This past Christmas in lieu of exchanging gifts we decided to take a vacation and cruise the Nile River in Egypt.
I looked into a number of cruise companies, and ultimately went with the Sonesta Cruise Company and was really happy. There were around 16 of us in the group and we went on the sailboat Dahabyia Amirat.
This is a picture of the boat that we took to get to our sailboat Dahabyia.
That little boat took us upstream to the Dahabyia shown below.
I love early mornings, and took a number of photos of the river. Below are a couple of pictures of the Nile at Sunrise from the boat.
We began our cruise in Luxor, and sailed up river with stops in Edfu, Komo Omo, and ending in Aswan. Then we took a bus ride down to Abu Simbel. I'll do individual posts for each of these stops later.
The food was terrific. They had a chef and team of servers. I suppose they would have cooked what ever we asked. But we ate mostly traditional Arabic food which was my preference. Here is a photo at dinner.
Since the dam was built in Aswan, all the crocodiles are now on the south side of the Aswan in the resevoir. There is a cruise that goes around the Aswan lake that looked interesting. You can’t swim in the water, and it takes you almost to the border with Sudan. It is probably good for animal watchers and relaxing on the boat.
Above is a picture of Aswan. There was a temple called Philae which I'll blog about later. I want to focus on the beauty of the river in this post. Aswan, is a bit more developed than Edfu or Komo Ombo. From a natural beauty standpoint, Aswan was my favorite. I was blown away at the beauty of this part of the Nile.
We came across this camel caravan and I had to take a picture.
Here I am in Aswan.
If I had to do it over again, I would have started in the south in Aswan, gone to Abu Simbel and then cruised north with the river. (As is widely known, the Nile river is a bit unique in that it flows south to north). This would have saved me a day on the river and given me more time in Luxor to explore. If you like to sun bath and watch birds then the extra day on the river might be up your alley. I will blog about Luxor next as this was a real highlight historically and I would have preferred to spend more time there.
I hope you enjoyed this post.