Getting to Know the Nubians

Nubian Houses

In southern Egypt, there is a separate cultural group called the Nubians. Their civilization actually predates the Egyptian dynasties and at one time the Nubians ruled all of Egypt. While visiting the city of Aswan in southern Egypt we got to learn a little more about these interesting people.

When Egypt built it's massive dams on the Nile it was the Nubian People who most suffered. Over 200,000 people had to be moved and over 20 priceless archeological sites were threatened by the creation of Lake Nasser, the largest man made lake in the world. Some of the temples were rescued and moved, but the expense was so great that the only way it was accomplished was to donate other temples to the countries helping Egypt move the temples. Many minor sites were simple flooded and lost forever. I recall National Geographic doing a feature on the relocation of the

Boating up the NIle

Abu Simbel Temple, and was interested to learn that this was where it happened.

As part of our cruise ship tours, we visited the Philae temple which was moved from it's original island where it was partially submerged and rapidly deteriorating to a nearby island that was higher. This really was amazing to see. The temple was disassembled stone by stone, moved and rebuilt. Other than little metal pins used to identify the individual pieces, you cannot really tell it hasn't been on the island forever.

We also toured the Nubian Museum which gave a very detailed description of the history of these people including many photographs of the original temples prior to the flooding by Lake Nasser.

Waiting for Lunch

Finally we took a leisurely boat ride up the Nile through protected areas to a Nubian Village. They favour a unique style of domed houses that are built to remain cool in the 40º+ temperatures in this southern region of Egypt. We stopped and had a delicious Nubian meal prepared as we waited overlooking the Nile. Their houses are brightly coloured Mud brick structures decorated with paintings all over the walls. Walking through the village you came across camels lying beside the road, or you might turn a corner to find a camel walking towards you.

Spending time finding out more about the Nubians was a pleasant way to end our cruise.

Lunch - Delicious!

Nubian Family Pet

Camel Parking Only

Spice Market

Unplanned "Power" Sidetrip

We had a choice today driving south from Inverness, either take the motorway through

Walking across the dam

Perth, or go through the mountains cross country. I was rested so I though I’d be fine on the secondary roads for another day, so we took the scenic route, “The Tourist Route” according to the signs.

We stopped at the town of Pitlochry for lunch and I saw a sign for a dam and dam visitor’s

The fish ladder

center. We had enough time on the parking so we wandered down to the dam. This was one of Hydro Scotland’s power generating plants and had been opened to the public as a tourist attraction. It is on a beautiful location, and the dam has created a lake behind it adding to the attraction.

Footpath across river

Although the actual hydro plant is not open to the public, you can walk across the dam and look down into the plant through windows, although you can’t actually see much. There are interpretive signs explaining everything however. Once across the dam, there is a long fish ladder to allow salmon to get up the river past the dam. They have built an observation area where you can look into the ladder to see the fish climbing up. Although we did not see any fish, there is a digital counter that keeps track of how many fish swim up and the how large

Back to town

they are. This season, 4,091 salmon have used the fish ladder.

Lunch time

Walking over the dam we saw a footbridge downstream which would lead us back into the town, so we walked down along the river and crossed the bridge to a trail through the woods back to the town where we stopped to eat lunch.

On this part of the trip we have the time to do things like this. We only had a drive of about three hours, so it was nice to be able to see attractions like this which were not in our plans and fit them into the adventure.