Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Messing About On The River

 I have mentioned before in one of my old posts how important the Nile has been in the past, today it is still important as a source of water and without it the Nile Valley would be an arid desert.

Today also it is still used for transport in this case to and from across the Nile usually using the public ferry, 1LE for Egyptians, 5LE for tourists, if you have got used to the exchange rate that is 20p one way.

For the tourist it is more of a source of entertainment and no visit to Egypt would be complete without at least one cruise on a felucca, the traditional Nile boat. Feluccas come in all sizes most of those used for tourist trips are no more than about 6 or 8 metres long but there are some moored up which are far larger and can take 10 to 20 people in extreme comfort up or down the Nile for a week long cruise to visit the archaeological sites bordering the Nile.

SO there was me on Friday sitting there stationary by the public ferry waiting for lunch to arrive when all of sudden we took off across the Nile taking somebody across to the East Bank on business....

A bit later after lunch I took off for an hour with Saieed for a more sedate cruise along the river as far as his house and farm where we stopped for the proverbial cup of Egyptian tea... Getting back on to the boat was a bit of a challenge walking up a narrow gang plank and naturally as there was water involved I fell off the gang plank and got the Gucci Loafer wet...... Nothing serious..... 

While we were out a normal felucca passed us.... Very relaxing they are too unless you are on the one that took in 2019, look further down the blog at the older posts and you will se the bit when we nearly capsized.

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Things Are Not Quite The Same, And Word Gets Around...

 So after a day of not doing a lot my legs are now used to being back on solid ground and I no longer feel like I am still on the train.

My hotel is next door to the one I stayed in on my last visit and Abdullah the 'house boy' has already spotted me and told Mahmoud the cook on the top floor who leaned over the balcony on the top floor next door to talk to me, my hotel is one floor shorter you see.

Today I will venture a little further afield and take the public ferry across to the East Bank... I take a late breakfast in the hotel, (2 hard boiled eggs, pitta bread, tea, cheese and jam, English pounds GB£1.50), and walking out the gate I find the nuisance from my last stay sitting outside the gate. (Egyptians are not allowed in hotels where there are foreigners staying unless, a) They work there, or b) They are staying there themselves)

How the nuisance found me I do not know but all I can say is the 'bush telegraph' works extremely well.

So what's changed?

A lot less people selling boats trips, taxi rides, and whatever else they can sell for a start, Instead of crowds of them there are now only a few and yet the number of boats moored on both sides of the Nile is just the same.

And what few people there are are a lot less pushy, but I know how to get rid of them now anyway so they didn't really bother me a lot.

A little shopping never goes amiss and prices are still the same, a few essentials like some fruit... and toms and cucs..

The fruit set me back by 35 LE, or £1.60 if you prefer, and the tomatoes and cucumber were £5, or 25p if you like...

Meanwhile the public ferry no longer goes straight across to the other side of the river but now lands a lot further north near the museum which was a bit of surprise as it is no miles to get to the market and Luxor Temple. Well not really miles but quite a long way. 

I haven't got to the bottom of why it has been changed.... Yet.

                                                                                                              

One thing I did find out walking past the Temple was how people knew I was back, this is down to a tour guide that I have used twice in 2017 and 2019 and he saw me getting off the train the previous night. So that is one puzzle solved.

One thing about them moving the ferry is that there is now a couple of cafes nearby. The 'boy' making the coffee assures me that he is 'very beautiful', I will leave you to make your own decisions about that!

Meanwhile back at the hotel some Irish people have just arrived, they flew in via Hurghada which is how a lot of people seem to be doing it, probably because of the cheaper flights. They have just spent a week in Hurghada and are trying to do the rest of Egypt in a week. It's not going to work.. I try and help and give them a few tips of what is most important, but they have got one thing right and that is that they want to do a short cruise up the Nile to Aswan but have been put off by a TV program showing Joanna Lumley all dolled up and sipping cocktails. I assure them that a Nile cruise is not like that unless the TV company are paying a fortune for one of the 'select' cruise boats.

Wandering around my neck of the woods I take make morning exercise through the banana plantations along some very dusty tracks...

