We decide to drive to Abu Simbel. 280km in convoy. We leave Aswan at 9 am. Within 10 minutes the convoy is past us except for one poor bus which has obviously been assigned to stay with us traveling the long straight tarmac road south. We are there in about 3 hours and go immediately to the site. We can't see anything from the parking lot just a mountain of sand and Lake Nasser as we come around on the pathway we see 4 huge statues of Ramses II….We only have 1.5 hours to look around as we have to travel back to Aswan in convoy as well.
Driving back it is dusk and then dark on this long, straight unlit road through the desert. At dusk no oncoming cars or trucks have their lights on and as it gets darker they still don't! Sometimes you can see the parking lights in the distance. As the vehicle comes closer they start flashing their lights and fiddling with their indicators – left, right, left, right – then just as they are approaching they turn on their brights before going back to the parking lights. This seems to be the norm as many cars and trucks do this.