Day 23: Edfu - Luxor, Egypt

Viking Amun Riverboat

14 January 2026

Jim ran out of his cold and flu medication this morning, so we asked the boat staff if we could go into town to a local pharmacy. They were happy for us to go, but provided us with security - as a guide and protection. Thank goodness they did!

Edfu is a small and extremely poor, dirty and dusty town. It is also absolutely full of horse-drawn carriages - more horses than cars. They are driven at full speed down the street, and the poor horses are skinny and the carriages are rickety and dirty.

It's one thing to look at the streets of Egypt from the windows of a bus, and quite another thing to walk through them. You have to have eyes in the back of your head, because vehicles come at you from all angles. The roads are dirty and full of obstacles and potholes, with rubbish everywhere. There are also people walking about, running across the road, sitting at the side of the street or in small dirty cafes. It was quite overwhelming! There is also a strong smell of horse dung.

We wouldn't have found the pharmacy without the guide, as there is no obvious signage. The one we ended up going to was like a hole in the wall - but at least it did say Pharmacy in English on the outside.

The pharmacist spoke very little English, but he understood the words 'cold and flu' and 'cough syrup' and 'Strepsils', so we were able to buy what we needed and scuttle back to the safety of the ship.

After that, we headed out on buses to our last temple of the tour - the Temple of Edfu, supposedly the most well-preserved temple in Egypt. Our guide said they refuse to use the horses and carriages as transport to the temple because of the poor treatment of the animals and the poor condition of the vehicles. You could never be sure the guests would arrive safely!

The temple was lovely, but much like other temples we have seen. Although it was well preserved, it still had damage and a lot of deliberate vandalism. Coptic Christians chiselled out a lot of the images of the gods and goddesses when Christianity came to Egypt. 

This temple was dedicated to Horus, the falcon-headed god - so lots of images of falcons everywhere. The most lovely was a statue outside the inner temple, which everyone was lining up to have their photo taken with. I had to find an image online because I could never get a photo without a tourist in it!

We then got back on board, cast off and headed up to our final port of call, Luxor. We had a lovely afternoon sailing up the Nile and relaxing. We went through one lock, which was very interesting, but the rest of the time we were reading and packing - as we leave the ship bright and early tomorrow morning.