I found a spot just beyond the riverbank, well out of sight of the felucca,
and answered the call of nature. That was when the camel came nosing around.
It gave me a bit of a shock, as you can imagine. One second I was alone with
my bodily functions, the next looking up at a pale, yellow mane and dark,
mournful eyes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Such an encounter
is probably to be expected on a trip promising a duck’s-eye view of the
Nile.
Egypt’s main artery is big business: about 2m people cruise this section of
the Nile every year. Most choose one of the 260 river liners that plough the
southern stretch between the ancient cities of Aswan and Luxor, stopping en
route to view the antiquities that have made this one of the few countries
on earth worthy of its own “ology”. And while these floating hotels
certainly have their attractions (air conditioning, deck-top pools, on-board
loos), to me they seemed out of place: too mechanical, too dirty, simply too
big for this ancient land.
I wanted something different: the same antiquarian excitements, but a more
intimate experience of the river along the way; the sort of experience you
get by exploring the Nile in the simplest of sailing boats: the felucca.
I began in the city of Aswan, the trading town famous for the engineering feat
that bears its name. When the Aswan High Dam was inaugurated in 1971, it was
one of the largest in the world, and most Egyptians are extremely proud of
it.
It supplies much of the nation’s power, prevents flooding and keeps the Nile
north to Cairo croc-free. But the project had its costs. As well as having
environmental consequences, the dam’s construction displaced a people — the
Nubians — whose homelands were flooded by Lake Nasser. And, without a vast
international rescue effort, some of Egypt’s most staggering sights would
also have been drowned.
The vast temple of Abu Simbel, a 3,000-year-old Mount Rushmore near the
Sudanese border, with images of Rameses II carved into a rockface, was moved
away from the encroaching waters statue by statue, block by
hieroglyphics-covered block. So was the Isis temple complex on Philae
island, just outside Aswan. “Every part of Egypt is interesting and
curious,” wrote the explorer and diplomat Robert Curzon in 1834, “but the
only place to which the epithet ‘beautiful’ can be correctly applied is the
island of Philae.”
Philae may have gone, but its beautiful adornments remain — moved to slightly
higher ground on another island. Set against the water, they are
exceptionally dramatic, though their impact is slightly dented by the
modern-day crowds. These coach parties — transferred from the river liners
moored three abreast along Aswan’s promenade — were just the ones I hoped to
escape once aboard my felucca.
Feluccas have sailed the Nile since the Middle Ages. The word originates in
Italian and refers to a simple cargo boat. Our vessel, the Locarno, was as
typical as they come: a broad wooden hull with a painted tree trunk that had
already seen one incarnation as a telegraph pole and was now living a second
as a mast. Its boom — lowered from diagonal to horizontal as required —
consisted of four thick branches, lashed together and galvanised with white
paint. Between these was a lateen: a heavy cotton sail, perfectly
triangular, with rips in the upper reaches that seemed specially fashioned
for romantic effect.
The deck, 3ft below the boom, was a cushioned space sheltered by an 8ft by 6ft
sun canopy. This would be home to me, my three fellow passengers, an
Egyptologist guide and Zizo, our captain and cook. No toilets, no cabins, no
air conditioning bar the breeze. In a felucca flotilla with two other boats,
we left the shores of Aswan and began to tack downstream.
Travelling by felucca is a mixture of sailing with the wind, drifting with the
current and (when both drop away) impromptu rowing, with planks used as
oars. Herons and egrets swooped at our bow, and at night we moored alongside
sand islands and among reeds and coots. We slept like sardines across the
deck and woke at dawn to see the real things darting through the water just
inches from our heads.
The days — three aboard, though it seemed like more — were lazy and long,
spent reading, talking and watching river life go by. While most of the big
cruise ships passed in the night, occasionally one would chunter past by
day, its passengers looking down at us and we up at them. They were the ones
with cameras in hand, we being the more photogenic.
Being photogenic comes at a price, of course. What we gained through
simplicity, we lost in comfort and privacy. Most of our meals were eaten
cross-legged in a circle on deck, and we ate simply — hummus and fennel with
whatever meat or fish Zizo had found to cook on his travelling gas stove.
The lack of showers meant the river was both our road and our bath; the lack
of loos prompted regular treks in search of suitable bushes,
camel-frequented or not. In essence, this was waterborne camping, with all
the privations that camping brings. Our trip was rough and ready, but our
experience of the Nile was all the more intimate for that.
The killer advantage of a felucca cruise is the ability to pull over to the
bank and explore at will. We spent a few hours as the only non-regulars at a
camel market in the village of Daraw. It would cost us £500 to buy a working
camel, we were told, £300 for one to race and £200 for one good only for
meat. We settled for a few camel steaks bought from a nearby stall — that
evening’s dinner, eaten around a riverside fire.
