Along the Egyptian Nile to Luxor

The dir­ec­tion to ride after Cairo was uncer­tain. I’d been jug­gling the options for weeks. Pre­vi­ous attempts at the Nile had res­ul­ted in police con­voys to ‘safer’ places. The Red Sea Coast route didn’t appeal to me after the ugli­ness and mono­tony of its oppos­ite shore, and the West­ern Desert route, beau­ti­ful, quiet and remote, would con­sti­tute a long, if tempt­ing, detour.

But in the end, it wasn’t ’til I was weav­ing through Cairo’s down­town traffic, Sudanese visa stuck firmly in my pass­port, that I made my choice. Des­pite the pre­vi­ous failed attempts, I would try and ride the Nile.

I set off down the cor­niche on the East bank of the river. Through the leafy Embassy dis­trict, sub­ur­bia and the indus­trial zone. The two check­points I passed were manned by obligingly-distracted traffic officers. I didn’t feel the need to alert them to my pres­ence and silently rolled by. I’d escaped Cairo undetec­ted, and I was out on my own.

I rode along the quiet road in the still, sunny after­noon. Lush palm groves dot­ted the patch­work of fields. The river slid past, glint­ing, a stone’s throw to my right. Old men trot­ted past on heavily-laden don­keys and eyed me curi­ously. Chil­dren, hav­ing fin­ished their stud­ies for the day, bel­lowed greet­ings at me (“HELLO!!!! WHATISYOURNEM!!!!!”) and thank­fully refrained from fol­low­ing up with a bar­rage of projectiles.

Sud­denly, every­where I looked was life! People crouched amongst the crops in the sun, birds sang from invis­ible hiding-spots in the foliage above me, camels and donkey-carts trans­por­ted huge piles of har­ves­ted green­ery to places I would never see. After the pre­vi­ous weeks of arid­ity, this was a para­dise for the senses. I rode slower and drank it all in.

After the town of Beni Suef, the road veered East, out of the shal­low val­ley and into the desert. The dreaded head­wind returned. I camped above the edge of the gorge behind a small and seem­ingly point­less wall which served to some­what block the dusty wind. A kilo­metre or so away in the val­ley I over­looked was an expanse of palm trees and fields so vast that I could not see the far side of the val­ley as the sun sank into the even­ing haze.

Fuel­ling all of the life I could see was the Nile, snak­ing blue through the yel­low sand, fringed with green, feed­ing an entire coun­try of 80 mil­lion people. The well-known his­tor­ical import­ance of this water­way sud­denly made sense. The vital­ity impar­ted by the arrival of East African rains to this oth­er­wise parched land was unmis­take­ably appar­ent. I had never ima­gined or exper­i­enced a mass agri­cul­tural oper­a­tion on this kind of scale.

The fol­low­ing day I came to an unavoid­able police check­point. They seemed sur­prised to see me. The wind blew hard in my face and I laughed at the irony of the situ­ation when they let me con­tinue unhindered. Sud­denly, after all this time, I wanted to be put on a con­voy, and here they were, let­ting me go!

About an hour later, a beaten-up navy blue Chev­ro­let pickup pulled over and the same officers got out, grin­ning. I had trav­elled less than 10 kilo­metres since I had seen them. I grinned back and a couple of minutes later I was speed­ing through the desert in the back of the truck. At the next town, Al Minya, I crossed to the West bank of the Nile after some dis­cus­sion with a help­ful local man about which would be the bet­ter side to travel by bicycle.

For the next two days I was accom­pan­ied by sporadic police escorts as I rode. I think I should have had them per­man­ently, but I was joined by a fresh squad of bored traffic cops in a pickup every 15 or 20 kilo­metres, and some of them became under­stand­ably impa­tient with my leis­urely tour­ing pace and sped off to wait for me at the next check­point. Oth­ers they were vigil­ant to a ridicu­lous degree. At one point, I stopped to take a pho­to­graph, and they leapt out of the van, stopped all traffic in both dir­ec­tions and then for­cibly held my hand as I crossed the road!

I dis­covered to my sur­prise that the mid-section of the Egyp­tian Nile is home to a large Chris­tian pop­u­la­tion. The Egyp­tian Coptic Ortho­dox Church has between 8 and 15 mil­lion adher­ents, depend­ing on who you believe (pun not inten­ded exactly), in Egypt. This is a far higher pro­por­tion than in the pre­vi­ous Ara­bian nations I’d vis­ited. This sec­tion is also heav­ily settled, with no real dis­cern­able begin­ning or end to any of the vil­lages, towns or cities.

I fol­lowed the small road along one of the canals par­al­lel to the main flow of the river. I passed great tracts of banana palms, wheat, toma­toes, and vast fields of sugar cane, which was always under­go­ing har­vest and being loaded onto don­keys, trucks or rail­way wag­ons parked up on narrow-gauge branch lines. Men, women and chil­dren grabbed canes from passing wag­ons and set to work rip­ping the outer husk away with their teeth to chew and suck on the sug­ary fibrous inner core. (I’m sure dent­ists do a roar­ing trade.) Every few seconds I would return a friendly but sur­prised greet­ing or have to apo­lo­get­ic­ally deny another Egyp­tian the pleas­ure of my com­pany for a glass of tea or coffee.

