Once through security I again marvel at how quiet it is on the other side. Where has everybody gone??
The last time I did the flight from Cairo to Luxor it was on an Embraer aircraft which I was rather impressed with as far as comfort and noise went. This time it is an Airbus, and Egypt Air have ''upgraded'' me, which means instead of sitting at the back, my favoured position, I am now half way up the aircraft directly behind Business Class with the curtain directly in front of me.
We board and are then told there will be a short delay, which turns out to be over an hour because we have to wait..... For the catering truck... On such a short flight I really think we could have done without a packet of biscuits and a cup of lukewarm coffee but there you go... When we do finally take off and the trolley comes around the man next to me manages to convince the young lady that as we are sitting so close to Business Class we should get Business Class service. We get a plate of sandwiches each.
Arriving at Luxor the wait for baggage seems like forever. But my driver, organised by my hotel is outside waiting for me, he looks vaguely familiar.
''I know you,'' he says.
Realisation dawns, it is the man that took me to the train station the last time I was here, the one with the oldest Peugeot car still in existence. ''Lord help me,'' I think, ''Don't tell me we are going all the way to the West Bank in that Peugeot.''
Luckily he has a ''newer'' vehicle this time, and we take off through the sugar cane fields, they grow a lot of sugar in Egypt, through Luxor to the bridge as this time I am staying on the West Bank...
Of course taking a taxi is the long way round and it would be a lot quicker to take a taxi to the ferry and then walk to my hotel which is not far from the ferry terminal on the West Bank.... But I am not as young as I used to be....
No flash hotels this time, a basic apartment in one of the several smaller hotels that exist on the West Bank. A bit of unpacking to do as I am here for three weeks and then a wander around to get my bearings, and tonight I will eat at the hotel on the rooftop as the cook tells me the food is very good!!Sorry about the quality of the video, my phone is not the best!! But you get the general idea. The place I am staying is almost opposite The Winter Palace where I stayed on my last visit.
The West Bank is considerably less touristy than the East Bank, the ''Corniche'' is quite short running either side of the public ferry dock, and apart from the main road that leads from the Corniche out to the Valley Of The King's most of the side roads are unmade. Here the ordinary daily life of Egypt carries on, in some cases much as it has done for a thousand years.
The road past my hotel is, like many others, dirt.....
A car is definitely a rarity, a motocycle slightly more common, but most of the traffic is on foot, by donkey, or by horse.
There is just an open space between here and the Nile but rumour has it that the Corniche will be extended and then like anywhere else, property prices will rise!
From where I am staying I approach the Corniche and the public ferry from the south, I know this looks pretty deserted but as you approach the public ferry you get mobbed by Nile boatmen. It is Egypt, what else do you expect??
The public ferry costs EG£5, about 25 English pence, to cross to the East Bank, the boatmen want GB£20 at least..... And anyway you meet more
interesting people on the public ferry!
As before there are a lot of boats and feluccas going nowhere, and a lot of shipping that has clearly not been anywhere for a while...
Perhaps the names of the boats might put some people off using them!
Fighting my way through the boatmen and taxi drivers wanting to take me to ''The Valley'' heading north I am taking wander and find Abdul, another Abdul that is. Not the one I met last time I was here. This Abdul has a felucca but does not seem very interested in going anywhere in it. He is interested in coffee though and we find a typical little Nileside cafe, with dirt floors and wobbly tables, and a fai amount of ethnicity about it.
The coffee is good......
Abdul says I should go and look for accommodation in the village of El Gezira because it will be cheaper. (And probably he gets a commission).
It was actually quite an interesting walk, up the main road from the ferry, passing various shops on the way, including a butcher's where they haven't heard of refrigeration yet, and the meat probably tastes all the better without it.
Along with a pharmacy, a new ATM that has just been installed but doesn't work yet, the nearest one is across the river on the East Bank, a greengrocer and other vital services like a mobile phone shop.....
There is a least one felucca in business, and that's a picture of Abdul 2 on his felucca.... And below is the place where we went for coffee... Complete with dirt floors, (none of those fancy ceramic tiles in Egypt), and some very ethnic throws etc.. While we are on that subject of ethnic throws, somebody ''back home'' asked me if I could get them one of the brightly coloured blankets they put on the camels.
After a bit of research I found out that they are Bedouin work and cost fortunes!! I was taken to meet the man that sells them but I had to decline his offer...
I will let the photos do the talking for the most part, but on the way to see this accommodation we pass a stables, Abdul want to know if I can ride a horse. ''Well I did try years ago but kept falling off.'' ''I will teach you,'' he says..... Having and using a horse and a donkey is still something the do here, you will often see children on the way to school on a donkey, and I must admit I didn't know that donkeys went that fast but if you are late for school then they do.
I am reminded of Greece in some ways, for instance, the ladder is not long enough?? Then tie two together with a piece of rope. And there is a shop selling live rabbits for eating. Sorry about that.
It is quite a pleasant stroll through the area, and I notice that there are several small hotels along the way, and a couple of bigger ones as well, and the normal number of unfinished buildings to avoid paying the tax, although Abdul tells me that they now have to pay it anyway!
Finally we reach the apartment that he has been telling me about. It belongs to Mahmoud who like a lot of Egytpians is not so tall, and slightly built, and most of him seems to be made up of ''turban'' which apparently extends beyond his shoulders, but doesn't really....
During the course of our travels I have made contact with Abdul the boatman from my previous visit. Isn't WhatsApp wonderful, and tomorrow morning hes i picking me up on the riverbank by my hotel...
Returning to my hotel I find the ''chamberman'' has been taking lessons from the ones on the Nile cruise ships so I can look forward to finding there are no towels in the bathroom and my hat and spectacles have been used to make monsters on my bed... In this case the remote control for the aircon as well.
And a quick note on that too, Egytpian summers are hot, around the 40C mark, but the humidity is low which makes the heat more comfortable. In winter the days are delightfully warm, mid to high 20s Celsius, but the nights are cold!!
I had to ask for an extra blanket, but then anything below 20C means I wear thermal socks, it is all to do with the dicky mitral valve in the heart.
And so to bed...... After something to eat that is....
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