Centuries apart in Egypt

By JIM EAGLES

This is like being in a time machine. I'm sitting in my cabin, with its television, air-conditioning and fridge full of cold drinks, pecking out a story on my little Nokia Communicator. Beyond the picture window are the ageless warm winds, smells and sights of Egypt and the River Nile.

A felucca sails past loaded with waterweed for cattle fodder. A fisherman casts his net and thrashes the water with a stick to scare the fish into its mesh. A farmer collects buckets of water from the river. Behind him another farmer ploughs with the aid of a donkey.

Inside, it's definitely the 21st century. Outside it could be the age of the pharaohs.

The scenes before me must be much the same as when one of the first tourists, the Greek historian Herodotus, visited 2500 years ago.

After his tour, Herodotus famously noted that, "Egypt is the gift of the Nile."

It's easy to see the truth of that when you fly to somewhere like Luxor, crossing a vast, lifeless, waterless wasteland until suddenly you see a bright green ribbon winding across the arid brown plains.

Through its long history, most Egyptian activity has been compressed into this thin strip of fertile land along the banks of the lifegiving Nile. Which is why a cruise on the world's longest river is not only relaxing but also an easy way to see this fascinating but often stressful country.

Luxor, which is where our cruise starts, was established as a capital 4000 years ago precisely because of its position on the banks of the river midway between Upper and Lower Egypt.

Its prosperity today is still utterly dependent on the Nile. As ever, the river provides water for the crops and a safe highway through an inhospitable land.

But these days giant tourist ships have taken over from feluccas and cargo vessels as the principal source of traffic and of income.

There are, apparently, 330 cruise boats on the stretch between here and Aswan.

When we arrive in Luxor they are moored four and five abreast along the banks, looking surprisingly twitchy, occasionally switching places as though jockeying for position, eager to be starting in some unknown race.

They all have doors in the middle, so to get to our boat we just stroll through the luxurious chandelier-hung foyers of the boats alongside.

We are cruising on the Ti Yi, named after the wife of the great pharaoh Amenhotep III, one of the newest and fastest.

It is furnished in olde-worlde wood-panelled luxury in a style which has mystery fans looking around anxiously for Hercule Poirot in case his little grey cells should be required to solve a murder.

Ti Yi is 70m long, 14m high and 11m wide, with 60 cabins, each with its own window on to the river - making the ship look a bit like a huge floating greenhouse - plus a restaurant, bar and outdoor recreation area. Most of the boats are of similar size, no doubt to fit through locks and under bridges, which they do with only centimetres to spare.

The riverboats fret nervously, forced to wait at Luxor as their passengers come and go from visits to the wonders of the Valley of the Kings, the magnificent complexes at Luxor and Karnak, Hatechepsut's Temple and the Colossi of Memnon (which I'll write about in a later article).

Then suddenly, at 6 o'clock one morning, the mysterious starting gun they seem to have been waiting for is fired and they are off and racing.

From the sundeck on the top of Ti Yi we can see 30 to 40 other cruise boats sprinting away in a cloud of diesel fumes.

The normally placid greeny-brown waters of the Nile are whipped into a chop as the they dash up river, overtaking and honking their horns, like so many oversized Cairo taxis.

This frenzied activity is in marked contrast to the tranquil panorama passing by on the banks.

On islands rich with silt washed down from Ethiopia, farmers plough their fields using donkeys and water buffalo while flocks of white egrets - known by Egyptians as the farmer's friend - follow behind to eat the insects.

Some lucky families have smoking, sputtering diesel-powered driving pumps to take the lifegiving water to their green fields, while others rely on buckets.

Fishermen ply their trade with nets and rods, some from boats and others standing in the shallows.

The dwellings on the islands are makeshift affairs, some merely a sheet of woven reeds held up by two poles, presumably in the expectation that they will be washed away if the levels rise, although the Aswan high dam has all but eliminated floods.

The more permanent homes on the higher banks opposite look much like the workers' dwellings of ancient times - square blocks of crudely made mud bricks, with piles of straw drying on the rooftops, and donkeys and children lolling in the courtyards.

In some places these units are piled on top of each other three and four high, a consequence of the tradition that all the generations of a family should live in the one house.

Some, incongruously, sprout satellite dishes from their ancient-looking roofs.

The daily life of locals unfolds as we cruise comfortably by.

Women wash themselves demurely in their long robes. Men and children plunge in.

Women and girls squat at the river's edge to do the family laundry.

Brightly coloured clothes, sheets and mats are spread on the rocks to dry.

At one point the boat cruises past one of the quarries for the stones which built the pyramids.

The neatly squared-off cliffs stretch for kilometres, interspersed with dozens of perfectly cut holes leading to the caves where the workers lived.

In places, the modern world intrudes.

Crowds of men board launches to travel to work in the towns, just like rush-hour commuters everywhere.

Metal barges chug down the watery motorway carrying blocks of stone which these days are destined for the construction of mundane office blocks and warehouses rather than temples and mortuaries.

Factories squat incongruously on the banks.

But mostly the fertile land gifted by the Nile continues to produce Egypt's food, with incredibly green plots of herbs, thickets of bananas, fields of tomatoes and cabbages, and lofty date palms.

At regular intervals the palms share the skyline with elegant minarets and from time to time the muezzin's cry can be heard summoning the faithful to prayer.

