Aswan City Holiday and Travel Guide - Touring Southern Egypt.

Aswan is a peaceful Egyptian City located on The River Nile and around 80 miles south of Luxor .

Getting to Aswan. The two main ways of getting there are to fly in from Luxor and/or Cairo or to go at a somewhat slower pace by using a Nile Hotel Boat. There are quite a few flights from Cairo on Egypt Air - since this is pretty much the only airline allowed to operate the route the fares are a little expensive (around LE1500 Cairo-Aswan return) - the flight takes around 70 minutes. It would seem necessary to pre-book your flights quite early on since the aircraft are quite heavily used and some flights are business class only - far more expensive of course. Aswan's airport is a small set-up and arrival is a fast process with quite minimal checking of documents. Aswan itself is only 18kms away and there are plenty of taxis waiting for your business - LE60 is plenty enough for the trip which should only take around 35 minutes as the city is not busy with traffic most of the time. Quite a few people get to Aswan as part of a Luxor-Aswan or Aswan-Abu Simbel hotel boat cruise - along the river in the city it's not unusual to see 10 or more of these boats moored. Quite how good it is to travel on these hotel boats pretty much depends on how much you are willing to pay. Several people we talked too had arrived this way and said their cabins were terribly small - and to be on the boat was pretty expensive. A big complaint was the cost of mineral water which at LE22 a litre was around LE19.5 overpriced - quite upset several people we met. Of course one great benefit if you travel as far as Abu Simbel is to see the site from Lake Nasser - at night with it all lit up it makes an incredible sight.
You can get a car and driver from Luxor - the route is completely open with no convoy type controls in place. There are also Egyptian Railway services from Cairo via Luxor to Aswan but foreigners can only travel on a few specific trains so this may not be too flexible and it's not much cheaper than flying (Government Monopoly thrives in Egypt). Anyway most of the trains go at night and certainly in our case we would like to see the countryside along the River Nile as part of our trip.

Aswan - a nice place to stay?. It really is a very pleasant city to stay in for a few days or even longer. Apart from it being located near enough for various sightseeing escursions the River Nile is beautiful and scenic as it passes through. There is not a great deal of hassle and it's not bombed out with lots of traffic and noise - a welcome relief after a few days in Cairo for instance.

Money Exchange/ATMs in Aswan. There are ATMs along the Corniche el Nile at the Arab African International Bank, MISR bank and the National Bank of Egypt - plus one inside Aswan Airport. Quite a few of the better hotels have money exchange facilities and you can also change currency at the Thomas Cook travel agentcy which is located at 59 Abtal El Tahrir St., (Isis Island ferry end of El Corniche). It's worth noting that the exchange rates on offer in Aswan are pretty much "market" rates rather than "tourist" rates (this was true in Cairo as well) - we were getting a significantly better rate than that on offer at Heathrow for instance.

Hotels - Accommodation. There are a variety of hotels in Aswan - some really cheap and they look it - however hotels are considerably less expensive than those found in Cairo for instance. For around LE450 a night you can get a nice room (2 people) with a Nile View and with breakfast thrown in - we stayed on Isis Island (booked this on line with a hotel search site) and found it really good. Very peaceful of course as the hotel is all that's on the island and did they ever have a really good breakfast there - especially the made to order omelettes. As with all hotels you should avoid any type of room service requests and certainly don't touch the contents of the mini-fridge.

Eating Out - cafes/restaurants in Aswan. We had not booked evening meals at our hotel so we had to find sustenance in the City - for once in Egypt this was not a real problem. There are several to chose from - fairly basic places most of which were floating on barges/pontoons on the Nile itself - but the food was good and quite inexpensive. We tried these which are situated along the Kornaish:
Aswan Panaroma (excellent rice pudding but no alcohol and closes at 9 p.m.), Emy, Aswan Moon and the Salah al - Din which serves beers and probably offered the best food of the above.
Go along the Kornaish and then turn into Sharia Abu Zid road (next to the Bank Of Misra) and a little way up the road and having passed to roads on the left you will find on the left El-Masry. This quite basic restaurant offers variously priced fixed menus - starters, bread, soup, main dish with rice and a vegetable dish, a desert and Egyptian coffee. This works best if there are 4 or more of you because you then get more variety of vegetables etc and can share it around. Typical price for 4 people was around LE200 including a soft drink each - no alcohol was served.

