Day 5 - River Nile Cruise, Part I

Dec 13, 2005.

The three of us woke up early as instructed by Mohammad as we will be visiting the Kom Ombo temple before our breakfast while the ship is docked there. Armed with our digital cameras and our sweaters, we got down and walked up to the temple complex while breathing in the fresh morning air. We were the first visitors to arrive at the temple for that day, and even the shops and markets outside were not open yet. Looking back now, I guess in a way THIS particular trip to Kom Ombo was the most pleasant for me because:


1) We had the whole place to ourselves =D

2) Cameras are allowed so we took lots of pictures (and since there was no one else around, you can take pictures at every single photogenic place without waiting for your turn or worrying about the view being hidden by someone else's head:P)

3) It was an open temple complex unlike Abu Simbel, so our tour guide can lead us straight to the hieroglyps and carvings on the walls to explain to us instead of refering to pictures and us trying to find the exact spot as shown in the picture later:P

4) Well...there's just something magical about observing a deserted (i.e no one else around but your tiny group), ancient ruin that has been around for thousands of years while the sun slowly rises up in the east...it's kind of like the temple is saying :"As the sun is still here, I am still here..." ;)


The Kom Ombo temple is dedicated to two Gods, which are Sobek, the Crocodile God and Horus, the Falcon God. Aside from the columns and hieroglyphs and all that, this temple is also famous in that three mummified crocodiles was found here...They mummify everything here in in Egypt according to Kok Hin:P




The entrance to the temple is pretty impressive with tall Roman-esque columns...Mohammad led us inside and showed us a wall of hieroglyphs that actually showed the old Egyptian calendar. The ancient Egyptians used to divide one year into three seasons which revolved around the River Nile. If I'm not wrong I think it is the flooding or inundation of the Nile, the receding (air surut:P) and the planting and farming season that can be carried out later when the banks of River Nile is made fertile due to the flooding. In one year they had 12 months, 300 days and 10 days per week. The detailed hieroglyphs showed of how for every day of the month there was something to be done (working , harvest, festival etc) and it also charts the shape of the moon for everyday. As for the remaining 5 days in a year? Well Mohammad said that the remaining 5 days are rest days for the ancient Egyptians, therefore these days are not recorded in the "working" calendar:P That was pretty cool to learn and you're really amazed by the ingenuity of these people :)...

After several more explanations of the drawings on the walls (mostly depicting the two Gods), the three of us were pretty much left on our own free will to take pics:P One of the cool thing that I realized was that, the temples of Egypt were not originally so brown!:P Meaning that actually all their hieroglyphs and drawings had colour on them initially (quite bright colours mind you:P), but over the ages they have disappeared and grown brown...There was one particular column which still had some colour on it (though faded), so that was quite a novelty because so far it has been pretty much brown monuments and stuff:P... There was also a funny moment when Woonie climbed the enclosure to take a picture, but then was told by the 'caretaker' of the place to get down...after the picture was taken :P....oops. Wanted to take one myself but they guy was keeping an eye on us so no go:P

After one last group picture, it was back to the Cruise for breakfast :) Strangely, breakfast is the meal that all of us look forward to most in a day:P Probably because food during breakfast tastes better than lunch and dinner heheh:P I mean at least breakfast food tastes as they SHOULD be tasting you know:P....Breakfast buffet everyday is the same, with cereals, cheese, buns, potatoes (either wedges or mashed), salad, fresh tomatoes and HAM :)...yum...what I like to do is place the cheese and tomato and ham together and munch them at one go...delicious :) Another cool thing is that you can get freshly cooked omelette according to your taste. There are several ingredients to choose from (onions, tomatoes etc) and you can just tell the chef what you want in your omelette and he will fry it there and then for you :) Or if you want it to be plain, or half-cooked etc...unfortunately he doesn't seem to know mata kerbau style though as Kok Hin didn't exactly get what he ordered:P

As we were having our breakfast, the Cruise started moving and we could see the banks of the River Nile pass us slowly at a leisurely pace...Pretty cool. We drank as much juice and tea and milk that we could as we haven't bought our supply of water yet and would only be able to do so after lunch, when we will be stopping by Edfu where we will see yet another ancient temple. Till then, we were pretty much free to do anything we liked on board:).....which, we found out later, was pretty much nothing:P

After we finished our breakfast, we went up to the sundeck. The other tourists (which is around 3 to 5 other people:P) were all suntanning in bathing suits and such, but I was still wearing my sweater hehe:P It was sunny, but pretty windy on the sundeck. Me and Woonie stood there looking at the River Nile for awhile...the fact that we were sailing on the world's longest river didn't really register in my head because the River Nile is pretty narrow, and from the sundeck we could see both banks of the Nile quite clearly. There is plenty of lush vegetation on both sides, with the occasional herd of cattle here and there. With all these agriculture surrounding us, it was easy to see how the River Nile is an important lifeline for Egypt.

After getting down and changing into my more comfortable sarong:P, I got myself some postcards at the souvenir shop onboard. They had a pretty good selection, and I got quite a lot there since I had quite a lot of people to write to:P And that was pretty much what I did the whole morning, writing postcards:P We didn't have much options available really as there wasn't much on the cruise to entertain us...there were like three exercise machines in lieu of a gym, a tiny swimming pool (and I can't swim anyway:P)...and that was pretty much it:P We asked for poker cards from the receptionist, but seems that they didn't have any kind of board game aside from backgammon:P So...writing postcards and spreading the love it is :)...As for Woonie and Kok Hin, they spent much of the morning reading "Tales of Ancient Egypt" and "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" alternatively, both books that I brought along (though I didn't think that we will actually read it :P ). After that it was lunch, and off to another temple...but that's another blog entry;).


For more information on Kom Ombo, go to these links:
http://www.eyelid.co.uk/komombo1.htm
http://www.touregypt.net/kom-ombo.htm
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/kom_ombo.htm