Pharoahs &; Feluccas

I travelled to Egypt with a company called Explore Worldwide who
specialise in "small group exploratory holidays". They are prefect for
anyone travelling alone, as I was, or on a budget or anyone who wants
to get "off the beaten track" but still have support from a guide and a
group of fellow travellers.

Their website is www.exploreworldwide.com and the trip I went on was
the Nile Felucca Sailtrek, this opinion is part 4 of my travelogue
covering days 5 to 8 the journey down the Nile on a felucca.

One of the main reasons for me picking the particular trip which I did
was the opportunity to spend four days travelling down the Nile from
Aswan to Edfu on board a traditional Nile felucca. The felucca has been
the most popular vessel on the Nile for centuries and is still widely
used. About 11m long and rigged with tall lateen or triangular sails,
it has no motor and relies only on the steady North wind. These days
the boat is boarded over to allow a wide area for passengers to sit/lie
with bags stored under the deck and in the front is a tiny cabin for
the crew. A canvas canopy acts as sunshade during the day and keeps off
the dew at night, when you sleep on deck.

Our group of about 20 split onto three boats - Dolphin, Golden Star and
Romance - each with two Nubian crew. Each morning we were awakened at
dawn with a glass of tea, after
breakfast we set off to enjoy the relaxed pace of life on the river. We
spent our days lying on the deck reading, chatting or sunbathing,
watching life on the banks drift past us. We made a couple of stops to
visit various sites along the way the major of these being Kom Ombo a
temple on the banks of the Nile.

Romance was slightly larger than the other two and was used to carry
the majority of our food and as the "dining car". At lunch times we
generally just tied the three boats together, moved across to Romance
to sit and eat as we continued floating downstream. The food was simple
but tasty, lunch generally consisted of pitta bread (actually pitta
bread was served at every meal and we all began to dream of a thick
slice of crusty granary bread!), salad, felafel and feta-style cheese
followed by fruit and tea.

One afternoon the wind picked up and we experienced the thrill of
racing before it with the boat banked right over and the water lapping
over the deck. As we tacked across the stream our captain directed us
to swap from one side of the boat to the other to balance it!

At night we would find a spot to moor and get out to stretch our legs
whilst the crew prepared our evening meal of vegetable stew or
something similar. After our meal we would persuade the crew to bring
out their drums and sing round the campfire under the stars.

One of my most vivid memories was of the first night sitting out under
the stars, we became aware of a bright light below the horizon of the
far bank. We asked our guide if it was a large city and were told that
it was the moon and as we watched we saw it rise above the horizon. I
had never seen this before, living where I do the moon is already above
the horizon by the time it becomes visible each night and it was an
inspiring site to see.

I also spent quite a lot of time pointing out constellations to the
other passengers on my boat as, of the eight, only three of us were
from the Northern hemisphere and so looking at familiar skies. When we
had been asked to form ourselves into three groups prior to boarding
the boats, I had been invited to join what became dubbed the "young
&; single" boat. The other seven consisted two sisters from
Australia aged 18 and 19, another Australian girl in her mid 20's, a
young couple from New Zealand in their early twenties, an English girl
around 24 and an English guy of about the same age. I was flattered to
discover that they all thought I was about the same age as them, and
they were amazed to discover that I was actually in my early
30's!
Myself and the only other two Brits on our boat were also horrified to
discover that we were all Chartered Accountants (what are the chances
of that?)

The rest of the group was very mixed in both age and nationality
another 6 Brits between about 25 and 50, a retired couple from New
Zealand and another from America, a middle aged woman from Canada, an
Irish girl in her 30's and an American woman of around 40. This mix
made the trip really interesting and conversations in the boats were
fascinating.

Myself and the retired chap from New Zealand, Rod, discovered that we
had a mutual interest in the ancient history of Egypt and that this was
the reason for our visiting. We quickly became known as the group
experts on ancient sites and were quizzed for
historical and archaeological information at each stop we made.

For ourselves, it was great to have someone else with a similar
interest to talk to as we wandered around the temples. This, after all,
was my main reason for choosing this type of "group holiday" so that I
had someone to turn to and say "wow, isn't this fantastic?"

Our felucca trip ended at a small village just south of Edfu where we
said a fond farewell to our crews and their crafts and boarded a small
fleet of taxis to take us to the monumental temple of Edfu.