God invented Egypt for people hellbent on sightseeing. From the pyramids of Giza to the Valley of the Kings, the Nile is just one darned monument after another. Pyramids, sphinxes, tombs, temples: it can go on a bit.

But at the end of Egypt there is respite. Aswan is the loveliest town on the Nile, and the place where the river is at its most beautiful. For weary souls who are beginning to overdose on antiquities, there is relatively little to see. In Aswan you can relax on the sun lounger without feeling you are missing one of the wonders of the ancient world. It couldn’t happen to a nicer place.

For millenniums, Aswan was the end of the known world. Beyond lay Africa and the land of Punt. Well into the 20th century, visitors to Aswan felt they had reached the limits of civilisation. That has always been part of its charm. Through the alleys of the bazaar, where one could find ivory and ebony and gum arabic, wafted odours from the heart of the continent.

Yet Aswan has none of the melancholy transience of a frontier town. It is a delightful and sophisticated place. Its inhabitants are tall, dark-skinned Nubians with a reputation for honesty and loyalty. Best of all is the river. Threading its way through islands, the Nile narrows here towards the First Cataract between banks of yellow sand and smooth granite. It is the splendid views over the Nile that have made the terraces of the Old Cataract Hotel one of the world’s great venues for afternoon tea. Or for cocktails, as you watch the sun set into the desert on the opposite bank. For a glorious moment the Nile and the sails of the passing feluccas are stained pink.

Aswan is a town of boats. Everyone comes and goes on the water. Villages dot the islands and the opposite bank like riverine suburbs. Cruise ships arrive from Luxor, ferries chunter back and forth, and the feluccas spread their swallow wings to the north winds that have carried boats up the Nile, against the currents, since before the days of Cheops. They are the enduring image of Aswan.

I set off one morning with a boatman for a trip upriver to Sehel Island. Out on the Nile, Aswan vanished in a moment as we entered a labyrinth of islands and rocks. Sentinel herons stood watch on the shores. Here and there the currents quickened, an echo of the First Cataract that the High Dam had largely submerged. The boatman pointed out the local landmarks: the places where they used to tow the boats over the rapids; where the islanders crossed to the mainland with their camels; where a big market was held on Thursday mornings between two sand dunes.

We moored on the sandy shore of Sehel, beneath a stand of acacias. The boatman led me up a path past the village laundry, where brightly coloured clothes were laid out to dry on the rocks. The houses were blue as the river.

The village headman invited us in for tea. A sweet old man with a slight tremble in his hands, he proudly showed me the architectural features of his house, a traditional Nubian building — the large courtyard shaded with latticed palm fronds, the high windows orientated to catch the cooling north winds, the barrel-vault roofs to keep the rooms cool in the hottest months. I relished the moment. I was being shown a real house of living people in a contemporary village. For the moment, I had escaped the ancient world. BUT, of course, Aswan is still Egypt and you can’t get away without at least a couple of magnificent monuments. Philae and Abu Simbel are two must-see sites here. Abu Simbel lies 175 miles south of Aswan on the shores of Lake Nasser. Visitors usually fly down for the day. The temple is a grand imperial gesture, a triumphalist warning to envoys arriving from Africa. Four colossal statues of Ramses II form the facade, dwarfing even the gods to whom the temple is nominally dedicated. The story of the way it was rescued from the waters of the High Dam — the temple was hand-sawn into more than 1,000 blocks, many weighing as much as 30 tons, to be moved back from the banks of the rising river — is as remarkable as the monument itself.

Philae is altogether more modest, and more lovable. It too was moved, to Agilkia Island, just below the dam. A taxi from town takes you to the quay between Nubian villages of blue houses, and a boat ferries you across the lake.

