Flying Over Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Nile River, and the Red Sea

Ah - a nice four flight without having to give a lecture and going over interesting terrain! Cloudless desert skies round this as a perfect flight!

On the ground at Mt. Kilimanjaro International Airport after our one hour flight from Serengeti. The temperature was about 85 degrees here at 4,500 feet and 3º south of the equator.

Beautiful blue skies too as we boarded our jet. For the second half of this flight, I have been sitting in row 1, starboard side.

Once in the air, the pilot radioed for permission to do a scenic flight over Mt. Kilimanjaro and was granted the request. Unfortunately, clouds covered most of the mountain.

But every now and then while circling the giant volcano, we could see the Lemosho Route traveling along the southern base of the volcano. If you look closely in this shot, you will notice small orange tents pitched in the cleared area. We may have camped here in 2014 on our ascent of the mountain.

This is the Blue Nile River just upstream from Khartoum, Sudan. Currently there is a huge dam being built on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia and it will be completed next year. Read about the project here.

This is the Nasser Reservoir, the body of water inundated behind the Aswan Dam on the Nile River. This is very close to the border with Ethiopia. The scenery was very much like that seen near the Powell Reservoir in the American Southwest.

Another shot of the shore of Nasser Reservoir showing significant mountain terrain that itself is being inundated - with wind-blown sand (lighter orange material on the mountain slopes). It must be incredible to be on the ground here and see this - if you can get there!

A poor, long-distance shot of the Aswan Dam across the Nile River. The Nile flows left (north) and the Nasser Reservoir is on the right (to the south). The last time the Nile River flooded freely was June, 1964 when the gates of this dam closed.

The irrigated banks of the Nile River below Aswan. Note the desert lands outside of the rivers floodplain.

Now we are flying across the storied Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Looks like the Mojave Desert to me.

After crossing the peninsula, we arrived at the edge of the shoreline in Egypt.

This is the most famous of the resorts at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, Sharm El Sheikh. It began as a fishing village and was transformed into a naval base for the Egyptian Navy in the 1950's. It is now a tourist destination and the diving is said to be quite spectacular.

These islands in the Gulf of Aqaba are located directly across from Sharm El Sheikh but are in the country of Saudi Arabia. Note the very shallow reefs which I'm sure are excellent places for snorkeling and diving.

More desert, more sea in Saudi Arabia.

The Google Earth image of this stretch of Saudi coastline shows absolutely nothing named.

We entered Jordanian airspace near the northern terminus of the Gulf of Aqaba. I have seen these black dikes, which admittedly look like tilted strata but isareactually black basaltic dikes intruding into lighter colored Precambrian granite, which is a part of the Arabian shield.

We turned to the east and got a great view of the Wadi Rum area, which I will show in the next post from ground level. In this aerial shot however, note the darker substrate beneath the orange sandstone - this is the Great Unconformity where Paleozoic rocks lie atop Precambrian crystalline rocks.

The Jordanian city of Aqaba at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Three counties are visible from here, Jordan in the foreground where the city is located, Israel in the center, and Egypt at the far top of the photo.

My next posting will be from the ground in Petra and Wadi Rum.