After
getting up yesterday at a stupid hour today is somewhat more relaxed. I will be
in Aswan until 1 in the afternoon. Then
leaving on a Felucca to go down the river Nile to Luxor stopping at a couple of temples along
the route. At least that was what I thought would be the plan for the next
couple of days.
There are
three ways to get from Aswan to Luxor. You can go by train which is the fast,
easy and boring way to do it. You can go by a cruise boat the cruise boats on
the Nile looks more like a house than a boat
and they are pretty noisy. The cruise boat is the way to go down the Nile in style. The third option is the old fashion way to
go by feluccas the traditional Egyptian sailing vessels used since the days of
the faros. The last option sounded a lot more interesting than the first two
possibilities so I went the felucca way.
I spent the
morning staying inside my hotel room enjoying the air con only leaving to go to
an internet place which also had air con. Getting some water for the trip - and
other necessities then back to the hotel - had to be out of the room at 12
sharp - well this is Egypt nobody probably cared if I left the room at 11, 12
or 13 but hey I am from Denmark so when it says check out at 12 I check out at
12.
Then at 1
it is time to board the felucca and start to sail - this is when everything
starts to go wrong in my opinion. I obviously expected we would start sailing
downstream to make progress towards Luxor
- but no we sail upstream doing one circle after the other. And it is hot Aswan
is one of the hottest cities in the world in late July the usual daytime high
will be above 45 degrees Celsius that's around 110-120 Fahrenheit I
think. When the felucca is only moving slowly the temperature onboard starts to
sore. There is a small piece of canvas on top of the area of the boat where the
passenger's sits this gives you some shade but without wind the temperature
under the canvas is even higher than the already extreme 45.
We keep
going in circles for an hour or so and the cook starts to make lunch - at 2 he
is done and we start to eat. The food is actually really good considering he
made it on limited space on a boat - at least he had no problems with the
felucca moving it where virtually parked on the middle of the river doing it
extremely slow circles. I guessed the reason for the circles was to give the cook
who doubles as the man on the wheel some time to prepare lunch - but no. After
lunch we went back doing more circles.
Then somebody
needed a toilet stop - the skipper parked the felucca at the shore just next to
some cliffs. It was in the middle of the sun and the heat from the rocks where
intense after we had been there 5 minutes the temperature just skyrocket to an
unknown level - it got so hot people started to feel physically bad and got
within a short distance of getting heatstroke or something like that. After
what seem like eternity we got back out to the Nile
- and started doing circles - again.
Finally at 4-4.30
we start to go down the Nile - we are now
moving in the right direction. At 5 we pass the spot where we boarded the
felucca 4 hours earlier - and I can't help but thinking how much nicer it would
have been to spend the day in Aswan instead of wasting the time onboard a hot
felucca doing circles all day. We keep going down the river - we are getting
closer to Luxor
great. It is actually nice on the feluccas when they are sailing at a decent
pace instead of the slow circling.
Then we
pull over again it is around 6 and we can still see the hotel were I spend last
night. Is this another toilet stop - could be we surely will be continuing down
the river tonight right. It is a toilet stop - but also the night stop we will
spend the night right here 20 minutes by car away from Aswan - it took all day to get here.
We get the
diner in little villages where there are some music and dancing old Nubian
style. The diner is Nubian dinner as well. It is very different from things up
in northern Egypt
and it is a really nice night we spend in a house of a Nubian family. After
diner it is back to the felucca to go to sleep - I were told to keep all my
stuff onboard the felucca because we would be leaving early in the morning the
next day - and you would probably be sailing when you woke up around sunrise. So
all stuff onboard the felucca. The crew is having a bit of a party in the front
but - hey they are probably used to only get a few hours sleep so we will
surely leave very early in the morning.