It was clear that for­eign­ers were almost never encountered in these small and busy farm­ing set­tle­ments. Some­times, air-conditioned coaches sailed by, white faces peer­ing out or (more often) bur­ied in guide­books as they headed for one of the temples or tombs that adorn the val­ley. No won­der I was eli­cit­ing such a strong reac­tion from the loc­als. Strong, but invari­ably genu­ine and friendly, I should add.

The only for­eigner I actu­ally met dur­ing the week it took me to cycle from Cairo to Luxor was Mat­thew, an Amer­ican guy about my age who had come to work in one of the numer­ous Chris­tian com­munity centres. He’d been there for about 18 months and was as sur­prised as the loc­als were when my police escort dumped me on his door­step as I searched for a place to sleep for the night.

I was evid­ently being ste­reo­typed as a Chris­tian by being Brit­ish, for I was taken to no fewer than three churches to sleep dur­ing this part of my trip. Of course I accep­ted their delighted hos­pit­al­ity and enjoyed my time see­ing this part of Egypt from the point-of-view of a minor­ity group — a part of which I had pre­vi­ously been entirely unaware — but couldn’t help feel­ing a little guilty that I had been brought to them on an incor­rect assump­tion about my reli­gion. I have no reli­gion, but try­ing to explain that, in this part of the world, is like try­ing to explain that you don’t have a heart, as one Syr­ian man put it.

I arrived in the tour­ist town of Luxor two days ago. I was cyn­ical about what I would find there. I expec­ted to wind up in a small, dirty, over­priced hotel room, and to spend a few days hid­ing there to escape from hordes of people try­ing to sell me boat/horse/camel trips or tacky souven­irs or food that I would pre­vi­ously have eaten for a tenth of the price elsewhere.

What in fact I did find was the only accom­mod­a­tion I have ever felt moved to actu­ally recom­mend. Al Salam Camp can be found at the end of a dirt track on the West bank, well away from the centre of Luxor but close enough to be able to see across the river as the sun rises over the 3,400-year-old temple and the slightly newer Sheraton hotel. It’s run by an hon­est, friendly and well-spoken Egyp­tian man and his fam­ily (who also live there). It’s quiet, peace­ful, remote without being inac­cess­ible, and at $4 per night it is within my means to sup­port his business.

I’ve had my usual equip­ment explo­sion in one of the small huts that sur­round a court­yard, dis­covered that my pen-knife and bike pump have mys­ter­i­ously van­ished from my pan­nier. It must have occurred dur­ing the day’s ride from Naga Hamadi (the last time I used them) to Luxor. It is too much of a coin­cid­ence (and the road too flat) to assume that they ejec­ted them­selves from the side pocket sim­ul­tan­eously as I rode along. This was the only sour point of a week which has oth­er­wise been so unex­pec­tedly packed with delight and inspiration.

Yes­ter­day I left my things at the camp and hitched a lift the 350km to Aswan to buy my ferry ticket to Sudan. The ship sails every Monday and is the only legal over­land route between the two coun­tries. On the train back to Luxor I sat next to a mem­ber of the plain-clothes tour­ist police who oper­ate under­cover on the tour bus net­work in the coun­try. He told me of the Luxor mas­sacre in 1997 in which 63 people, mostly tour­ists, were gunned down by an Islam­ist ter­ror cell at one of the his­tor­ical sites. Egypt’s tour­ist industry under­stand­ably suffered greatly in the fol­low­ing years, and as one of the most import­ant sources of income for the coun­try, I began to under­stand why the police are so pro­tect­ive of their visitors.

Over a mil­lion Brit­ish people alone visit Egypt every year. Add to that the count­less vis­it­ors from other West­ern coun­tries and the scale of tour­ism in Egypt begins to become clear. Most of the tour­ism centres around Ancient Egyp­tian his­tor­ical sites, and as well pre­served and beau­ti­ful as they are, and as inex­pens­ive and access­ible as Egypt is, it is easy to see the attrac­tion. Cyc­lists, whose travel philo­sophy rarely ranks sight­see­ing at the top of the agenda, are obvi­ously an anom­aly and are treated as such by the author­it­ies. I found myself giv­ing my escorts a hard time on some occa­sions, but I can’t expect them to under­stand bicycle travel and its priorities.

I was for­tu­nate to be able to ride this way. It’s been a spec­tac­u­lar example of sim­pli­city, fam­ily and tra­di­tion in life which char­ac­ter­ises all the Arab people I’ve encountered so far, but never more so than on the grand scale of the River Nile Val­ley. Egypt has sur­prised me at every turn. I knew noth­ing of what to expect, and I will leave the coun­try next Monday earn­estly look­ing for­ward to my next visit!

The next time I write, I will (hope­fully) have made the desert cross­ing in North­ern Sudan. This remote road is one that I have been anti­cip­at­ing with a mix­ture of fear and excite­ment ever since I made the decision to ride to Africa. Wish me luck!

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