Pt1 - 5: THE STUFF OF LEGEND

 

The forty minutes to Luxor was just long enough to consume the endearingly turdy little croissants that pass for breakfast on domestic Egyptair flights. To get off the subject straight away, the croissants arrived in plastic containers that disappeared in the West yonks ago – now I know where they went. After environmentally responsible packaging came in the stockpiles of PCB, CFC and other politically incorrect materials must have been dumped on third world airlines. It's an indication of how with it I wasn't that I found myself  wondering if the pastries were flaky because they were served up on something with the half-life of uranium 235.

Although we occasionally passed over the fertile patchwork of the Nile floodplain, which hasn’t flooded since the Aswan High Dam came online in 1968, the terrain was mostly a canvas of rugged bare hills and rivers of sand that from this altitude looked like petrified ganglia.

We entered the terminal to find a short man waving a white board with our names on it. His name was Fayez and he would see us to the boat. He took Tess’s pack and strode off, leaving me to struggle along in his wake with my 20 kilos of indispensables, much of which was soon to be dispensed with. In contrast to the dreary morning we’d left behind in Cairo the weather here was warm and clear, reminiscent of late Spring back home. We drove through irrigated fields of cane and green wheat that looked not unlike the hinterland of Bali, although the bare brown hills in the background put this impression into perspective. Luxor seemed a prosperous place.

“The Legend is the best boat on the river,” Fayez assured us as we bounced across the narrow wooden gangplank connecting our white four-deck cruiser to the eastern embankment of the Nile. This would be easy enough to confirm since the entire Nile fleet, all identically trimmed in green, appeared to be moored four deep here in the shadow of the Luxor Sheraton.

Cabin 302 was gratifyingly close to the dining room and like the rest of the boat was clean and comfortable, with dark wood panelling, gleaming glass ‘n brass and well-tended plants creating an air of colonial charm. The bathroom was serviceable and there was plenty of space for the luggage. We installed ourselves and, with three hours till lunch, headed off into town.

A swarm of ragged children, none of them more than ten or twelve, engulfed us like flies as we stepped off the gangplank, bidding us a fluent good morning in fourteen languages. Did we want postcards, papers, a taxi, a felucca? Would we look at their little silver charms, their scarves, their tiny alabaster figurines? It was several hundred meters before the last of them reluctantly accepted that we weren’t in the market today.

A city of 165,000, Luxor had a small town feel to it after Cairo. The air was fresh and you didn’t have to be an Olympic athlete to cross the street.  We strolled uptown past the King Dude Pub and Tomb and found ourselves on a mainish drag fronted almost exclusively by silver shops.

I could tell by the slightly manic look in her eye that Tess was in the mood for some aggressive shopping. Extensive studies have shown that the best place for me to be when the shopping demon comes out is elsewhere, so I left her at the entrance to a large silver store and wandered off in search of a notebook. When I finally tracked one down in a souvenir stall the guy started off at E£60 (about A$30), claiming the little thumbnail sketches in the top left corner of each page were original artworks. When we finished laughing he settled for 5 pounds. It was amusing to observe over the following weeks that an alarming number of better funded tourists than I would have happily surrendered the sixty.

By the time I returned to the silversmith’s Tess had nailed a deal with the young assistant. She held out a medium-sized cartouche on a slender chain. One of the few things I’d retained from yesterday’s museum marathon was that the cartouche, an oval shaped stylised scroll, was the Pharaoh’s personal seal. This one was just big enough to have our daughter Kirstie’s name engraved in hieroglyphics. It had to go off to the workshop for that but the assistant promised to have it delivered to the boat this afternoon.

“Bargained him down from 150 pounds to 70,” Tess announced as soon as we stepped out into the street. She is a canny negotiator and nothing becomes her so much as the warm glow of a deal well done. “And he threw in the chain,” she added proudly, “I did good.” Indeed she had, it proved to be a very competitive price.

We dawdled back to the Legend pondering a view that was the stuff of all those postcard fantasies. On the opposite (west) bank lay a narrow strip of green punctuated with tall date palms, and beyond them the bright, bare lavender-hazed hills concealing the Valley of the Kings. What little movement there was – the odd felucca drifting by, a flight of birds winging low over the calm water – was in slow motion. On this clear, cool morning the whole languid scene seemed to be behind a pane of newly polished glass and I felt the tide of tension beginning ever so slightly to ebb. For the next four days we’d be relaxing as hard as we could.

 

*

 

At 1 the lunch bell roused us from a restful nap. A giant Nubian in tails, a striking figure with a voice that could travel the globe underwater, ushered us to our seats. The lavish spread in the centre of the room was crowned with a metre-high fruit sculpture of a begging dog and I began to salivate, a sure sign that my appetite, AWOL for several days, was back with a vengeance. I snuffled into the salads, then the roast turkey and veg with such gusto that it wasn’t until I sat back, wiped the dribble of gravy from my chin with the back of my hand and let rip a very contented burp that I realised we had been joined at table.

Stan and Alva from Dorset sat across the way. Stan looked like Michael Palin might at 65, in other words, he looked about fifty. Alva looked like my mother did at 55, in other words, about seventy. Two young Japanese girls kept to themselves at the end of the table while towards the window a French family had occupied four seats.

We’d barely struck up a conversation with Stan and Alva when a young Egyptian man appeared at my elbow. “My name is Bessim,” he addressed us with a confident, friendly gaze. “I will be your guide.” He was in his mid-twenties with a shaven, black-stubbled scalp and intense black eyes. We were to meet him in the bar at 2.30 for a briefing.