Passing just one of the many stables in the area. They make quite a thing of horse riding here and most of the Egyptians can ride it seems, if they can't ride a horse they can ride a donkey. With the amount of horses and donkeys here I am surprised that they don't all grow prize roses in their gardens. 

Indeed they don't seem to use the manure for anything just stack in bigger and bigger piles on the side of the road, although I suspect that in some areas they burn it as fuel judging by the smell at time.

Wandering about in the middle of nowhere I come across the shell of a new building which according to the sign is set to become a new hotel, the sign does not say when but looking at the state of the building it will not be in the near future.

Heading back in to 'town' via the main road to the desert and The Valley of The Kings takes a while because you have to keep stopping to talk to people many of whom do not speak much English but enough to ask where you are from

 ''England'',

 ''Ah, lovely people''.

 So you see we are not as bad as we think we are!

Arriving back in the ''village'' I find out what the best dressed bride will be wearing this year, and stop off at the bakery where I admire the pitta breads and get given one still warm from the oven.

The pittas are quite 'fluffy' when they come out of the oven... The man on the counter selling them has to give them a bit of a 'pat' to squash them down a bit, a skilled job if ever I saw one....

Meanwhile back at 'The Corniche' it is time for a picnic lunch on the ''Ahmed''

A variety of 'sandwiches' in pitta bread along with bit s and pieces cost a massive 100 LE, about £4. The delivery boy didn't get a tip he got a leftover sandwich instead, and a new taste was to be had,

pickled pink turnip, unbelievably salty!! I will not be eating those again a hurry!

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - In Luxor (finally!)

 It is now Tuesday and if you are observant you will notice that I am still on the train, except I am not.

The train was supposed to be an express and all went well until we got to Minya which is about 150 miles south of Cairo so roughly half way, and we reached Minya after about 4 hours. So according to me we are running to schedule, yes?? But no, because I couldn't find an actual route timetable so what I didn't know was that further down the line the train turns into an ordinary stopping train. 

A bit further down the train stopped at Assyut, and again I know that is a scheduled stop. And look at all those stations we are now going to stop at!

Minya, by the way has what must be one of one of the tallest mobile phone towers in the world...

 

And why is that Egyptians seem to appear at the side of the railway line for no apparent reason, (below). He can't of come from anywhere because there is a canal behind him, unless he can walk on water... And why is he just standing there?

Still lots to look at though because it does not get dark until after 5pm, and numerous level crossings which are unmanned it seems...

Logically enough I got organised to get off the train after 8 hours, getting suitcases down off racks etc., when doing so a man two seats in front very kindly came and told me that the train was running 3 1/2 hours late... Of course the language barrier got it a bit wrong here because we are not running late at all.

Because we have turned into a stopping train the trip now takes 3 1/2 hours longer!!

And a bit more video for you.....

So instead of arriving in Luxor at 6.42pm we eventually arrive at 10.15pm.... At least sitting on a train requires no effort, and there is a tea trolley comes around at regular intervals. And when it does I now suddenly realise what the tea man was trying to tell me earlier on during the trip when he asked me where I was going and busily showing me numbers on his mobile phone! 

Luckily I have come prepared with bags of crisps, chocolate, and water.... Although I did buy lunch on the train which cost me 45LE for two cups of tea and an enormous chicken roll.

Fortunately I had already told my hotel which train I was coming on and I think they realised that I did not know that the train was going to be much later than the time I gave them.

The transfer organised by my hotel was a little different as well, a taxi from the station to the Nile, a boat across the Nile, a quick clamber up the bank and 15 minutes later I am in my room. I was expecting to be taken by taxi over the bridge 15 kms upstream from Luxor.

SO after all this I got into bed and the bed was still moving with the rhythm of the train! Not a comfortable experience.

Today will be a rest day.

The Return to Egypt 2019 - Further Felucca Fun, An Evening Cruise, And Flight Of Fancy.

In such a rush to get my shipwreck blog completed for all to enjoy I did not find out until later on the Sunday evening that I was not not the only one to have an interesting felucca tale to tell.....

There were two Australians staying in the same apartment block as me and we had had a couple of chats over breakfast although they were only here for less than a week, and returning from an evening cruise with Ahmed and then dinner that evening, they were standing outside waiting for Abdullah to come down and open the front door because ''we have lost our key..'' 

