Feluccas on the Nile and the Valley of Kings

On the Nile is the place to be in Egypt. The Felucca is a small sailing craft, with a single massive sail, no engine, and two planks for oars if you get really stuck. The crew are two Nubian men, Ahmed and Moustafa, who steer, clean, cook and entertain with implaccable grace and quiet good humour. For our two night trip, the deck had been covered with matteresses and we spend our days reclining languidly, our punishing regime of sleeping, playing cards, learning backgammon and reading being broken periodically for sumptious vegetarian feasts, cooked by Moustafa on a single hotplate the front of the ship.

The Nile seems to be almost an immortal river, the scenes along the bank could have come from almost any time. Men in galabayas (long Arabian tunics) and turbans squat on the shore fishing, or bounce along on grey donkeys. Boys with sticks lead flocks of goats, or take their cows into the water for a bath.

We stop every now and again for toilet breaks and we all pile off to find a private bush, boys gravitates right and women left. At our first stop, one of the more shy women ventures deep into the scrub to find a place completely hidden from the river only to discover as she settles down to squat that she's walked straight into a perfect vantage point for a group of Egyptians behind her. She turns around to avoid them and some of the boys run up to outflank her to the left.

At night we moore at the bank and go swimming. The water is safe here, cold and clear coming straight from the great dam. The current is very strong though and I jump in off the back of the boat and start to swim ashore, only to find myself thought swimming furriously, completely stationary. It's like being in a giant infinity pool.

After dinner, the captains from a couple of boats get together and start to sing and play the drums. It sounds touristy but it's really not. I doubt they could have cared less whether we were watching or not. For hours they dance, bums out in the African way, and sing Nubian folk songs. Later, when they run out of songs they make them up, singing rude things about each other and guffawing with laughter. It's a good night and I go to sleep snug in my sleeping sheet, with the cool nile breeze carassing my face.

There's so much more to tell about the rest of my trip but I really have to go to bed. I'm in Luxor at the moment and tomorrow we go off to the beach for a few days. There'll be no internet access, so I'll have to update you all from Cairo next week. Take care all.

Oh and I've finally uploaded some photos. You can click on the box on the right, or click here to go directly to my flickr page.

Abu Simbel and the great Nile Dam

Aswan is in Upper Egypt which confuses me cos it's in the far South I've been brought up on maps that have north at the top and south and the bottom. The catch cry here is "Welcome to Alaska!" which is a kind of city-wide joke on all the foreigners. Aswan is HOT. It's hot and dusty and you can feel that the desert is only just a little way away; around the corner; over that hill. But that's true for most of Egypt; in Cairo you turn one way from the pyramids and you're facing highrise appartments, the other way and it's just sand, all the way to Morrocco. The bits of greenery in between become almost indescribably precious in when the desert is so close.

Aswan is on the Nile, 300 kilometres from the Sudanese border, and it used to be the start of Nubia. Nubia, or more precisely Nubians, or to be honest, Nubian slave girls have always seemed to me to be almost mythological. In history clases at school we learnt of people bringing tributes to Pharohs, Emperors and Mongol Hordes, of giraffes, frankinsence and Nubian slaves. I guess I'd belived that the people had long ago been swallowed by history, like the Moors (moops!). Well they haven't. Nubians abound in southern Egypt and in Northern Sudan, and they are wonderful, laid back but very proud people. Unfortunately Nubia itself was swallowed, by the Great Nile Dam, which in the 1960's inundated the entire country of Nubia. The people scattered, relocating on islands in the Nile, upon which they now run pleasure cruises for tourists over their drowned homeland.

We had dinner last night with a Nubian family, who live across the river from Aswan on Elephantine Island, an island which has been a centrepiece of trade between 'black' africa and the north for over 5000 years. There are hieroglyphics carved into the rocks clearly visible from the river to prove this, if they tombs of Middle Egyption nobles dug into the rocks didn't give it away first. Now the Island is host of Egypt's largest population of Nubians: two villages, with about 6000 people in total. The older people still speak Nubian amongst themselves, but they elder I spoke to got very quiet when I asked about the younger people and said that even though the island had two schools, the children were forced to learn in Arabic only. I wonder how much longer these people can survive. Already they say they are feeling the effects of the dam. In the past, the Nile would flood the island every year, bringing rich topsoil from upriver and making this area incredibly fertile. Now there is no mud to replenish the soil and farming is harder, Hammoud (the Elder who gave us a tour) say they didn't like to use chemical fertilisers but they didn't have much choice. Still the Nubians are survivors, for thousands of years they were the Pharoh's slaves and workers, and if they can find a way to adapt they will.

