We are up bright and early having spent the night at the ferryman’s house. We pile into an ancient beaten up Corolla with no side windows no dashboard equipment but nicely adorned with glued on red felt and tassles hanging off the ceiling. The ample natural ventilation somewhat offset the petrol fumes in the cabin. Mercifully it was only a short drive to the banks of the Nile where we boarded our felucca for the crossing.
Our destination was the northernmost monument of the Egyptian Empire in Sudan, Soleb temple. Built by pharoah Amenhotep 111 in 14 BC it is the most Egyptian in appearance of the many monuments in Sudan. It is also just 100km south of Wadi Halfa on the Sudan-Egypt border. Our journey here entailed much negotiation over a number of days first with the hotel owner who booked the trip who said it was too far in the time we had and secondly with our driver. Everything is very typically “African vague” here and in the end it was an ordeal but here we were and it was certainly worth it. Smaller in size than the Luxor Temple in Egypt also built by Amenhotep 111 it is nonetheless a little Egyptian gem with soaring sandstone columns richly engraved with Egyptian art.
My first overseas adventure to an off beat destination was to Egypt in 1982. Egypt now (except for the recent civil unrest) has become a bit passe, but then it was new and unusual especially for an Australian. There were only a few tourists there in those days, overwhelmingly European, no Australians. The monuments were not crowded with tourists. It was the year after the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assasinated and fellow called Hosni Mubarak took over as president. I engaged my trusty travel agent, Cliff (who finally retired last year) and organised a trip that would encompass every significant temple, tomb or monument in Egypt to satisfy my nascent curiosity for all things ancient and particularly Egyptology.
Today I find myself reminiscing about that first adventure. Even then I knew I would be back here, that this country represented “unfinished business”. So I touch the ancient sandstone, think back to the men who created this, obviously with no modern tools or implements, that 3500 years later I am looking at. I linger, sit absorb the atmosphere. As we leave I look back one more time and a melancholy grips me. This is it! I have seen all the substantial Egyptian monuments I have travelled the length of Nile from both sources to the sea. The wheel has turned full circle. It should be cause for exhilaration and there is certainly that but, as with all of life, most of the pleasure is in the anticipation and not the completion of the act.