Up the Nile - Mary Powell

The plane has landed, the door opens and we walk down the stairs to the tarmac. There is a balmy breeze, un-expected but greatly appreciated.

We are in Cairo!!

Streamlined buses take us to the new airport terminal. We are met there by medical examiners, who check our temperature and on we go. There are counters to purchase our visas (15.00usd), then on to immigration.

I hand over my passport and visa and what is this? One of the guards has taken my passport and left! The other guard tells me to go down further to collect it.
Where?

As I am standing there panicking, a member of the police passes by with my passport in his hand and says he will be right back.

Am I to be deported?

Here he is! He hands over the passport, tells me to go on through and all is well again.
On to baggage pick-up where we wait at the carousel noticing members from our tour with Explore tags. We follow them and there is our group leader Wael, who is rounding us up like forgotten sheep. A few us use the washroom, a few buy coffees at Starbucks, and then onto the shuttle bus for an hour and 15 minute ride to our hotel in Giza “The Pyramids View Hotel”.

We are given our room keys, what time to meet (there will be a wake-up call) and off to bed! It is midnight! I fall asleep right away but awake at 4:00am to the loud calling to prayer. Rather than it being annoying, I find it quite comforting. Back to sleep for a couple of hours and then as the sun rises I look out my window to the sight of two pyramids.

Amazing.

The group has breakfast then an introductory meeting, and then we are off to the Pyramids, Sphinx , Mummifying Temple, papyrus workshop and museum, falafel lunch (never had one before), Cairo museum (containing the treasures of Tutankhamen) and then finally, after an extremely busy day, we stop in Cairo city centre for tea.

While there a hookah pipe is passed around. This is very common in Egypt. The sweet smell of apple is in the air.

One thing Cairo is full of is cars, cats, dogs and people. No problem!

Now it is on to the train station for our overnight trip to Luxor! There is a fairly lengthy wait as a number of trains pass through but finally in comes our sleeper train. Every cabin sleeps two and dinner and breakfast are included. They bring dinner to us and when we are done they make the sitting area into beds. As we move along I am lulled to sleep with the continuous rocking motion of the train.

We are woken with sharp raps on the door. A little unnerving as it is quite dark. They will not stop until you respond. I must find the door, undo the lock and open it. There, I did it! Thank God (or Allah, who’s name be praised)

Sunrise is spectacular and the Egyptian countryside beautiful!

The only drawback on the train was the communal washroom which was quite dirty and flushed directly onto the tracks. Ewww.

We have now arrived in Luxor. We are taken to our riverboat, the “M.S.Soleil”. It is lined up with many other boats and we walk through three of them to get to her. We dump our luggage in the lobby and go for a ride in a calesh (horse and carriage) to the Karnak temple. It is amazing.

Then back to the Soleil to check-in to our cabins. They are nice and fairly roomy. Showers can be tricky as I had flooded the bathroom before I figured out how to keep the water in the shower and out of the cabin. We have a nice lunch in the dining room then back to my cabin to rest my eyes. I promptly fall asleep for a couple of hours.

Next we go “walkabout” in town. We go to the “souk” were I find a great bookstore. I bought “Death on the Nile” by Agatha Christie and am a happy camper. Back to the boat for a view of the sunset from the top deck followed by a late dinner after which I stumble to bed to sleep before the 7am wake-up call the next morning.

We have a full breakfast then take a motorboat across the Nile to see “The Tombs of the Workers.”
The riverboat is our base for the next six nights and it is from there that we take tours to see some incredible sights. Life on board is easy-going and informal: a perfect base from which to explore the sites of the Nile.

Some of the highlights are: The Edfu Temple (you must go through the Esna lock to reach Edfu), Temple of Kom Ombo,Aswan (from here you would do a lenthy busride or short flight to Abu Simbel, a truly remarkable site reconstructed with amazing engineering) Also in Aswan we visit a Nubian Village.

From our riverboat we take tours to see the Philae Temple of Isis, Valley of the Kings (which is where King Tut’s tomb was found), camel ride to the deserted Coptic Monastery of St. Simeon, and a donkey trek to the temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Egypt’s only female pharaoh).

This was an extremely busy itinerary but thoroughly enjoyable. I will always remember the sunrises, sunsets (truly beautiful in Egypt), the feel of camel hair (very course), the smell of sandalwood incense, sailing on the Nile while passing tombs in the hillsides and temples right before your eyes, hieroglyphs in colours still vivid from 2500 BC and the first sight of the pyramids from my hotel balcony.

Interestingly even though the temperatures varied from about 28 degrees Celsius to about 42 degrees Celsius, I never found it unbearable. It is very dry heat. I never really noticed any bugs although some people on the tour did get bites. Food on the boat was very tasty and mostly European or American type fare. A lot of water had to be consumed to stay hydrated. Egypt has been a tourist destination for many years and is very organized and tourist oriented. At no time did I feel unsafe (annoyed occasionally but not unsafe).

The Egyptian tour leader was very knowledgeable. He used a few local guides who were okay to good. The group on the tour was a good combination of ages and was mostly British. Overall the tour was very well run and I would recommend Explore as they did a good job.