Markets. Aswan's 2km long Souk (market) is situated on the Sad Zahglol street which runs parallel with the Kornaish El Nile main road. The market opens for business during the afternoon but really gets going in the evening when it's a really colourful and very busy scene. As with many large Egyptian markets the various types of items for sale are split into sections - for instance you get a spice area, food, fruite and veg, clothing, suitcases and bags, souvenirs, gold jewellery and then silver etc.

Although you are not particularly hassled by the traders you should expect to be constantly approached by the owners to go and look in their shops and stalls. Around the spice area - where the aromas are incredible - you will be constantly asked to try and identify various spices and so on - it's all part of the scene of course.

Touring in Aswan.
The following visits could easily be done in one 3 or 4 hour taxi ride - we were charged LE80 (plus gave a LE20 tip) for which we visited the High Dam, the Temple of Philae and ended up at the Obelisk.
The Aswan High Dam - Nile/Lake Nasser. Well the thing is it's world famous so you just have to take the 6km trip and stand on it. In truth there is not a lot to see and even less to photograph. Firstly they of course charge for you to go on it (LE20) then you are only allowed to stop at a couple of 100 yards worth of Visitors Area - go any further and the guards scream at you. So not much to see in reality but then it is the Aswan High Dam and you have been there. The Older Dam looks quite interesting what with it's brickwork and so on but the road across it is very narrow and there is no stopping unfortunately. You can however get a pretty good view of the Old Dam if you take the boat trip to Philae Temple (which should certainly not be missed - see below).

Temple of Philae. This is a really worthwhile trip and very easy to undertake on your own - no need for an organised and surely more expensive tour. A taxi driver will happily do the trip from the City for around LE60 including waiting and bringing you back into Aswan. When the Aswan Low Dam was built in 1902 Philae Island and the Philae Temple complex was often flooded and this became a much bigger problem when the Old Dam was heightened in the early 1900s and again in the early 1930s. Much of the temple's reliefs were washed away and the temple complex became heavily silted up. In 1960 the whole complex was dismantled and re-instated on nearby Agilkia Island.



Philae Temple is reached by hiring a small boat - these are located in a harbour next to the Old Dam - there are lots of them waiting to take tourists and you pay for the boat and not per person. You need to negotiate your price for the trip - how much depends on how busy things are but probably LE70 is more than enough - for this the boat will wait for you for around an hour and bring you back - remember to not pay until you get back by the way. The entrance free for Philae Temple Complex is LE50.

Unfinished Obelisk. One of the pre-planned list of places to visit whilst staying in Aswan, this in our view was something of a waste of time. The Obelisk is situated on the southern edge of Aswan at the Northern Quarries and we got our taxi driver to drop us off there on the way back from visiting the High Dam. The entrance fee is LE30 - you trog across some open ground and then follow a man-made rocky path in and around a stone quarry (it's not very far) to arrive at this huge obelisk - it is just lying almost horizontally and has few features - this because it was "unfinished" due to cracking. The obelisk is carved out of granite and if completed would have been approximately 120 feet tall making it easily the largest ancient Egyptian obelisk ever erected.

Fatimid Cemetery. The cemetery is on the opposite side of the road to the Obelisk and is a particularly interesting place to visit. In fact if you wander through it you will end up on the main road into Aswan City and the Nile - just a further few minutes walk away.

The cemetery is always open and there are no entrance fees of course - what you will see are lots of mud built Islamic Tombs dating between the 8th and 12th Century although there are also more modern tombs too.

Elephantine Island. You can get to the Island by local ferry for just LE1 and don't be co-erced into paying more than that let alone take up the offer of a "private" boat - also they don't like giving change at the ferry desk. There are two Nubian villages on the island which you can wander around though in truth it is all pretty scruffy with lots of rubbish lying around.

Perhaps the best part of the island to visit is the Temple of Khnum situated within an archaeological site containing the ancient ruined town of Yebu. There is also a Nilometer within the site. Entrance fee is LE30 - this allows you to visit the small but very interesting museum, have a quiet sit if you wish in some nice but small gardens and allows entrance to the archaeological site.

Kitchener's Island (Island of Plants or Geziret an-Nabatat). This island is just one quite large botanical garden - there is a ferry but this only tends to cross when there are enough passengers otherwise you need to hire a small boat to take you to the entrance and wait for you at the other end of the island.*** Entrance fee to the island is LE10 and it's meant to be open from sunrise to sunset - Fridays are best avoided as the area is very busy on that day.

