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19 April 2001 - Day 7 - The Nile River As stated on the previous page, I was quickly recovering from the previous day-and-a-half's illness and felt good enough to eat lunch and sit out on the covered deck with Aungela, and relax as we slowly floated down the Nile. We finished our tour of Edfu mid-morning and sailed out of port sometime around noon. Today's leg of the cruise was technically only around 120 kilometers (70 miles) long but was going to take us 8 hours to complete because we would have to wait for four hours at one of the locks along the Nile which can only service two cruise ships at a time, and with the many cruiseships chugging up and down the Nile, we all had to wait our turn. This wasn't a problem though since the scenery was nice, the weather was beautiful, and my company was great! :-) |
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For the most part of the afternoon we just relaxed on the sundecks, chit-chatted with the other members of our tour group or rested in our cabin from time to time, so there's really not a whole lot to report for this page! Aungela did have a bit of a run-in with one of the ship-hands on two occasions though. The man had acted inappropriately toward Aungela on two occasions and the situation turned out to be a bit of a thorn in our sides, but Patricia (mother of the Thomas family), Aungela and I had a serious talk with the operators of the cruiseship, registered a complaint, and ended up writing a letter showing our dismay with the whole situation while also informing the crew that we would not be paying the (sizable and almost) obligatory tip upon disembarkment of the ship once we arrived in Luxor. But that's all a story I shall save for Aungela if she should choose to share it herself. That incident aside though, the rest of the cruise went quite well and we were able to kick up our a feet for a while and enjoy the truly leisurely pace of life of drifting slowly down the Nile River. And now, a few images from along the way:
Above: this picture was taken on 1 September 2000 on my flight to Saudi Arabia and in it you can see how the Nile River - and the nation of Egypt in essence - winds through parched desert lands and is bordered by a tiny strip of irrigated greenery on both sides of its waters. It is within this narrow strip of life that Egypt developed into one of the greatest civilizations in history.
Above: wake from our ship spreading across the river.
Above: the lush, green western riverbanks of the Nile covered in wild grasses and date trees.
Above: a lazy little lagoon-esque spot along the Nile with date trees growing along the shores.
Above: eastern bank of the Nile. As you can see, the desert begins just on the other side of the trees!
Above: it was a bit strange actually, the greenery along the western bank of the river seemed to stretch for up to a kilometer or more from the shore, while the greenery on the eastern bank at the same spot along the river seemed to be just meters (yards) wide. Perhaps western side was being irrigated?
Above: as you can see along the eastern bank of the river, the great Arabian Desert butts right up beside the tiny strips of green oasis neighboring the waters of the Nile and often pushed itself right between them and straight into the river. Below: a close-up from the above shot of a little town nestled in between the blazing hot rocky desert mountain behind them and the cool and life giving waters of the Nile before them. I wonder what it must be like to grow up in one of these little communities here in central Egypt?
Above: a handsome little mosque in a tiny town along the eastern banks of the Nile River north of Edfu.
Above: a nameless town located somewhere on the Nile with the Arabian Desert towering up behind it. Below: residents have their wash strewn over laundry lines, a cow stands beside the shore, and a small boat is being readied to set sail into the waters as the minaret of a neighboring mosque watches on.
