When I researched Nile cruises, the amount of information available was almost overwhelming- tons of companies offering all kinds of experiences at different price points are available.  One of the top items on my “must do in Egypt” list, however, was to sail the river in a traditional Egyptian sailing ship, a dahabiya.  The shallow bottomed boats, hosting two sails, one fore and one aft, have been sailing the Nile for thousands of years.  They are small, usually hosting between 10-20 passengers and like the bigger cruise ships, have different levels of experiences.  Working with Hossam during the planning stages, I figured that if I could have five people, at a minimum, on the tour it was possible to book a private dahabiya cruise (just our party).  Luckily four friends signed up for the trip and now we were sailing on our own private dihaybia up the Nile in a wonderfully intimate and luxurious manner.   The ship, Khemet, is beautiful— with an upper deck open to the sky apportioned with lounge chairs to watch the world go by, a middle deck with an open air seating area, bar and dining area outside as well as an indoor seating and dining area, and a covered aft deck lounging area for those wishing to avoid the sun.  The lower deck has a small lounge area at the rear, but otherwise hosts the cabins.  My room was well appointed with an en-suite bathroom more than adequate to my needs.  I may be biased, but I think it is one of the nicer dayhabiyas on the river!

The aft covered deck of the dahabiya. Super comfortable and a very pleasant place to watch the countryside go by.

Since we were sailing upstream and the wind is unpredictable, the dahabiya was towed by a small tugboat.  I thought this was unusual until I noticed every other dahabiya, whether sailing upstream or downstream, was towed. The trip was peaceful however and whenever one of the larger cruise ships came by (capacity 50-150) with their loud engines, belching black smoke, I was thankful to be on our graceful, peaceful serene dahabiya.  A couple of days into our trip, the wind picked up and the crew detached the ship from the tug boat and unfurled the sail giving us a taste of what traveling the Nile would have been like before the invention of the steam engine. We were not moving very fast (sailing against the current, regardless of the wind) but it nonetheless was kind of magical!

Columns in Esna Temple.

The front of the Esna temple; restoration will make the existing colors even more spectacular!

The temple dedicated to Khonum, god of the Nile who created man out of clay, at Esna was our first stop.  The temple was within walking distance of our mooring stop on the West Bank and after walking across the four other dahabiyas moored at the same place, all of us in parallel, we climbed the embankment and walked down the street to the temple entrance.  We arrived early, around 8am, so absent any crowds, Hossam easily guided us through the temple, explaining the scenes on the walls and columns. A restoration project was underway on the outside of the temple and a team of workers was applying the same chemicals to the structure that were used on the ceiling of the temple at Dendara which removes the soot and reveals the colors.  Based on the colors that were still intact on some of the inner columns, when the project is finished, the temple is going to be stunning.  The temple is below the current ground level and to unearth the main sanctuary required the relocation of many families.  Because of the surrounding city and complications with moving more people, the complete temple grounds are still buried.  The deities represented in the temple— Khnoum, Neith, Hera, Satet and Menhet, were mostly new to me and it was difficult to pick out the nuances that identified them.  The crowds were starting to show up as we finished and were walking out, so our timing was perfect!

The walls of the Esna temple. So colorful!

And the ceiling!!!

The Temple at Edfu was another stop, one that practically every cruise ship on the Nile makes and as we pulled in to moor, the shoreline looked like a parking lot.  The dahabiya mooring area was a bit further up the river than the large cruise ships so we avoided the crowds on the embankment, but the temple was incredibly crowded.  Getting to the temple from the banks of the Nile was fun— the city prefers that visitors use horse drawn carriages as they are trying to keep motor vehicles out of the city (bad roads) and away from the temple grounds (no parking).  I had never been in a horse drawn carriage before and really enjoyed the trip.  Watching the carriages, and there were a lot of them, navigate through the town streets around tuk-tuks, cars and buses was very entertaining.  (The large cruise lines are allowed to bring buses to drop off their people, because trying to manage 50-150 people in carriages is difficult-  the cruise lines complained).

On the way to Edfu temple via horse drawn carriage.

The temple complex is huge and hosts the largest set of scenes and hieroglyphics on its outer walls of any temple in Egypt. The temple is dedicated to the god Horus and was built during the Ptolemaic period between 237 and 57BC. It is considered one of the best preserved shrines in Egypt.  The mud-brick wall  surrounding the temple, mud-huts and outbuildings is still intact.  The outer walls depict scenes describing the battle between Horus and Set.  The columned hall leading to the inner sanctum was similar to other temples we had visited, but the difference was in the number of intact rooms off of the main axis.  One room contained hieroglyphics that documented perfume recipes, other rooms were shrines and others had unknown purposes.  The inner temple had walls immediately surrounding it creating a narrow passage that went around and behind the  sanctum, with even more rooms hidden away.  It was interesting to explore, but unfortunately super crowded, with large groups trying to stay together while navigating tight spaces.  The temple is worth a visit just because so much of the complex is intact and walking around it was easy to imagine what it must have been like to live or work there, but be prepared for lots of people!!!

More of the Edfu temple complex.

The passageway behind the inner sanctum. Lots of nooks and crannies in the temple complex.

We arrived at Kom Ombo, another stop, around sunset.  The dahabiya moored only a few hundred yards down the shoreline from the entrance to the Temple of Kom Ombo so we easily walked to the ticket booth. The temple at Kom Ombo is dedicated to Horus and Sobek, the crocodile god, one of the few temples that hosts the sanctuary of two deities.  The temple is one of the “newer” ones of all that we visited, being constructed during the Ptolemaic dynasty in the 180BC timeframe; the Romans added to it later.  Keeping track of the various entities that compose the Egyptian pantheon is confusing since the mythology covers thousands of years and roles and functions of gods and goddesses start bleeding together.  In the case of the temple at Kom Ombo, Horus is portrayed as a healer and interestingly, there are scenes on the walls that depict medical instruments, some of which are recognizable and in use today.  Because it was night while we visited the temple was lit up, providing some dramatic shadowing on some of the figures and making the hieroglyphs stand out.

Since the temple is dedicated to two gods, the structure is symmetrical and follows what I have come to recognize as the standard temple design—courtyard, roofed (once upon a time) rooms with columns, inner sanctuary for the particular god and surrounding small rooms as additional shrines.  Scenes showing the god engaging with whichever ruler built the temple dot the walls and columns along with text explaining scenes, themes or whatever points the ruler was trying to get across.  An unusual twist to the standard design at Kom Ombo was the discovery of a large cache (hundreds) of mummified crocodiles under the sanctuary of Sobek.  A separate “crocodile museum” was constructed on the temple grounds to host the discovered mummies for the visitors. I was surprised at the size of some of the creatures!

Kom Ombo at night.

An example of hieroglyphics on the walls of Kom Ombo.

The temple was very crowded as it is a popular stop for boats of all sizes and the large groups roaming around made it hard to stand in a corner and soak up the atmosphere but I still managed to spend some time studying the scenes and the symbols in my quest to be able to recognize different gods and goddesses.  I cannot imagine what the crowd would have been like if the cruise ships were all completely full (many of the ships were fairly empty because of cancelations due to fear of the war, or disruptions to air traffic through the main hubs in the Gulf states because of the war).

Mummified crocodiles found at Kom Ombo.