Kom Ombo to Aswan isn’t a very long trip. At this point, we’d had it with our tour guide. We were supposed to be taken to the Unfinished Obelisk, the High Dam, and Philae Temple. However, these three things could be easily combined with a trip to Abu Simbel which we knew we were doing the next day.  We unfortunately had already pre-arranged a trip to Abu Simbel with Hamis Travel (which didn’t include these 3 side-trips). We took a flier on being able to re-arrange things, and fired our second tour guide and were out on our own once again. 

We called Hamis Travel, and fortunately we were able to re-arrange our day trip to Abu Simbel to include these 3 side trips. So, we had the rest of the day to ourselves. We wandered down the Corniche and took a local ferry (where finally we were the only tourists) across to the Tombs of the Nobles, up on a hill overlooking the town. Although nowhere near as impressive as the tombs that we saw on the West Bank in Luxor, we were the only ones (apart from a not pushy guard).  Ian climbed the hill for a beautiful look over the town and surrounding countryside.

Back down on the island, we wandered through the Nubian Village. There are two different Nubian Villages that can be visited around Aswan. It sounds like the main one has been turned into a tourist trap. This one was a little more ‘genuine’. Apart from one small tour group we saw ahead of us, we were only with the locals. Although most of our encounters with locals were friendly, at one point some women were shouting something at us and we decided to clear out and head back to Aswan.

We spent the rest of the day shopping in the market, and headed back to the cruise boat for our final night/dinner on board.