There is a cafe and a couple of souvenir shops - and toilets. The area is laid out with paths and is generally quite peaceful apart from the irritating "gardeners" who keep trying to get money from you by picking various herb leafs and wanting you to guess what they are. The island was originally given to Lord Kitchener as a reward for his actions during the Sudan War in the late 19th century.
***We decided to hire a small boat for a trip along the Nile to Sehel Island and included stopping here as part of it - see Local Boat Trips below.

Local Boat Trips. The River Nile is beautiful around this area of Aswan - lots of wildlife, small boats and felucca everywhere, fish jumping and lovely vegetation. From a boat you can get excellent views of the (currently in a run down state) Old Cataract Hotel - famous for being where Agatha Christie wrote Death on The Nile. One good way of enjoying all this is take a felucca trip for a few hours - just meandering around the small Nile islands under sail is an excellent past-time -  they charge around LE50 for an hour or so sail.
Sehel Island is situated a few kms up river (south) of Aswan and on the trip there is where you can get great views of the 1st Cataract. Sehel itself is Nubian - there is a school there as well as the Nubian village and more views of the 1st Cataract of course.

Our small boat was initially hired for LE70 which was for the trip to Sehel Island and back - however once finished looking round there we decided we would go to Kitchener's island where the boatman dropped us off and waited and hour or so. We then got him to take us on to Elephantine island where our trip with him ended - we had the boat on hire for probably 5 hours and this ended up costing LE150 including tip.

Aswan - River Nile West Bank. There are quite a few bits and peices to look at on the West Bank. You can easily reach the West Bank by local ferry (6am to 11pm) which costs 1LE and leaves around every 30 minutes from the railway station end of the Corniche El Nile and goes over to Min Gharb:

Aswan - Tombs of the Nobles. Entrance fee for the Tombs area is LE35 and the Ticket Office is along the path from the Aswan Min Gharb village ferry landing on the left. You will be bombarded by locals offering to hire a camel ride to the steps leading to the Tombs and then out across the desert to the Monastery and Mausoleum. However if the intention is simply going to see the Tombs these are quite easily reached on foot as only a short distance from the ferry landing area - there are quite steep steps for the final walk up to the Tombs. Once up the steps there are no signs but certainly yet another "guide".

However just go left to reach the tombs which are numbered but not named. The "guides" will still be around and offer to let you into the tombs however you have payed so just be insistent that the doors are unlocked and don't pay any more money to them. The tombs are not ever so impressive (nothing remotely like those in Luxor) which is probably why not too many tourists bother to go in the first place - but there are a few releifs and so on to look at. Once finished looking around return to the top of the steps and go straight on - you will find a small church and other old structures to look at. If you intend going no further then it's just back to the steps and down to the ferry.
Qubbet el-Hawa. However you can go and have a steep climb on up the slope to take a look at the Qubbet el-Hawa shrine sat above the Tombs (see above left photo) - this is visible from just about anywhere in Aswan so of course fairly essential to visit. The name means Tomb of the Wind and it's a hilltop Muslim shrine - the views over Aswan are very good and you also get a glimpse of the Monastery and also of the Aga Khan Mausoleum** - plus lots fresh air too. From here you can simply return to the ferry the way you came however you may decide to visit the Moni of St Simeon. If you have hired a camel ride for this then thats all sorted already however it is perfectly possible and quite easy to walk there and back. **The Mausoleum - which is not open to the public so you can only look from the outside - is for Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan III who died on the 11th July 1957).
Moni of St. Simeon (Deir Anba Samaan). The Coptic Monastery of St. Simeon is located around 4kms across the desert and is a reasonable walk mostly on a clear wide path however the final part involves a steep climb down and then back up through soft sand.

The Monastery looks from the outside like a huge fortress - it was originally founded in the 7th Century and then re-built in the 10th Century. Entrance fee is LE25 and the monastery is open from 0800 to 1600 daily. There are lots of ruins and various rooms to look at - the monastery could house 300 monks who slept on stone beds at 5 to a cell.

Longer Trips to possibly take whilst staying in Aswan. From Aswan it is easily possible to visit Abu Simbel, the Temples of Kom Ombo, and Edfu. Please see our Aswan Trips topic. You may also be interested in visiting our Egypt Home Page for lots more about Egypt including touring Luxor and topics about Cairo and Giza. If you fancy some great sunshine and beaches you may be interested in our Sharm El Sheikh Holiday Guide.

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