Our first Egyptological visit was to Kom Ombo, a Ptolemaic-era temple
dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek. We got there just after sunrise,
before most cruise-boat passengers had stirred. The complex houses a
mummified croc and a giant well: a crude “Nilometer”, designed to monitor
the water supply. When the level rose above a certain mark, or fell below
another, a flood or drought was declared and taxes were amended accordingly.
Agricultural subsidies, I discovered, are nothing new.
We continued to Edfu, Egypt’s second-biggest temple and its best preserved. It
was dedicated to the falcon god Horus, and everything inside was designed to
reflect his glory. The staircase to the roof spirals, to represent the
ascent of a bird of prey, while the steps down are a straight flight — the
falcon’s descending glide.
At Edfu, we left Zizo to sail back against the current to Aswan, and continued
by road to Luxor. Site of the ancient city of Thebes, this is the treasure
trove of Egypt. On the east bank of the Nile lie its temples — including the
astounding Karnak, a vast complex of sanctuaries, columns, obelisks, statues
and altars arranged around a purifying lake.
Spreading across an area the size of seven Eden Projects, Karnak was an
immense collaborative effort built by successive pharaohs over a period of
1,300 years. Its Hypostyle Hall was built by Seti I and Rameses II, and is
the place where James Bond once tussled with Jaws. Wandering among its
pillars, I felt like an ant among the pins of a bowling alley: 134 awesome
skittles, each more elaborately decorated than the last.
The sun sets on the west bank of the Nile, of course, and for the ancients,
that side represented the afterlife: “The shore of dead, the beginning of
the beyond.” The resting place of the pharaohs is here, the Valley of the
Kings, and it has tombs the way the South Downs have rabbit burrows. Each is
a temple, and they were once stuffed with treasures, but their riches have
long since been plundered or taken to Cairo, London or Paris. Even so, the
warren-like corridors are incredible: underground mansions, crammed with
hieroglyphics, for the dead to luxuriate in for eternity.
Today, the tombs are very much alive — the scorched valley swarms with
camera-wielding tourists — so on my final day, I resolved to be up before
all of them, to take my final look at Egypt in peace, and from high, high
above.
In a sense, being in the basket of a hot-air balloon was like being back in
the felucca — sailing through the air, rather than across water, but still
at the whim of the wind. In the still of the pre-dawn light, I looked down
and couldn’t see a soul, only fields of sugar cane, the river curving
through a green valley, and beyond it the scorched hills of the desert.
Among them, I could make out the triple-tiered temple of Hatshepsut, glowing
gold as the sun edged above the horizon.
When we landed, it was still only 7am, and I made for one final temple, the
Ramesseum, built by Rameses II with the understandable aim of erecting a
monument to his own greatness. It is now mostly in ruins — a cracked visage
lying in the sand, a giant stone foot with broken toes — and as such it
served as the inspiration for Ozymandias, Shelley’s ode to the folly of ego.
I was the only tourist there, sharing the site with restoration workers moving
fallen blocks back into position. Two planks of wood acted as rails and
metal rods as wheels, as eight men pulled on a rope slung around a big cube
of rock.
As they worked, they chanted in rhythm, heaving at each crescendo. A crane
would have done a far more efficient job — but they didn’t have one, and
didn’t much seem to care. Perhaps they knew instinctively what I’d learnt on
my Nile cruise: that sometimes simplicity trumps technology.
Andrew Thomas travelled as a guest of Travelmood and Discover Egypt
Travel brief
Getting there: flights to Cairo from Heathrow and Manchester with
Alitalia, via Milan, start at £239 through Travelmood (0870 066 4556, www.travelmood.com).
Or try Travelocity (0870 111 7061, www.travelocity.co.uk).
Charter Flight Centre (0845 045 0153, www.charterflights.co.uk) has charters
to Luxor from Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham; from £169.
Getting afloat: Travelmood (0870 066 4556, www.travelmood.com)
has a nine-day felucca safari, starting in Cairo, from £229pp,
including accommodation, most meals and train and bus transfers, but not
flights. Or try On the Go (020 7371 1113, www.onthegotours.com)
or Explore (0870 333 4001, www.explore.co.uk).
It’s also possible to arrange a cruise yourself. Go to the promenade at
Aswan and felucca captains will approach you: expect to pay about £20pp
for the three-day, two-night journey from Aswan to Edfu, including food and
the minibus ride to Luxor.
There is one “luxury felucca” on the Nile. The Royal Cleopatra (00
1 415 440 1124, www.nubiannilecruises.com)
has a sun deck, a lounge and ensuite cabins. A four-day trip costs £579pp.
Balloon rides over Luxor cost £70: book with Magic Horizon (00 20 95 2365
060, www.magic-horizon.com).
Admission to the temples costs between £1.70 and £5.
