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Aswan
feels so relaxed after being in Luxor. There are few
people around you trying to convince you into doing
things you don't want to do. And the beauty of Aswan
is striking, too. Taking a journey around the
islands on a white felucca, is compulsory, but this
means that you expose yourself to those always
looking to get some more money out of you.
Elephantine Island, just outside the centre of
Aswan, is one of the highlights of Egyptian nature.
Dark yellow stones, where green trees grow out of
nothing, framed by the sky that's always blue, and
the Nile, even more blue. Elephantine Island housed
a sizable Jewish community some 400-500 years BCE,
but it remains an enigma what happened to them. On
the other side of the Nile, the western, you can see
the Aga Khan mausoleum, which is very new, but has
it's charm through being the shrine over the
celebrity-imam dying in 1957. And it's one of the
few landmarks in the nearest vicinity of Aswan.
Among the major attractions of Aswan are of course
the Aswan Dams. There are two. The first was
finished in 1902, and was the largest in the world
in its days. The new one was completed in 1971, and
came as a result of the higher needs of the
increasing Egyptian population. But it's far from
containing it's maximum amount of water, due to low
water in the Nile up from Aswan.
Aswan feels so relaxed after being in Luxor. There
are few people around you trying to convince you
into doing things you don't want to do. And the
beauty of Aswan is striking, too. Taking a journey
around the islands on a white felucca, is
compulsory, but this means that you expose yourself
to those always looking to get some more money out
of you.
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