Aswan Travel Guide

Standing sedately on the East Bank of the Nile at the First Cataract, Aswan is Egypt’s southernmost city and gateway to the Sudan, Nubia and the rest of Africa.

Once a garrison town, located at the crossroads of the ancient trading routes, Aswan is now a popular resort destination and an embarkation and disembarkation point for the many cruise ships that sail the Nile between here and Luxor.

Aswan is one of the driest inhabited places in the world with rainfall occurring only once or twice in a decade. The dry, warm climate made Aswan popular with Winter holiday makers, particularly in Victorian times. The Summer heat at that time being too much to handle.

Lying just above the original Aswan Dam, with the newer and larger High Dam behind it, Aswan stands almost at the point where the Nile enters Egypt. The river here is wide and majestic, strewn with boulders and islands, bordered by golden rock tombs to the West and populated by hundreds of feluccas as they ply their trade on the gently flowing Nile waters.