To cover the 900km between Cairo and Aswan we took the overnight train. We thought it would be wise to upgrade from the basic 'seater' train to the 'sleeper' train which came with bunk beds and it's own private compartment, however it didn't do much good for anyway because James didn't sleep a wink due to all the noise and movement.

Luckily the next day was quite chilled out so we could spend some time getting to know our awesome tour group and relaxing by the pool. We visited our first of many temples that afternoon called the 'Temple of Isis' on Philae Island. This was our first time seeing stone carvings and hieroglyphics so we went a bit crazy with photos.

En route we passed by Aswan High Dam. It took 11 years to build this incredible structure which has now created the world's largest artificial lake, Lake Nasser (named after Egypt's first President, Gamal Nasser). Like many things in Egypt, you don't really appreciate the significance until you have heard the story behind it.

That night we battled the shopkeepers at Aswan Markets, 'Sharia as-Souq'. The vendors are loud and pushy and all stand in your way with arms full of jewellery and wooden statues. You can appreciate that this is how these guys make a living, but it's hard to not get annoyed because we aren't used to it. You just have to keep it friendly and smile, which they unfortunately interpret as 'you're interested'. We haggled for scarves and souvenirs, they all have the same pick up lines "where you from?" "oh Australia- Aussie Aussie Aussie!" "you have very beautiful eyes, I give you special price". We saw one guy who had an entirely different tactic "don't even bother coming into my shop, it's full of crap you don't want" so of course we went in...

Day 4 of Egypt tour was the optional trip to the Great Temple at Abu Simbel, which about half the group did. We left at 4am to make the 3 hour journey south towards the Sudanese border.
The temple was built by King Ramses II, as a place where his followers can come to worship him. Generally speaking, only gods were given temples but Ramses II was so vain he didn't mind employing people for 30 years to build a temple with 4 huge statues of himself out the front.

We boarded our Felucca that afternoon for 2 nights of Nile sailing. Our first night stop had basic functioning toilets at a guesthouse where they served 'Sheesha' water pipes with apple flavored tobacco. During the day we lay around reading books, playing cards and we even jumped off the side of the boat for a quick dip (where the water was running fast). It was freezing so we didn't stay in for long, but it sufficed as a shower for the day because second night stop was just on the side of the Nile.

We waved goodbye to our Felucca crew and made our way by bus to Luxor. The next 24 hours we went a little temple crazy....Kom Ombo temple, Edfu's temple of Horus, Luxor temple, temple of Hatshepsut, Karnak temple before winding up at the Valley of the Kings where we went inside the tomb of Tutankhamen and saw his mummified body.

That night we braved the seater train (which in all honesty was actually really good) back to Cairo where our group split in half. It was the end of the tour for some, others (us) continued on to Sinai peninsula, to a little seaside village of Dahab.