As per my All of Egypt tourbook, some information about the Nile: |
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The Nile The Nile winds its way 6,500 kilometers (4,333 miles) from its origins in the Great African lakes to the Mediterranean. Its sources were unknown until the 19th century. Today they have been identified in the Nyawarongo River, a tributary of another river which enters Lake Victoria. The Nile flows northwards across the immense savanah with its woods and marshes before gathering in to itself from the left the waters of the Bahr Ghazzal (the Gazelle River) originating in the Darfour and Congo regions, and from the right the waters of the Sobat, the Blue Nile (or Bahr al-Azrak) and the Atbarah from the high plateaus of Abyssinia. It then runs up against the limestone barrier of the Sahara and its progress is interrupted by the cataracts as it flows slowly towards the Mediterranean without receiving the waters of any other tributary. Egypt proper is simply that northern part of this great valley which extends from the cataracts at Aswan to the sea. From Aswan to the ruins of Thebes the valley narrows, being penned in between two chains of rocky mountains, but between Thebes and Cairo it becomes considerably wider again. Each year following the torrential rains which fall on the mountains of Abyssinia and the region of the equatorial lakes, the Nile becomes more and more swollen until finally it bursts its banks and in a few months fills up the entire valley. By the end of April the flooding has reached Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and by the end of May or beginning of June it reaches Egypt proper via Nubia. Until October the valley remains covered with the beneficial layer of mud laid down by the flood which only disappears completely at the beginning of December. As a result of the periodic flooding Egypt has a particularly rich flora and fauna and there are many types of big trees, numerous species of acacia and sycamore, forests of palm trees and many aquatic plants including the papyrus and the lotus. |
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Above: Aungela and me relaxing aboard the ship with a group of Spanish tourists sitting behind us.
Above: our family for four days! As described from the Aswan page:
Above: a fellow ship chugging down the Nile slightly ahead of us. Below: a passing ship heading south toward Upper Egypt as we sailed north toward Lower Egypt.
Above: a small town near one of the locks on the Nile with a nice church rising above the neighboring buildings. Although we remained at this location for several hours, we did not disembark.
Above: the line of Nile River cruiseships stacked up behind us at the lock. As you can see in the second row of ships in the back, in order to dock they just pull up next to one another, two to five across, and you simply exit the ship by walking through one vessel to the next until you reach the riverbank. This turned out to be a great way to see what the other ships all looked like on the inside!
Above: as our ship began its slow entry into the lock, a sizable group of local Egyptians came walking out into the center concrete guide-barrier beside the ship and tried selling their wares to the passengers aboard. For the most part they were selling cloths, blankets, robes for men, and simple dresses for women. As we stood on the ship hanging over the siderails on the sundeck, or others of us hanging out our cabin windows, we would look at the various items for sale and instead of requesting to see them, the salesmen and salesboys would simply throw the plastic-wrapped article straight up toward you unsolicited, and if you weren't paying attention the bag would whack you right in the face!
It was all very humorous especially when they'd throw something totally obscure up to us and we'd be all, "What's this for?!? We didn't ask for this!!!" and then we'd hurl it right back at 'em. And just before the ship entered the lock, a number of the salesmen/boys floated up right beside the ship in little boats of their own and whenever we went to catapult the unwanted goods back over the side of the ship, the projectiles would inevitably land in the water and start floating away so the men would have to quickly row up to the robe or the cloth and snatch it before it either drifted off or sank! Impressively enough, these waterside retailers spoke enough of almost every language of any tourist group that sailed by, so that they could at least barter back and forth with you in order to get the sale they were seeking. But since I wasn't in the market for a dress that day and already had a Saudi-style robe back in my suitcase, I decided I didn't need anything and just sat down on the sundeck laughing at the whole site as our ship entered the lock and the men continued their ship-side sales techniques, which were actually quite successful with a number of the other tourists on board!
Above: a small bridge connecting both sides of the Nile at the head of the lock.
Above: a small house on the eastern shores of the Nile north of the lock with a marshy outcropping of land and several grazing animals.
Above: agricultural workers along the eastern Nile working the fields.
Above: the silhouette of a not-so-attractive power plant somewhere along the Nile River. But with the shadows of the shore reflecting off the waves trailing behind the ship and the smoke billowing out over the water, it has a certain polluted charm about it, don't you think?
And last but not least: Aungela and me still sitting atop the "sundeck" long after the sun had since set. "Hey Aungela, you'd better suck in that tongue of yours lest a little birdie come and land on it!" :-) Next : Valley of the Kings and Queens Back: Edfu |
