Egypt
Wadi el-Seboua
A sphinx-lined avenue rising from Lake Nasser's shore to Ramesses II's relocated Nubian temple.
Stone sphinxes line a processional avenue that rises from the shore of Lake Nasser toward a temple facade carved with colossal figures of Ramesses II. The lake stretches flat and silver behind you. No other boats are moored, no other visitors walk the avenue — just you, the sphinxes, and the Nubian sun.
Wadi el-Seboua — Valley of the Lions — is a New Kingdom temple complex on the western shore of Lake Nasser in southern Egypt. The temple was built by Ramesses II in the 13th century BCE and dedicated to Amun-Ra and Ra-Horakhty, later converted to a Coptic church whose painted saints still overlay the pharaonic reliefs inside. Like Abu Simbel, Wadi el-Seboua was relocated to higher ground during the UNESCO Nubian Monuments Campaign of the 1960s to save it from the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam. The site is accessible primarily by Lake Nasser cruise — only a handful of boats operate the route — making it one of the least-visited major temples in Egypt. Two additional relocated temples, Dakka and Maharraqa, sit nearby, creating a concentration of Nubian monuments in near-total solitude.
Solo
A Lake Nasser cruise to Wadi el-Seboua is the antithesis of the crowded Nile Valley experience. Solo travellers walk sphinx-lined avenues and enter painted sanctuaries with no one else in sight.
Couple
The lake setting, the isolation, and the sheer romance of arriving by boat at a temple that most travellers have never heard of make Wadi el-Seboua one of Egypt's most intimate monumental experiences.
- The sphinx avenue is 80 metres long — the sphinxes on each side retain their falcon and ram heads despite 3,250 years, including decades submerged under Lake Nasser.
- Christian hermits who used the temple as a church painted over Ramesses II's face — the pharaoh's robes are still visible beneath the apostle painted on top of him.
- The temple was moved 2.5km from its original position by UNESCO in the 1960s — one of 22 monuments rescued simultaneously from the rising lake.
- Lake Nasser cruises between Aswan and Abu Simbel stop here — it is the only practical way to reach the site without a private 4x4 from Aswan.
Charcoal-grilled Nile perch with tahini and pickled lemons aboard Lake Nasser cruise boats.
Nubian peanut-and-sesame halva bought from village traders at the lake's edge.
Tarout Island
Saudi Arabia
A Dilmun temple buried beneath a Portuguese fort on one of Arabia's oldest inhabited islands.
Santa Ana Island
Solomon Islands
Dancers painted in lime and charcoal re-enact creation myths until dawn on a coral speck.
Reef Islands
Solomon Islands
Coral islets scattered like gravel across open ocean, reached by canoe navigators reading the stars.
Nanumea
Tuvalu
A bomber crash-landed off the beach in 1943 — the reef has been swallowing it since.
Al-Bagawat
Egypt
Domed desert chapels with fourth-century biblical murals, among the oldest Christian art on Earth.
Meidum
Egypt
A pyramid that peeled apart, exposing its stone skeleton like an anatomical diagram of pharaonic ambition.
Abu Simbel
Egypt
Twice a year, dawn crawls sixty metres through solid rock to light a pharaoh's face.
Beni Hasan
Egypt
Rock-cut tombs high on a cliff face, their four-thousand-year-old wrestlers still mid-grapple on the walls.