The key, it turns out was, was at the bottom of the Nile, along with the bag containing it..... 

Strangely while we were returning to the West Bank to park Ahmed's boat I did say to Ahmed that there as something odd going on further up stream as suddenly there were several motor boats all converging on a point in the middle of the Nile.

These, it turned out, were rescue ships heading out to rescue the Australians whose felucca had sunk in mid-Nile!

An unusual occurrence but due to the same reason that mine had nearly sunk, executing a tack in still quite strong winds they had shipped some water and listing ''rather more than a bit'' according to the Australians, the next tack had swamped the felucca and down she went!

The police take this sort of thing very seriously and arrested the captain and tested him for alcohol and drugs, and took full statements for the two Australians, the only passengers, who were completely unfazed by it all and refused to file a formal complaint.

As they said, ''It's a boat. Boats sink. It happens all the time when we are at home.''

You would have thought I had had enough of Nile cruises for one day but it was pre-arranged, and an evening cruise, at sunset, on the Nile is an almost magical  experience not to be missed. 


Tomorrow is my last day in Luxor before I fly out early on Tuesday and to finish the holiday off I have booked a completely new experience....

 I am not an early riser at the best of times, but this morning I have to be up at 5 am to be collected by a taxi as I am going on......

Yes, you guessed it a dawn ride in a hot air balloon ride. I have been in helicopters, I have been in light aircraft, I have been on a DC10, indeed I am so old I have been in a DC8, I have even been for a short flight in a Spitfire, but never a hot air balloon.

It is still dark, and I have to wait for a boat to come over from the East Bank bearing the rest of the people going on the balloon I am on. Indeed there are a lot of people milling about because there are a lot of balloons going up!! I was surprised how many...

The take off field is out on the road to King's Valley, there is no landing field because the balloons come down wherever they do.... Arriving there was all rather exciting as some balloons are already airborne, some air being inflated, and some are not inflated at all. And the first thing that happens is that my big camera is taken off me, but everyone has mobile phones these days, indeed all of the people on my ''flight'' come from the sort of countries where they make mobile phones....

Dawn is breaking but the sun is not yet over the horizon.....

Too many photos spoil the fun, so here are just a few.... And a video...

I am not sure of the environmental impact of all these hot air balloons burning all this gas, but this is the first time I have been born aloft by a very large bag of hot air.


I can't help thinking that a large bag of hot air accurately describes some people I know... 

Getting into the gondola requires a certain amount of agility as not all of the balloons have though of providing steps, however there is always somebody on hand to give you a leg up as it were.... 

Dawn breaking on the Temple Of Hotchickensoup 

 Sugar cane...

 What goes up...... Comes down wherever it feels like it......

Tim's Hot Tip of The Day..... Do not do what one Japanese girl had done which was to book a coach transfer from her hotel in Luxor East to the Red Sea leaving at 10.30 am..... Because they don't know exactly when or where the balloon will land there is no set timetable.

Luckily for her we have mobile phones these days and the balloon company were excellent and organised a taxi to take her from the West Bank to meet her coach after it had left Luxor town!

 Those power lines look a bit close....

 Landing in the middle of a cut cane field suddenly people appear to help you out of the gondola.


I must say the whole experience was quite thrilling, and well worth the money!

It took a while for our minibus to arrive to pick us up, time for a wander around on terra firma, and have a look at one of the many irrigation canals.









Don't ask me how the captain does this but her gets the balloon to turn a full circle providing panoramic views, luckily I am quite tall so I can see over everybody else... This is not actually the video I wanted to post but the file I wanted to use is too big it seems!!

The Return to Egypt 2019, Exploring The West Bank.....

Arriving at Cairo Airport is always an experience, it is a busy airport, and everyone has a least 10 suitcases that have to be scanned....

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...

 This might sound odd, but in a way, I rather feel like I am coming home.

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....

A Day in Luxor, and Boarding The Good Ship MS Mayfair....

I have a day to spare in Luxor until I board my cruise ship late in the afternoon so I have plenty of time for a wander around and stick my nose into places it really shouldn't go..... 

Did I say somewhere you don't get hassled?? Well in Luxor you will, by boatman and carriage drivers. Indeed until you get the hang of getting rid of them it does quite spoil the walk along the Corniche on the Nile Bank,

especially in the stretch from the Museum to just down past The Winter Palace.

