Stunning sights and Agatha Christie connections: this Egyptian city has it all

The Advertiser

16-05-2025

Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed."
Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan.
Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below.
Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth.
It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels.
Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees).
More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare.
Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors.
On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home).
"So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door.
After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime.
The writer travelled at his own expense.
Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed."
Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan.
Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below.
Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth.
It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels.
Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees).
More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare.
Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors.
On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home).
"So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door.
After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime.
The writer travelled at his own expense.
Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed."
Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan.
Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below.
Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth.
It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels.
Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees).
More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare.
Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors.
On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home).
"So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door.
After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime.
The writer travelled at his own expense.
Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed."
Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan.
Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below.
Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth.
It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels.
Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees).
More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare.
Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors.
On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home).
"So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door.
After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime.
The writer travelled at his own expense.