ABU SIMBEL

Aboard EgyptAir flight 132, en route to Abu Simbel, a short 30 minute hop to the southern border with the Sudan and the famed rock-carved temples of Rameses II and his Great Royal Wife Nefertari. These were cut piecemeal and moved up the cliff in the 1960's to protect them from the rising waters of lake Nasser and the Aswan High Dam.

We are landing soon... More later.

I have seen a thousand photographs of Abu Simbel and so have you. These rock carved temples have been shown over and over in documentaries and Egyptology books, yet I was completely unprepared for their beauty. Such a sense of harmony and balance. The King shows the features of a man deified, serene and benevolent yet powerful. The carving is exquisite and the hands of the artists that created these colossi speak to me through the ages.

No one could ever do something like this again. Splendors from an unrepeatable past.

The visit is short, way too short, but such are the restrictions of organized travel. The place is also mostly deserted. A parking lot that could accommodate a hundred busses has only three, including ours.

Return to Aswan and the hotel. Very late lunch pool-side, and later an excursion to the Nubian Museum across the river.

It is very disturbing to be walking awake in the fabric of one's own dreams.