Aswan

Aswan is the last city before the Nile turns south into the cataracts and the desert takes over. Everything about the place is unhurried: the feluccas with their painted sails, the coffee in the market, the walk along the Corniche at sunset.

The granite hills that run through the city are the same rock the pharaohs quarried for their obelisks, and you can still see the marks on some of them. Most of the famous sites — Philae, the Nubian Museum, the unfinished obelisk — are within a short drive or a short boat ride.

Philae

Philae temple was moved. When the Aswan High Dam was built in the 1970s, the original island flooded, so the whole complex was dismantled stone by stone and reassembled on Agilkia island, 300 metres away. Walking through the reassembled temple is a strange experience: the layout is right, the stones are right, and the ground under your feet is not.

The Nubian Museum

If you visit one museum in Aswan, make it this one. It is small, well organised, and it does the job that most museums fail at: it puts the people back into the story of Nubia, a civilisation that lived on this river for millennia before Egypt absorbed it.

Getting out

A day trip to Abu Simbel is five hours by road, or you can take the early morning train from Cairo to Aswan and then the bus. Either way, going early in the morning and coming back late is worth it.