Behind them, providing a mute reminder that all of this picturesque scene is utterly dependent on the river, loom the giant sand dunes and lifeless rocky hills of the desert.

Animals thrive on the river too.

When not on duty, water buffalo bathe in its waters. Camels stalk haughtily along the banks.

In the shallows and on huge floating rafts of weeds, flocks of birds search for food. Falcons soar above.

There are no longer crocodiles here, though they can still be found in Lake Nasser, they, like the floods, having been tamed by a series of dams and locks.

One of those structures turns out to be the reason for the riverboats' headlong dash upriver.

At Esna the ships have to queue in order of arrival - Ti Yi is second behind her reborn grandson King Tut II - for a giant lock which lifts them two at a time 9m up to the next level of the river.

As each boat approaches the entrance it is immediately surrounded by a buzzing cloud of waterborne salesmen furiously rowing their craft into position.

"Hello," they cry, waving brightly embroidered dresses and carpets at the passengers. "Francais? Espagnol? Ah," - with utter disregard for the existence of other former colonies - "English."

The faintest show of interest sees a dress hurled up four stories for inspection.

"Hello. My friend. Only five (Egyptian) pounds. Only one (US) dollar."

When the dress is thrown back, misses the boat and lands in the water, it is treated with equanimity as a normal business hazard. "Hello. My friend. Have a nice visit." And off to the next ship following close behind.

Their place is soon taken by a small flock of ragged children who gather where the bow has nudged up against the bank awaiting the opening of the lock.

"Hello. Take my photo," they demand, beaming enthusiastically. Then if anyone responds they add the words that seem to be learned by most Egyptians in the cradle, "Hello. You give money. Baksheesh."

In a ritual which is repeated whenever we stop near the bank they throw up weighted film canisters and even plastic bags in the hope passengers will fill them with coins and throw them back.

Further up river at Aswan the youngsters are even more enterprising. They pursue tourists enjoying the traditional felucca cruise around Elephant Island in tiny canoes powered by hand paddles.

To give more pep to their appeals for money some have learned to sing songs in just about any language. The felucca next to us was serenaded with Guantanamera, which ought to be worth something if only to go away.

While the pace of life in the countryside is governed by the seasons, in the towns along the riverbank it is ruled by the arrival of the tourist boats.

When the flotilla arrives in Edfu at 10pm the lights suddenly go on and the streets fill with desperate vendors.

The few passengers who go ashore for an evening stroll are pursued with an enthusiasm they find disturbing, sticky-fingered hands seeking to drag them to the delights of everything from kebabs to galabiyyas.

As dawn breaks the streets fill up again, this time with an incredible seething mass of hundreds of horse-drawn carriages, their drivers all shouting, gesticulating and jockeying for position.

Suddenly the doors of the ships spring open, thousands of tourists pour forth, and by some miraculous process each is assigned a carriage, taken to the stunning Temple of Horus, and brought back again.

A similar ritual occurs at Kom Ombo, where the main attraction is the joint Temple of Sobek and Haroeris, and at journey's end at Aswan, where the highlights are the high dam and the picturesque Temple of Philae, relocated on to an island in Lake Nasser. It's hard work, because with all the boats arriving at the same place at the same time, you have to fight for space in the temples against 5000 other equally enthusiastic tourists - and this when the temperature is around 40C.

As my wife said, "This is like going to a test at Eden Park five times a day and in a heatwave."

It's also noisy work, with dozens of rival guides shouting the amazing history of these monuments in all the tongues of the world, transforming the temples into a sort of Tower of Babel.

But it's worth it. These vast complexes, which were built before my ancestors had figured out the recipe for woad, are simply awe-inspiring.

And afterwards we can return to the tranquility of the boat where we sip cold drinks on the shaded sundeck, cool off in the pool, take siestas in the air-conditioned cabins, marvel at the stunning sunsets and enjoy huge buffet meals plus - if you've got room - morning and afternoon tea.

Even the pharaohs didn't have it as good as this when they cruised the river in their ceremonial barges. They didn't have air-conditioning. They couldn't watch CNN. And they weren't able to visit these fascinating ruins.

* Jim Eagles and Alan Gibson visited Egypt as guests of United Travel and Innovative Travel.


Case notes

Visas

New Zealand passport-holders do require a visa to visit Egypt but three-month tourist visas can readily be bought on arrival for US$15.

Currency

Egypt uses a pound divided into 100 piastres. You get just over E£4 to NZ$1. Egyptian currency is not obtainable outside the country, but US dollars, traveller's cheques and credit cards are widely used.

Getting there

United Travel have return flights from Auckland to Cairo starting from $2559 a person retur (excluding taxes and other charges) flying Singapore Airlines.

Nile cruises

Innovative Travel has a range of touring options in Egypt, including Nile Cruises, available through United Travel. For example, a nine-day Upper Egypt and the Nile in Style tour costs from $2420 a person ex-Cairo, share twin, including a four-night Nile cruise, for travel between January 4 and March 19. Alternatively, a 13-day Realm of the Pharaoh tour starts from $3450 a person, share twin, including a five-day Nile cruise, for travel between May 1 and September 20.

Tipping

The custom of baksheesh can be irritating to someone from New Zealand, but it is a part of Egyptian life. Make sure you keep a supply of small denomination notes, either pounds or US$, to deal with the inevitable demands from airport representatives, drivers, porters, custodians, guides - and the rest.

Further information

United Travel can be contacted on 0800 730 830 or United Travel