Nota Bene

A long, long time ago – way back in the fall of… 2022 – my colleagues (from work, conferences, exhibitions, and other travels) and I found ourselves in Luxor, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Upper Egypt. But we only got to visit the main temples of the city in the evening, in the dark ->

And that’s when it was decided that we simply, absolutely, categorically, mandatorily had to return one day to see the ancient temples by the light of day. And never mind how fiercely the sun would be beating down, or how tough it would be in that furnace for the poor, wretched tourist soaked in sweat from head to toe. Ancient Egypt is one of the most important cradles of world civilization. For any reasonably curious person, a visit here is nothing short of an absolute must. You just need to pick the right season to avoid the very worst of the heat (winter is best, but for us – alas – it was October), plus, ideally, have plenty of free time so you can stroll around everywhere and see as much as you possibly can.

It’s more than worth it!

Read on…

The next stop on our Nile boat-trip from Aswan to Luxor, the ancient capital of the Upper Kingdom, was the city of Esna, home to the temple of the ancient Egyptian god Khnum. The ancient Egyptians had a great many gods (here’s the list); Khnum was a creator-god who molded the first humans out of clay. But to study all that in detail you’d need to dive into further reading; we, meanwhile, just headed for the temple:

On the way to the temple we were told that, over thousands of years, the temple had sunk down through the soft rock beneath it, and that’s why it had sunk so deep into the ground – by some 15 meters. But somehow I don’t buy it. The earth’s strata aren’t uniform, so a temple “sinking” down through them would most likely have simply fallen apart. So the earthen walls around it are probably the cultural layer built up over the millennia, plus the desert sands, which have buried a great many structures along the Nile.

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Sixty kilometers down the Nile from Aswan in the town of Edfu, there’s another ancient Egyptian temple complex that shares the town’s name: the Temple of Edfu. It’s one of the largest temples of ancient Egypt – and a pretty well-preserved one at that. Alas, the oldest structures have been almost completely destroyed, and what stands today is a complex rebuilt during the Hellenistic period.

As our guide told us, some of the ruins (ancient walls) date back to prehistoric times – some of the stonework here is around four thousand years old. We’ll take his word for it…

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Onward!… Down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor…

We’d finished checking out the tourist sights at our point of departure (the Aswan Dam, an unsuccessful dash to the ancient quarries with the unfinished obelisk, and the Philae temple complex), our boat barge pulled away was pulled away from the pier, and our leisurely 2.5-day journey downstream along this great African river began.

// That’s not our boat; it’s a vessel under sail heading upstream toward Aswan.

And this bridge was right by our starting point:

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Bye-bye, Indonesia! Hello… Changi Airport, Singapore!

Yes – to the most luxurious airport in the world. I’ve already written about, and shown you photos of its Jewel shopping and entertainment complex with its ginormously gorgeous waterfall. And here I was again. On this layover, just like last time, I was lucky enough to land at one far end of the complex and fly out from the other.

A reminder for some, new knowledge for others: Changi’s terminals are joined up into a giant letter “U”, so if you arrive at the tip of one of its arms and depart from the tip of the other, walking all 3+ kilometers of the structure is simply a wonderful idea! Of course, you can also ride in comfort between the two ends on the airport’s little driverless trams (something many major airports have had for years now), but Changi deserves to be explored on foot! At a medium-to-brisk pace, you can cover it from end to end in 40-45 minutes. So off I popped…

What’s so pleasing and impressive here is the sheer amount of space. Even though it’s one of the largest airports in the world, you don’t get packed crowds of passengers. Sure, there are still plenty of folks milling about, but the terminal floors are covered with some special kind of carpeting that’s easy to pull a rolling suitcase across – and its pile muffles any excess noise. It’s practically a miracle! An airport with acoustics taken into account: woah!

By the way, this airport even has a swimming pool, though apparently it’s only for first and business-class passengers. Next time I’ll try to arrange a longer connection – and actually test it out.

Here’s the kind of interior design you’ll find in the central areas of the terminals:

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This year’s anarchic SAS has been duly covered. “But what about tourism?” you might ask. To which I’ll reply: we found time for that too!…

At long last I got to see up close one of the biggest statues in the world with my own eyes – Garuda Wisnu Kencana, which depicts the Hindu god Vishnu riding the sacred bird Garuda.

Here’s what the sculpture looks like from the beach:

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An absolute must-see for tourists near the Aswan Dam is the Philae temple complex. Its origins are truly ancient, but it’s been ruined and rebuilt many times over – so in the end it’s not so much genuinely Egyptian as something remade “Egyptian-style” later on, in the Greco-Roman eras. And then other cultures/religions came along and trampled all over the place too: as our guide told us, “religious barbarians/fanatics” destroyed the images of the “wrong gods”. Yes, I can believe it. How else to explain all this obviously deliberate damage to the ancient stone frescoes and sculptures?

Some of the artifacts just lie about, while some of the structures are clearly being put back together by archaeologists:

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Our annual conference for cybersecurity experts – the Security Analyst Summit (this year – SAS-2026) – has thundered its way to a close. It was fun, it was lively, and this time it came with a ground-breaking design:

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We began our cruise along the great Nile River in the city of Aswan. That’s a name familiar to anyone who grew up in the USSR in the seventies/eighties – and, I’m told, in the UK, where, apparently, its main feature (see below) was studied in middle-school geography classes (yet – no mention of Soviet involvement; grrr figure:). Anyway, it’s from there that I bring you the next batch of stories from this most unforgettable trip.

The main thing of interest here is the Aswan High Dam, which the Soviets helped build built in the 1960s, and which produced its first electricity in the early 1970s. Of course – we just had to go check it out. And our look around this vast power facility turned out to be great fun – and really quite fascinating…

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When I first visited stunning Luxor back in 2022 (on my first trip to Egypt), I heard that tourist boats ply the great Nile River on the Luxor–Aswan route, and that it comes highly recommended for exploring firsthand. Just four (far from boring) years later, and business has brought me back to the land of the pharaohs and, well, yes – dreams do come true! We combined work with play (my fave combo!) – and cruised the Nile on a riverboat! Direction: Aswan -> Luxor…

It was a simply delightful two-and-a-half-day river cruise!

Read on…