Most Egyptian temples are divorced from the Nile; Philae seems to have sprung from its waters. Through the empty windows of the Hall of Nectanebo are views of the river, of boats and water birds and water-smoothed outcrops of Aswan granite. Nile winds blow through the West Colonnade, bearing the lap of water and the scent of fish. Egrets with their curious yellow feet stalk the temple roofs, while pied kingfishers dart between the bougainvillea along the shore. Fifty years ago, before the temple was moved, visitors drifted through the halls by boat, gazing down at the reliefs through the green, translucent water.

Another day I took a boat across to Elephantine Island and walked through the village where women sat on their doorsteps sifting rice and gossip. On the other side of the island I found another boat to ferry me across to the west bank of the river. I landed near the walled compound of the villa of the former Aga Khan. With the whole world to choose from, the Aga Khan chose to spend his winters in Aswan. When he died in 1957, he was buried in the beautiful mausoleum that stands above the house. A fresh rose was placed on his grave every day by the Begum until her death in 2000, when she joined him in his tomb.

The sprawling ruins of the St Simeon Monastery stand on a bluff about half a mile into the desert. With its gatehouse and crenellated walls, it looks like a fortress. Founded in the 7th century, it was originally dedicated to St Hadra, a cheery fellow who encountered a funeral procession on the day of his wedding and immediately decided to renounce the world for a hermit’s cave without ever consummating his marriage.

The monastery was sacked in the 12th century and has been a brooding ruin ever since. I found the guardian alone in the domed vestibule where he was enjoying the cooling winds coming through the door. Isolation had made him something of a fantasist. The life of his ruined monastery had become as real to him as his own village.

As he showed me through the crumbling rooms, he began to enact the activities that had once taken place in each. In the refectory he sat down to dinner at the vanished tables. In the kitchens he began to knead the dough, sliding it carefully into the ovens, before rushing off to tread grapes. Pausing in his culinary duties, he climbed a tower to watch for enemies. Spying some, he ran down to close great invisible doors. Unnerved by this threat, we repaired to the church where one moment he was the priest behind the altar offering communion bread through a hole in the wall, and the next Simeon himself reading the Bible with his beard tied to the ceiling to give him a wakening tug should he nod off. I WAS sorry to leave. Life in the ruined monastery was so entertaining. Waving goodbye to Aswan’s great mime artist, I walked across the desert to the Tombs of the Nobles, which overlooked the river from the escarpment opposite the city. Many of the occupants led expeditions into Africa; these are the tombs, perhaps, of the world’s earliest explorers. There is none of the magnificent artwork that adorns the Valley of the Kings down river at Luxor, but the tombs are simple and touching, and you can have them more or less to yourself, a rare treat in ancient Egypt.

And like everything in Aswan, they are blessed with splendid views of the Nile. You step outside on the terrace in front of the tombs and stretched out beneath you is the eternal river that helped to carry the souls of the dead into the next world. The day was already falling towards evening and the river was dotted with feluccas.

They say that the English prefer Luxor, with its promise of serious sightseeing, to laid-back Aswan. As Thebes, the capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom, Luxor has a host of ancient monuments: the Valley of the Kings, Karnak, the Temple of Hatshepsut, the Colossi of Memnon. But modern Luxor is a dull place. The French are said to have always preferred Aswan, where they can enjoy a promenade, a good dinner and a beautiful view.

For once, the French might be right.

- Stanley Stewart travelled to Aswan as a guest of Abercrombie & Kent

Travel details: Abercrombie & Kent (0845 070 0612, www.abercrombiekent.co.uk) has three nights, B&B, at the Old Cataract Hotel, in Aswan (with a night in Cairo in each direction), from £1,499pp, including BA flights from Heathrow, EgyptAir connections to Aswan and transfers. An extra three nights, B&B, at the Four Seasons in Cairo and three nights, full-board, cruising the Nile from Luxor on the luxury Sunboat IV start at £1,824pp. Or try Hayes & Jarvis (0870 366 1636, www.hayesandjarvis.co.uk) or Discover Egypt (0870 755 8466, www.discoveregypt.co.uk).

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