It seems to be a common misconception with a lot of Egyptians that because somebody is there on holiday it means they have got a lot of money. Well I am there because it is cheap, and so are a lot of other people..... I found that the best thing to do was engage them in a bit of conversation completely avoiding the fact that they are trying to get you on to their felucca or into their horse drawn carriage. Some of the carriages are genuine antiques by the way held together with ''Pop rivets'' and bits of rope... Having passed the time of day you can then happily walk off leaving them wondering what has happened.

This was the day I met Abdul.

Abdul has a felucca, and unless you like sailing in small boats you don't really want to go on one, but Abdul is not that keen on doing much. He quoted me a ridiculous price of US$300 for an hour. I had already asked them in the hotel how much it should be, GBP20 or maybe US$30 at most.... if you really want to take a sail on a felucca then by all means do, it is part of the Egyptian experience, and you will be sailing in a vessel the design of which has not changed much in a 1000 years. Indeed some of them look as though they have been around that long! Just don't pay too much!

Continuing my walk I realised that what actually happens is that as soon as you have got rid of one boatman another one will appear so it takes a while for them all to realise that you are just not doing it!

The carriage drivers are even more persistent. Returning back towards my hotel I come across Abdul again, so I ask him where is a good place to get coffee.... He shows me, but for that information I have to buy him a coffee, and breakfast as it turns out. Food is cheap so don't worry about it.....

There is a market in Luxor... 
I love markets! 

And I have to buy saffron....

Abdul knows just the the right shop, (it probably belongs to a cousin so he gets a cut out of the sale, but who cares?)
Lead on Adbul, there he is looking to see that I am following....

This is still the ''touristy'' end of the market, you can go further and find all the fruit and veg and so on, and it gets cheaper as well!!

There is also the famous camel market.... Another day.... I get my saffron EGP 25.00 per gram (about GB£1), and I have bought 20 grams, buying it by the gram makes it sound like some sort of drug, but it is one of the most expensive spices in the world, and you don't need a lot of it.

And it is time for coffee again, and Abdul needs feeding again.... I think I mentioned that donkeys are a common sight in Egypt? Well the same goes for horses, even in the middle of towns you will find horses still used as transport, and they have diggers as well.... 

And you see a lot of these Chinese motor bikes. But it is getting towards the time when I have to go back to my hotel and collect my luggage and wait for somebody to pick me up to take me to my Nile cruise ship, a lot of the Nile fleet are ''laid up'' and it is a fair bet that this one will not be going anywhere in the near future....

I don't know why..... But for some reason boarding a ship always seems to be chaotic. Coming to Greece by ferry from Italy seems to involve driving down backstreets in the dodgy parts of town, (Piraeus is even worse), and there doesn't seem to be any system to it all. I found the same in Punta Arenas in Chile, I was told to wait at a certain dock gate, and an hour after we were due to sale somebody arrived and let us in the the docks... 

Here is it the same, and because they moor the ships side by side out into the Nile you have to walk through two other ships to get to yours, minus luggage of course because that has already disappeared... But finally I am on board the MS Mayfair, a relatively new vessel. I have already asked if there is a passenger called Poirot on board and got a blank look. It i a lot smarter than the ship boarded by Peter Ustinov in the film of ''Murder on the Nile''....

And I get to see my first Nile sunset...

I did wonder how they were going to organise us into groups allowing for several different languages, but at dinner it became clear that we were divided up by language each with its own guide, so in my group there are 6 of us, all English, two couples and 2 singles.

The two couples are travelling together and already I am a bit jealous because they started their trip off by staying at Mena House in Cairo, part of the Agatha Christie route that I didn't follow, but copious amounts of wine, (there are some very good Egyptian reds), thawed us out and got us away from the '''first day at school'' atmosphere. WE also found out that not all passengers are created equal, as one of the couples is not on the drinks included package. This didn't stop the waiter pouring them glasses of wine!! The food at dinner is distinctly ''western'' and I am a great one for cooking my veggies ''al dente'', but the green beans were positively rock hard.... Heigh ho, luckily we didn't get green beans every day!

And tomorrow morning we are off on our Nile Cruise....