Aswan High Dam

The High Dam was built between 1960 and 1970 across the Nile above Aswan, a rockfill embankment about 3,600 metres long and 111 metres high, holding back Lake Nasser and generating a large share of Egypt's electricity. Its effects were enormous in every direction: it ended the annual flood that had governed Egyptian agriculture for millennia, allowed year-round irrigation and multiple harvests, drowned Lower Nubia and displaced its population, and stopped the silt that had renewed the fields and now settles in the reservoir instead. Visitors stop at a viewing area on the crest with the lake on one side and the river below on the other, and at a lotus-shaped monument commemorating the Soviet engineering partnership. There is a small visitor pavilion with a model.

What you actually see

• The crest viewpoint - lake on one side, river far below on the other.
• The lotus monument - the memorial to the construction partnership.
• The scale of the embankment - three and a half kilometres of rockfill.
• Lake Nasser - the reservoir stretching south out of sight.

When to go

October to April. One hour, and it is almost always a stop on a circuit taking in Philae and the Unfinished Obelisk. Mornings for clearer air over the lake.

Honest expectations

Photography is restricted and cameras pointed at installations attract attention; follow what your driver tells you. There is nothing to walk to and the stop is short. The visitor pavilion is dated. Vendors work the car park.

Nearby

Philae temple is on the reservoir between the dams; Kalabsha lies just south.