Aswan Nubian House

We had a lovely stay at Aswan Nubian House and our hosts were extremely helpful, both before our visit and during. It is run by 3 brothers - Said is on site, Hamed popped in on our final day & Adel is actually based in Cairo as they run another guest house in Giza. I had asked Adel a number of general questions re Aswan before our trip and he was very responsive and made sure that we knew he was there to help. He also speaks English well so it was very easy for us to communicate. The guest house is located on Elephantine Island, so it requires a ferry to reach it. Logistically this takes a little bit more consideration, but we found it easy to navigate public/private ferries as advised by Adel. The public ferry takes only 2 minutes from the Aswan mainland (5 Egyptian pounds per person) and sets off fairly regularly (in our experience every 10 mins or so). When we first arrived Said greeted us on the Elephantine side once we got off the ferry, offered to wheel our bag for us and took us to the guest house (about an 8 minute walk). We had reserved the twin bedroom and therefore we shared the downstairs bathroom with another guest, but this did not present any issues. The guest house itself lends itself to people meeting eachother and chatting in the communal areas, in both the downstairs living room and the balcony with amazing views. The view from the rooftop is the real selling point, you can see the Nile and a monastery in the background and we enjoyed taking photos and relaxing in the shade there. There is also a dining table on the rooftop so if you choose to eat here you can enjoy amazing views while you eat. That evening, we decided to eat in so we ordered some food through Said - a chicken dish and a fish dish for 150 Egyptian pounds each. I think Said got this from a neighbour. The food was not great in all honesty (especially given it's fairly expensive for the area) - we'd recommend exploring the local area instead (although we did not get a chance to do this). Said was very hospitable and as we were due to go to Abu Simbel the morning after we arrived, we asked him to arrange a private ferry for us (as we were to be picked up from the mainland at 3.45am before public ferries were available). This was considerably more expensive at 75 Egyptian pounds per person. It should also be noted that "private" doesn't mean private exactly, we shared the ferry with at least 8 others but the increased price is due to the time in the morning. At 3.15am Said was up to take us to the island pier which was much appreciated. I asked Said to meet us and take us to the island pier in every instance as the route to the guest house is quite complicated and he obliged with no fuss. My only minor grievance was that the night before we went to Abu Simbel, Said had agreed to prepare and provide us each with a breakfast box to take with us given the very early morning start - the Abu Simbel trip involved a 3hr journey each way and 2hrs exploring the te

If you want to get back to nature - stay within 5 meters of the Nile - then yes it's great - but there are NO frills - no AC - there's basic sanitation - it's on an island - it's mosquito heaven - host is friendly but charges for everything - including water - make sure you know where you are going and have active phone service because taxi driver's - guys in the ferry did not know where I was looking for - I did not have local SIM card though