The temple of Ramses II
G’ day people!!
After the great Alexandria, I came back to Cairo ans spend a night there, against my will. I wanted to take the night train to Aswan, about 1200 km away, but instead of that I had to take the 07:40 one and spend the next 16 hours sitting there and looking thru the window!
Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world! Something like 6 years without raining!! It’s a small town besides the Nile, where there’s only a couple of things to do, but everyone who wants to go Abu Simbel has to go there.
Abu Simbel again, it’s located 290 Km away from Aswan, and there’s “only” one convoy that goes there every day. This is because of the tourist police, that in order to take care of tourist, prohibit the transportation of tourist in local buses. I missed the convoy, but I wasn’t gonna stay inAswan for the day, so I went to the bus station at 8 am, and got in the first bus I found. There was no problem with that, only that I don’t have my passport with me, it’s in the Indian embassy in Cairo, and I was stopped in a check point, I explained and four hours later when we arrived Abu Simbel, a policeman was waiting for me. He said: “Are you going to the temple?” “Yes!” “Ok, I have to come with you. Taxi?” “No!!!” jajajaja, so he had to walk 1 Km with me , until he got tired and stopped someone that gave us a ride. There in the temple I had to talk to the general, and expleined why I didn’t have my passport, then he was very pleased to meet me and we chatted for a while about biology 🙂
Now the temple is MASSIVE!!! It’s carved in the mountain, so everything was made of one stone!! it has some huge statues of Ramses II and of some gods. Beside the temple there’s another one, made for Nefertari, Ramses’s favourite wife, wich is also amazing. Another thing to be amazed is the fact that the temples were relocated in 1971, when Egypt built the High Dam in order to prevent floods. The creation of this dam, made the largest man-made lake to be born, the lake Nasser. So the UNESCO literally moved the temples with many others monuments that were gonna be coverd with water. They cut the whole temple stone by stone, and rebuilt it exactly the way it was, so every 22nd of February and 22 of October, the inner and most sacred chamber of the temple is iluminated by the rising sun, and the 4 statues of the gods, Ra, Horus, Amon and Ramses II himself are purified by the light. WOW!!! awesome!
The I went back, another 3 hours with a local microbus, je je je , and directly to bed I was exhausted.
zzzzzzz
simon =)
Tags: Egypt, Simon Uribe Convers, Travel
simonuribe@yahoo.com
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