I haven't told you anthing about my group. We are only small, and everyone is about my age or a little younger. We have a brother and sister from Australia, a Northern Irish ex-rugby player who met his girlfriend playing in New Zealand. They've been living in Northern Ireland for the past 3 years and are now going to give it a go in New Zealand, this trip is a break in the journey there. I'm the only single woman, and there's one single guy, a portugeuse guy who's researching nanotechology in England and, although he's nice enough, is probably better suited to the inside of a laboratory then the outside world. Upon first glimpse of the magnificent pyramids, he leaned to me and said bleakly, 'I thought they would be bigger'.

Our guide is a lovely woman nearing the end of her second Intrepid contract and clearly excited to be going home (with her new Egyption(?) fiance) and we have a trainee guide too, an Egyption whose real name was apparently deemed unpronouncable and is now called Gandhi - mainly I think because of a definite physical resemblance.

I have so much to talk about and not enough time. Must go to dinner now, and tomorrow start two days on a sailboat down the Nile! Bliss. Will blog again from Luxor (yes that's a real place too!)

Aswan

I'm in Aswan in Southern Egypt on the banks of the nile. It's hard finding internet cafes in Egypt - I'm sure there are heaps of them but if you don't know you're way around it's hard finding anything in Egypt. Also there's not a lot of free time on this trip. It seems like there will be but if often gets eaten by delays in transport and needing to rest. Not that it's a problem. I'm having fun, but just to explain why I can't write much. Day after tomorrow I'm going on a felucca (traditional sailboat) for 2 days. Definitly no internet contact there!

I saw the pyramids at Giza yesterday. Took me by surprise how moved I was by them. So big and old, they seemed so solid and beyond all the chaos playing out at their feet. And there was all sorts of chaos - Giza is an outer suburb of cairo and there were millions of tourists and touts of all kinds, including camel riding kids trying to sell them stuff. But I feel emotionally very like I felt when I first saw Uluru - strange cos they are so different, but in many ways similar. Have taken lots of pictures but discovered a mark on the lens that's put a smudge on all my pyramid photos. Grr. Hopefully I've cleaned it off now.

We have a camel ride this arvo and then dinner in a local Nubian village. I'm gonna go and find some food now. Camel riding is hard work.

Cairo!

Ok, so Iran was a no-go as most of you will know already. Visa issues were a nightmare and it all got a bit much so now I'm in Egypt!

I arrived last night. The flight was late cos we had some sort of fuel paperwork error that meant that engineers had to open up holes in the winds of the plane to manually check how much fuel we had before we could take off. Phobic me had to resist the urge to ask the flight attendant whether anyone had considered that maybe the fuel was leaking into other parts of the plane and would catch fire spectacularly in mid-flight. Fortunately i was distracted by the 500 channels(!) of entertainment on demand and had a great time watching movies and playing games on my seatback tv.

Cairo was underwhelming when I arrived. We went to a dodgy old terminal (saw the shiny new international one from the car on the way out of the airport) that was all chaotic and no signs and a million lascivious men to deal with. And this was before I even went through passport control. Met my first Egyptian pest when trying to pay for my visa. One of the bank guys decided it would be cool if he hung onto my passport while 'playfully' telling me we could get together later that night and was I married and where was my family? clearly not here etc etc ad nauseum. It's fine and I just waited till he got sick of the game but it's pretty irritating too.

Hotel is fine. I think it had some history. Something about George Bernard Shaw used to stay here? It's seen much better days though and most of the beautiful old features are hidden under that muzak and eighties floral fabric virus that afflicts so many cheap hotels all over the world. It actually reminds me both of the 'best' hotel in Belize City that I had dinner in a couple of years ago and the hotel I stayed at in Quebec City that winter. These faded gems are everywhere.

Have been taking it easy today. Still very tired from the flights but in good spirits. Looking forward to meeting the rest of the tour group tonight.