Catch up time - Trips to Abu Simbal

I have been busy making my website for the photos I have been selling at the Bazaars.  I had numerous requests for a website from them and from work now that there are some photos up there I wanted to get round to it and recently have made the effort.  Now about 90% complete and should finish and go live in the next week or so.

Whilst doing this I have been selecting images from Iphoto and realised I had blogged about the fishing trip to Lake Nasser previously but not our little side jaunt to Abu Simbal, one of the "must see places" in the world.   Heres our story.......

Gentlemen, start your engines

We decided to drive in one of the convoys from Aswan instead of flying.  There is an early one (ca. 3am - so you can be at the temples without being baked to death in summer) and a later one, which we took (11am - ok for winter).  The convoys are for "protection", some trouble in the past apparently and a general distrust of being close to the Sudanese border.

We arrived at the Unfinished Obelisk at 10:50am along with a number of other private minbuses and the odd tour bus.   A few armed egyptian police were there.

Security nearly manages to lose a few toes

Dictionary definitions

Race:  An event where everyone starts at the same time, goes as fast as they can and gets to a finishing n point as fast as possible.

Convoy in Egypt: An event where everyone starts at the same time, goes as fast as they can and gets to a finishing n point as fast as possible.

As soon as we left at 11.15am it was pedal to the metal, no apparent sign of a convoy except we were all going in the same direction......

Saw some good mirages as we cross the rocky desert and some major civil workings called Toskhia? which apparently was Mubaraks major project that would bring him fame of bringing life to the desert....one for later perhaps.

Thermal inversion in the desert- a mirage.  The black basalts reflected

Rameses II & Horus

Entrance

Ramesis II x two

That man again

Spot the joins where they cut the sandstone and moved it 

3 hours later we arrived in Abu Simbal, about 5th in the "convoy".  The monument was moved when the Aswan Dam flooded the lake.  It is pretty awe-inspiring in terms of scale.  The remarkable thing for me was the stunning heiroglyphs which I was not allowed to take photos of (photos not allowed in side).  Spent a few hours wandering round, and then made the long journey back.  A long day but a major site ticked off from our Egyptian list.

 

The Queens tomb

Back Blogging Again!

Lost man hole covers are marked (sometimes) with whatever is available, in this case a torn branch.  An expat with a camera taking photos intrigued the local kids of the builders and boabs who live on site. I have played with the filters here.

I decided to take a few months off blogging, work was busy post Christmas with a new job and many commitments lead me to concentrate on other things.  Im back and refreshed and ready to go.  Im also armed and dangerous now with photoshop which I have been learning (which does take time).  Plan is to make a website for the photos I have been selling for charity - but that'll take even more time.  So whilst I get back into the swing of things heres a couple of random images from the last few months......

Art - but not as we know it Jim.  The wooden scaffolding used to make the new housing near Carrefour on the Ring Road.  Expat with camera slightly annoyed security guard who obviously does not understand an artist a work....

 A makeshift wooden fence.

That hole again!  Sometimes these issues are not marked and can cause a little damage to you car!

Deep Down in the South

Just getting round to cleaning up the photos on the Mac after Christmas and getting the blog up to date as I have been a bit lax recently.  When we went down south to fish for big 'uns  in Lake Nasser we had a couple of days in the main city of the region, Aswan.  

It has a beautiful setting on the banks of the Nile.  I mainstay is tourism but judging by the number of hibernating cruise boats times are tough in the tourist industry now.  A really nice place, a bit hassley but no different from Cairo (not excessive like Luxor).  Heres some images from our stay, did not have time to do any dedicated photography but its worth doing there im sure. 

Parked cruise ships, feluccas, motor boats and rowers - the Nile is the lifeblood of Aswan.

Numerous Feluccas await tourists.....

The shadow family at the unfinished obelisk

The unfinished obelisk, left in the granite quarry as it developed a tensile fracture whilst being quarried.

Young T and Mrs T wondering about the genesis of the T-type Nubian granite 

More fractured Nubian granite on the way to Philae Temple

Arriving at Philae temple, moved onto this island to escape the Aswan Dam water rise.

Philae Temple

The Chrisitans took over the temple and vandalised the heiroglyphs

Orisis with two balls !?!

The tourist crush outside the main Philae Temple

More vandalism, this by the French soldiers shooting (19C)

Nice

The small print

The guard was like a coiled spring.....

Sunlight

View from the temple

Greek, Roman and Egyptian style side temple.

View from the tower of the Movenpick, sunset with beer in hand - great

Sunset over the Nile

Three free Feluccas

Aswan by Night

The Lemon man, Aswan Market. 

The Movenpick hotel on an island in the Nile.  Built by the Russians, they knew how to be sensitive to local culture in their architectural desgin - based on a traffic control tower? 

Boys with hand-paddles

This is Aswan