Travel Journal

I’d been warned that the history of ancient Egypt was so vast and complex that it can be overwhelming for a first-time visitor, that Egypt is so unique that it feels like its own Planet, so that doing a spot of pre-reading would be useful to understand the pharonic timeline and the various dynasties. Undaunted, I elected to go ‘all in’ and read Toby Wilkinson’s excellent ‘The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt’, which proved to be invaluable when trying to decipher hieroglyphics in the numerous temples we visited during our 12 day Viking ‘Pharaohs & Pyramids’ River Cruise-tour.

This included a week of cruising from Luxor to Aswan in a very comfortable stateroom aboard their lovely brand new 82 passenger river purpose-built cruise ship Viking Sobek. Viking are famous for their excellent food and hospitality and we felt very spoiled with the delicious food and palatable local Egyptian wines (who knew!?). They also have exclusive docking rights along the Nile in Luxor, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo and Aswan, which was very welcome when we saw some of the other 300-odd cruise ships on the river moored up to seven ships across in several locations!

Viking’s Egypt operation is very slick, with 8 river cruise ships already in operation and another 4 soon to launch, so they run like a well-oiled machine despite the inherently chaotic and rather crowded nature of life in Cairo and wider Egypt. Our tour was full, so from our meeting at the Sofitel in downtown Cairo overlooking the Nile, we were split into three smaller groups for land and shore excursions and our tour director Bassem proved to be calm and full of dry good humour amidst the seeming chaos.

We were travelling during the peak tourist season over the Christmas & New Year holidays when the weather is cooler but still comfortable (in the low to mid 20C’s) so Egypt is very attractive to visitors from Northern hemisphere and it was busy in popular tourist sites like the Great Pyramid of Giza, Karnak and Luxor Temples in Luxor and the remarkable Valley of the Kings.

All these sites are ticketed but oddly the government hasn’t introduced a ‘timed entry’ system yet so with Egypt experiencing a tourism boom at present it can get quite crowded at peak times. A trained Egyptologist as well as a very experienced tour guide, Bassem proved adept at guiding us patiently around the busiest areas to a spot where we could rest in the shade and reflect on some truly awe-inspiring sights whilst he explained the significance of each temple or tomb and how they fit within ancient Egypt’s staggering four millenia of history (at which point I was thanking Mr Wilkinson for his insight!)

In Cairo, some of the many trip highlights included the spectacular (inside and out!) newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum – just wow, the view of Cairo from the Citadel and seeing the Pyramids of Giza for the first time as they emerged from early morning mist. Aboard the ship, the highlights were the astonishingly well preserved colours of the tomb of Seti I in Valley of the Kings, soaking up local life on the banks of the Nile from the sun deck as we cruised past, enjoying a drink in the old bar of the famous Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan overlooking the Nile and visiting the extraordinary well preserved temples of Abu Simbel, Philae and the Temple of Horus at Edfu.

Ramses II’s monolithic Temples at Abu Simbel on the shores of Lake Nasser are particularly impressive given that they had to move the entire complex to higher ground in 1968 due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam and the impending flooding of Nubia; but it was well worth the additional cost to fly there from Aswan. Standing in front of this ‘wonder of the world’ I reflected that it really is ‘Planet Egypt’ – there’s really nothing comparable to it!