Abu Simbel is a minibus ride away. You leave in the night and get there in the morning. There is a government sponsored caravan to protect the tourists from muggers and kidnappers. People are only allowed to go there in this manner.

The minibus drops us off at several different spots for a designated amount of time and then we pile back in andove up. It feels so much like a package tourist kind of thing, but there’s no way around it.

Abu Simbel is probably the most impressive Egyptian runes. It is also the place that feels the most fake. If the rest of Egypt was a theme park for Egyptian runes, than Abu Simbel would be the Disney World of it all. The entire temple is rebuilt, it was even moved from the original site block by block and then reconstructed as well as restored. The hieroglyphics here are much deeper and some of them have been chiseled away from the Roman influence.

I wish I had more time here, but I’ve already booked a flight back to Dubai via Assuit Egypt. This brings another interesting story. Flying back to Dubai from Luxor or Cairo was going to cost a fortune. Luckily I was able to find a flight for right around 100USD from Assuit, Egypt to Sharjah, UAE via Airarabia. The funny part is the day before my flight left I looked in my dated guide book to see what kind of city Assuit was. The first sentence was “if there is one city in a country that is loathed, then Assuit is that city for Egypt”. It then went on and on about how dangerous it was and how tourists were guided around by police anytime they were in public. Luckily my Egypt guidebook was much outdated and Assuit is now a fly over, train over typical Egyptian city without much tourism.

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