Journey to Abu Simble

Having traveled quite extensively, I have experienced a number of situations, some funny, some not so funny during my travels. It was suggested that I write about my experienced so that others may either enjoy them also, or be made to suffer accordingly. Either way I hope you enjoy my scribbling and I would appreciate any feedback you may have both positive and negative.

Journey to Abu Simble

I was assigned to work in Egypt for a period and decided to take advantage of my location to visit several of the wonders of the ancient Egyptian world, the pyramids and the great temple at Luxor for example. This story however is not about those wonders, but about the journey I made to visit another wonder that belongs to both the ancient world and the modern one as well. I am referring of course to the temple of Ramses III. When the Aswan dam was created by the Russians to help with the annual Nile river floods, a lake was formed in the reaches of the upper Nile River. The location of this lake was such that the temple built in honor of Ramses III would be flooded and buried forever beneath the waters of the Nile. The United Nations, together with a group of highly skilled engineers, Egyptologists and geologists literally carved the temple into pieces and, in what must have been the worlds largest jig-saw puzzle, reassembled it on high ground adjacent to a small village called Abu Simble. It was to this site that my journey was to be made.

I began by purchasing a return air ticket from a local travel agency in Cairo and on the appointed day took a taxi to Heliopolis, which is the airport at Cairo. The journey from my lodgings to the airport went without incident, which is most unusual for Cairo, but more on Cairo traffic in another story. At the airport I traded in one half of my ticket for my boarding pass. Now this boarding pass was not your usual run-of-the-mill boarding pass, oh no, this had several unique features the like of which I had never come across before.

The pass consisted of a single piece of paper, approximately six inches long by two inches wide; its consistency was that of your average cheap writing pad paper and was an unkempt cream in colour. There was absolutely nothing written on this piece of paper, and of course it was written in both English and Arabic! A minute examination of this boarding pass confirmed that nothing was written upon it; nothing had ever been written upon it, and in all likelihood, nothing would ever be written upon it.

I left the ticket counter and proceeded to the boarding lounge, and once again I would be totally remiss if I failed to provide a description of this fascinating facility. The boarding lounge consisted of a large room, with plastic chairs allowing perhaps two hundred people to sit. What I thought was rather different was the fact that there were no monitors showing flight arrivals and departures, in fact there were no monitors at all. Further, the room was encased on three sides by plain buff coloured walls upon which was affixed not a solitary thing, these walls were beyond bare, they were naked. The third wall consisted of glass, which looked out upon the airfield and also contained a small door. Just inside this door there was a nondescript desk at which an equally nondescript man sat. As I sat there waiting I was joined by several other travelers from time to time, who, after appraising their surroundings gave a fatalistic shrug and sat down.

Approximately one half hour after my flight was scheduled to depart, a plane taxied up to the door and immediately the little nondescript man became highly excited. "Riyadh, Riyadh" he shouted. Not a soul moved. Now I wasn't born yesterday, I knew that Riyadh was in Saudi Arabia, and that the temple of Ramses III was not, so, like all my fellow passengers I too did nothing. After about five minutes of this, the little man started shouting "Luxor, Luxor". Now this was on the way to Abu Simble so I, together with my motley crew of fellow passengers filed dutifully to the door to board the aircraft. When it came my turn I was asked for my boarding pass - yes folks - that same totally blank piece of paper provided me at the ticket desk. Having discarded it as useless several lifetimes previously, I was in something of a quandary as there was no way I was going to get past that guy without a boarding pass. I returned to approximately where I was sitting and picked up the first piece of paper I saw that was of the same general size, I believe it was in actual fact a candy wrapper, but beggars can't be choosers. Once again I presented myself at the door and this time I was greeted with a smile, my candy wrapper was gratefully accepted and I proceeded to the plane.

Once I boarded, shock number two! The plane was full. Now I don't mean your normal everyday kind of full I mean full full. There were passengers in the aisle, passengers in the toilets, passengers in the fold down seats for the airhostesses and even one enterprising passenger was seated between the pilot and co-pilot. Yes folks that plane was full! Shortly after we were all herded, yes that's the right word, herded aboard, the plane started to taxi. As the door to the cockpit was wide open, I had a clear view of the runway we were taxiing to. I could also hear the exchange between the pilot and the control tower. After what appeared to be an argument, we started to accelerate down the runway. Nearer and nearer the end of the runway came and just as I thought we were going to Abu Simble by road, the plane actually left the ground. About an eternity later we landed at Luxor some passengers got off with immense looks of relief on their faces but a few undaunted souls actually got onto the plane. About twenty minutes after this we landed at Aswan and to the relief of the enplaned multitudes, many of the passengers got off

I was left on the plane with about ten other passengers. The pilot came back into the cabin, I don't think the address system was working, and explained that they changed crews here and that we would proceed to Abu Simble after a new crew boarded. We then taxied to a remote section of the Aswan airport and the engines shut down and the whole crew departed leaving us poor travelers all alone on the plane. One hour passed then another.

At this point I need to enlighten my readers, assuming I have any left, about the temperatures in Egypt, they vary between damned hot and "Oh my God" hot. We were sat in a hollow metal tube, no air conditioning as the engines had been switched off, for about two hours and the temperature had already climbed way beyond the "Oh my God" level. One enterprising passenger managed to get the cabin door open and lowered a ladder built into the door. Although the air that came in was hot, it felt really good. I must have been slightly delirious because I decided to go outside and stretch my legs.

I climbed down the steps and stepped off onto the tarmac. Suddenly out of nowhere, or so it seemed, the business end of a rifle appeared in my midriff section and on the other end of the rifle was a very sloppy looking soldier. "Up" he muttered, emphasizing it with a sharp prod with the rifle. I gathered he wanted me to return to the plane, but being the cock-eyed optimist that I am, I said that it was hot on the plane and a few minutes in the shade would be great for international relations. This exchange was greeted with a diplomatically uttered "Up", diplomatic because it wasn't accompanied with a prod. Instead he removed the rifle from my stomach, cocked it and pointed it in the general direction of where my heart was a few moments before. Now I can take a subtle hint when it is offered, and so I climbed back into the furnace.

After another fifteen minutes that seemed like hours a new crew boarded and we were on our way to the final destination. The remainder of the flight was sheer heaven, nice cool air-conditioning, ten passengers instead of hundreds and, luxury after luxury, we were each provided with a bag of extremely salty peanuts and nothing to drink. We landed at Abu Simble and deplaned. I noticed that several of the passengers must have been devout Roman Catholics, or fervent Papal supporters for they all bent down and kissed the ground immediately after getting off the plane.

And that concludes the story of my flight from Cairo to Abu Simble. Did I see the temple? What was my reaction to the Temple? Did I fly back? What was the flight back like? All these questions and others must await an answer in other stories