt.

My travel guide pointed out some fine lines as proof that these whole complex structures were cut, moved, and reattached from one island to another island, which I have talked about in previous posts.

This was the last item on our itinerary for today. We will go to the Basma Hotel from here and will have a free evening tonight.

Heading to The Temples of Philae | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 3 (Part 27) 02D20

Philae Temple – The Temple of Isis at Philae | Aswan

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

We reached a small dock from where we would take a boat to reach the Philae Temple. The dock area had lots of stores selling ornaments, miniature pyramids, temples, statues of Egyptian gods, and much more. Some sellers were on the side of the street displaying their wares on the street.

I liked the whole mini port-like environment there. There were lots of boats docked there, but we headed to our designated boat arranged by the tour company.

These boats are open-air boats with only a shade on top. The engine was nothing fancy. It would accommodate about 15-20 people.

It would take about 15 minutes to reach the island. I saw many other boats passing by filled with tourists. The scenarios along the shore were very pleasant. I saw the shorelines full of rocks and some of them were shaped like small hills.

As we approached the Philae temples on Agilkia Island, the columns and intact walls appeared to rise up out of the water among the large rocks.

I was still contemplating how they moved the whole temples from one island to another (see my previous post).

The dock here was another small one, but looked different because of the surrounding waters. We started to offload from the boat and walked a little bit uphill to reach the entrance of the temples.

Philae Temple – The Temple of Isis at Philae | Aswan, Egypt

The Temples of Philae | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 3 (Part 26) 02D20

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Our next destination is the temple complex of Philae. The Philae temple is the oldest temple that was built by the last of the Pharaohs, Nectanebo II, who was Egyptian. Once he died in 343 BC, his successors were Persian conquerors and then Greek kings. The Macedonian Greeks started the Ptolemaic dynasty, which began with the death of Alexander the Great and ended when Cleopatra died.

The original Philae temple was in the middle of the Nile, when it was first built more than 2000 years ago. Once the Aswan Low Dam was completed in 1902, flooding started to damage it more than ever.

In 1960, Egypt, UNESCO, and 30 other nations started an epic engineering rescue feat to move these colossal ancient Egyptian temples from floodwaters to another island.

I was literally shocked when my guide told me they moved the whole temple complex from one island to another. You can’t even tell these humongous structures were cut, moved, and reattached. I only saw some lines which the guide showed me that are the results of the joints. I would not have even noticed had the guide not mentioned it.

To this day, I find it unbelievable and remarkable how engineers managed to cut a complete temple apart and rebuild it exactly to its original specifications without being obvious.

To reach the present-day Philae temple, which is located on Agilkia Island, we had to take a boat. I will talk about the rest of the Philae Temple trip in the next post.