Day Three - Edfu Temple, Kom Ombo

Wednesday, April 5th 2000

It's another wake-up call. 7am actually feels quite civilised after yesterday, yet still we walk to breakfast bleary-eyed. It doesn't help when neither of us could ever be described as morning people...

This morning it's Edfu temple, and to get there we're taken on horse-drawn carriages. It's not actually quite as romantic as it possibly sounds. We're not happy about the driver whipping the horse and the conditions it lives in must be so far removed from grazing in the New Forest as it's possilbe to be get. Still, admonishing the driver wouldn't do much good in any long run and he gets quite bolshy when I don't tip him for taking a (pretty poor) photo of Lisa and me.

Edfu town itself is a complete dustbowl, teeming with market stalls all trying to sell the same garments or cartons of Marlboro. We walk to the temple around the walled back, and when we finally see the front, the size of it is staggering, especially when combined with the intricacy of the reliefs. The temple apparently took 180 years to build, which is completely incomprehensible to me - the generations of people that lived and died during the building of this well preserved monolith (the best remaining one in Egypt). You almost wonder what the point of commissioning and designing such a structure is like when you'll never come close to seeing it's full glory. Perhaps the certainty of the after-life and its rewards were what drove them. The temple stands at least eighty feet high, and how even the ceilings in the hypostyle hall do not come crashing down is a near miracle. All the carvings are in a relief style, which just adds to the feeling of over-whelment.

Thankfully we return to the boat before the sun unleashes it's full searing heat and after an hour of sunbathing and relaxing (which is difficult to do when cruising - you constantly want to soak in the desert views) a siesta is taken, which frustratingly turns into a three and a half hour sleep, awakening late afternoon with the sun low in the sky.

After sunset and docking, we take a short stroll to Kom Ombo, and by blimey, it's another temple! This one's extremely cool to see lit after dark, though perilous with the uneven stone slabs just begging for you to break your leg as you slip, unable to see your path ahead. We're given the rare opportunity to spend some time wandering around on our own, which makes a pleasant change. The temple contains many short underground passageways, poorly lit and you enter unsupervised, not knowing where they lead. A pit, about nineteen metres deep lies to one side, approximately thirteen metres of which are submerged by dank, stagnant and green Nile water, which the ancient women used, believing it aided fertility. I clutch my camera tightly and try to imagine the nightmare that would ensure if I fell in. The water is so hideous it looks opaque, and initially I though it had a concrete base rather than the foul covering on the of dead water. Bats flutter around, and in the spotlit night, the whole area is evocatively impressive.

Dinner tonight is a 'Galabaya' party in authentic dress. I've never really been one for mucking in and letting myself go, so Lisa and I are one of the few not dressed up. In fact, the table we're sat on is mainly populated by us killjoys, similarly expelled from the main crowd. I will give it to the staff though, they do try hard, in a not entirely crap way. Very amusingly, when opening our room before dinner, we find that the cleaners have made a scarecrow to greet us, made out of my clothes, sunglasses, hat and towels. It's a nice touch, and raises a scream from Lisa upon opening the door, thinking there's a dead body in lying in the room. I high-five the cleaner...