Day 22: Aswan - Kom Ombo - Edfu, Egypt

Viking Amun Riverboat

13 January 2026

Today was an enjoyable day - and something different. We actually went on a lovely motorboat trip up the Nile. (Much better than just being in a bus.) Jim still wasn't feeling 100% and so decided to stay on the riverboat. 

It was nice to have fresh air and to see the Nile up close. Our tour guide is a mad bird watcher and was constantly pointing out tiny, rather uninteresting, birds. I was more interested in the water buffalo, the camels, the dogs and all the rocks. 

In some parts, the desert comes right down to the water and we watched two camels galloping down this enormous sand dune to the river. The camel in front didn't have a rider, so we had no idea what was going on. Was it a case of an escaping camel? Or were they both just enjoying a run in the sand?

On the way up river, we must have passed twenty or so cruise boats moored at the docks - some much bigger than ours. Nile cruises are a massive industry!

The aim of this boat trip was to visit a house in a Nubian village. The Nubian community are quite significant in Aswan and they control all the motor boat tourism. Centuries ago, Nubia was a separate country in the south of Egypt, but it has been part of Egypt for generations. Nubians have a separate language and have very distinctive architecture and culture - more African than Egyptian.

We moored at a small dock and then all 80 of us trooped inside an enormous house. It was a very odd experience because a family live there so we were poking about their actual living space. The house was decorated in the distinctive blue and white Nubian style, with lots of domed rooms. There was a large central courtyard, open to the sky, and then lots of small rooms at the sides. It was a three storey house, but you went outside to go up the stairs. It had a sand floor and was quite dusty and messy - with laundry lying about, unmade beds and things. They also had, for some unknown reason, three baby crocodiles in an enclosure in the courtyard which they tried to encourage us to hold and take pictures with. I just felt sorry for them and so avoided it. The female members of the family offered to paint our hands with henna (for a fee, of course), but I avoided that too. They were obviously quite poor and this was a way of making money, but it seemed very intrusive and I felt rather uncomfortable. What I did enjoy though was seeing a couple of camels being led down the narrow street in front of the house. An impressive sight!

After leaving the Nubian village, we got back in the motor boats and sailed back to the dock where we caught buses to visit Philae Temple. It's located on an island, so the buses took us to another dock, where we boarded more boats and took a short trip to an island just off shore. The temple there was also going to be submerged by the Aswan Dam, so they cut it up into 43,000 blocks and reassembled it on a nearby island that was higher out of the water. You could still see the top of the original island sticking out of the water. Fascinating!

The temple was lovely. It was actually a temple complex, consisting of quite a few buildings. It was the last temple ever to be built in Egypt (in the 5th Century AD) and was dedicated to the goddess Isis. We went on a guided tour first and were then given half an hour to wander around by ourselves. It was a perfect day - sunny with a cool breeze, and an island temple is a lovely place to explore in such weather.

After the visit, we took the boats back across the water and then boarded the buses to be taken back to the river boat for lunch and a rest. During the afternoon, the boat continued back upstream to the town of Kom Ombo. (We were delayed a little because someone had to be taken off the boat because they were too ill to remain on the tour. Apparently they'd been sick since they arrived, but what a miserable way to end a visit to Egypt!)

When we reached Kom Ombo, we went on a walking tour to another nearby temple, dedicated to the very interesting crocodile-headed god, Sobek, and the falcon-headed god, Horus. It was late afternoon, by this time, and the floodlights came on while we were there, which always makes it more exciting.

I enjoyed walking around and listening to the tour guide explain all the images. We're getting good at recognising the different gods and the main hieroglyphic symbols, which makes it much more interesting. We finished the tour with a visit to the Crocodile Museum, to view the 18 mummified crocodiles on display.

Apparently, they found over a thousand mummified crocodiles at this site. The temple always had one crocodile that was considered sacred to Sobek. When that crocodile died, they mummified it, placed it in a special crypt, and selected a new sacred crocodile. Over the centuries, they went through a lot of crocodiles!