Tuesday, March 19th, 2019
This morning began with a ride on a felucca. It is an Egyptian sailing boat that travels slowly on the Nile River.
Agatha Christie wrote Death on the Nile while staying at the Old Cataract Hotel which is pictured below!
On our felucca ride we also saw some pied kingfisher and their nests.
You saw the fertile land along the Nile and then desert! It was quite a contrast.
The Aga Khan Mausoleum can be seen on the West bank of the Nile. Aga Khan was a spiritual leader of the Ismailis, a Shi’ite sect. The villa below to the left is his villa where he lived until his death and his wife oversaw the building of his mausoleum while living in the villa.
Our next stop was to visit a Nubian village. Below are various pictures of the village as we walked through the area! Nubians are indigenous to southern Egypt and they originated along the Nile valley.
One of our stops was a school in the village. We arrived as the morning classes were ending and before the afternoon session began. It was fun to see these happy young children.
The classrooms are very stark and have nothing in materials/technology that our schools in the US have to educate our students!
We were able to visit one of the Nubian homes and they were very friendly and let us walk all through their home.
As we left the village and traveled on our boat back to our riverboat we saw gardens and farms.
Late afternoon we visited the Temple of Kom Ombo.
This temple is dedicated to two gods: the crocodile god Sobek, and Haroeris, Horus the Elder. It has twin entrances.
We were walking around the temple and also visited the Crocodile Museum. The Crocodile Museum was full of mummified crocodiles and ancient carvings.
Below are pictures of the nilometer at Kom Ombo. A nilometer was built to measure the Nile river’s water level during the flood season!
After our visit to the temple we had a Galabeya party on our riverboat. Many in our group dressed in their galabeya outfits or whatever they had to wear. Not all of our group was around for the picture. We all enjoyed ourselves! It was a fun evening.
After the party we went out on the top deck to look at the stars and the moon! The moon was almost full!
Overnight our riverboat traveled on the Nile and we are heading to Edfu.