“You will be my Angels,” Bessim announced to the sixteen of us assembled in an alcove on the top deck. He’d just run through the week’s itinerary and we were preparing to leave the Legend for our first official excursion – to the great temple complex at Karnak. “Time is all important, so we must stay together. The last one back on the bus will sing us all a song,” he concluded with a mischievous grin.

Apart from ourselves there were six Maltese, two English couples, a South African couple and two young Jordanian women in our party and we all set off for Karnak in high spirits. I spent the short bus ride trying to remember all the words to Waltzing Matilda.

The numbers for Karnak are impressive by any measure. Eighteen hundred years to complete, the central religious sanctuary for eighteen dynasties (from the 12^th to the 30^th), a processional avenue three kilometres long, 20 seven metre tall statues of Rameses III, an open hall decorated with 134 columns each 21 metres high, a vast stone ceiling supported by 52 tapering pillars and nearly every available surface covered with countless hieroglyphs depicting every major period and every significant event in the history of Ancient Egypt.

Despite this unique historical record of an entire civilization it didn’t take me long to realise that almost nothing about Karnak feels human, least of all its scale, and the proportions are colossal for good reason.

Karnak was designed to overwhelm and intimidate. The Pharaohs were god-kings who exercised their power through the rituals of the temple. The priests invoked mystery with epic ceremonial theatre by guttering torchlight; echoing incantations, narcotic incense, elaborate costume, painted faces, solemn music and stylised dance all combined to inspire awe in ordinary mortals. When a new Pharaoh ascended the throne his spin doctors vandalised the stones of his predecessor, effacing the royal name from the cartouche and absorbing it into the new cult and proving that politics is at least the second oldest profession.

We gathered around Bessim as he explained how the ancients erected Queen Hatshepsut’s Obelisk. “They dug a hole and filled it with sand,” he began, illustrating the theory with a chalk sketch on the dusty stone path. Ever the smartarse, I was about to ask him what they took out of the hole in the first place when he continued, “As teams of 200 men pulled the obelisk upright using a big lever like this, others removed sand from the hole through these tunnels so the obelisk sank into position. It would have taken many days.” And this was after the massive effort already expended on quarrying the 100 tonne block of granite in Aswan, transporting it by barge down the Nile and then carving it on site.

Later, we stood before the defaced statue of Tutankhamun, a mere miniature at one-and-a-half times life size, while Bessim related the story of Akhenaten, the eccentric king who upset a lot of vested interests by insisting everyone worship a single god, Aten, instead of the traditional pantheon. He also dabbled in aesthetics, promoting a new realism in Egyptian art which ironically portrayed him as deformed and slightly goofy, like he’d pulled a few too many bongs. When he died and Tut succeeded him the monuments to his ten year reign were swiftly obliterated.

Tutankhamun was Akhenaten’s illegitimate son, or maybe his son-in-law, or maybe no relation at all – nobody really knows. A sickly lad, he came to power at the age of nine and was a singularly ineffectual ruler. At nineteen he died in his sleep, or was murdered by religious conspirators, or perhaps he pranged his sports chariot on a lonely backroad – nobody really knows. Such are the many intriguing vagaries of dynastic history that what you don’t know you can make up. In any case, Tut’s only claim to fame is that his has so far been the only royal tomb to have been discovered intact.

Bessim gave us 30 minutes free time and despite the throng of tourists Karnak was large enough to find a quiet corner to commune with the spirits of the past. Had we been free agents we would have returned at night for the spectacular son et lumiere, or sound and light show, and to lurk in the shadows for a few more hours.

As we retraced our steps past Hatshepsut’s Obelisk on the way back to the bus I noticed something that at last brought Karnak into human focus. Traces remain of the red mud brick ramps built to haul the highest stones of the entrance pylon into place. The straw used to bulk and bind the crumbling bricks is still clearly visible, the ordinary work of ordinary hands and, in the context of all this monumentality, a strangely poignant detail.

We returned to the Legend footsore and weary. We had just enough energy to shovel down dinner and retired immediately to a dreamless sleep. The next morning we learned that a belly dancer had performed to full accompaniment on the deck directly above our heads. I wouldn’t have felt a thing had she danced on my face.

We breakfasted heartily and boarded a dangerously overloaded ferry for the crossing to the west bank and the Valley of the Kings. I remembered the morning last year when an envious colleague had raced in to work and gleefully told me a ferry had capsized overnight on the Nile with something like 70 fatalities and silently wished a plague on his house as we cast off into the swirling current.

Our fellow thrill seekers were mainly loud Americans called Horrie or Dorrie and wearing those naval caps with things like “USS Eagle” emblazoned on them. They kept pushing and shoving to be near the railings and maybe it was my imagination but the boat seemed to wallow precariously with their antics. I heaved a sigh of relief when at length we drew up to the jetty.

Out first stop was the Temple of Hatshepsut. Hat, whose reign was a colourful tapestry of intrigue, infanticide and oppression, was the only woman to rule Egypt for any serious interval – 20 years – and therefore entitled to be called a Pharaoh. For the record too, Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptian but Greek, a Ptolemy of the dynasty established after the conquest of Alexander the Great.

Hat’s monument was whacked up in a mere 250 years and seems to grow naturally out of the stark mountain that forms its backdrop. For mine, the most impressive thing about the temple was the still vivid colours of the vegetable dyes used to create the wall decorations.

The sun was high in the sky and the day already hot as we piled out of the bus at the Valley of the Tourists, er, Kings. The site was chosen by Ineni, advisor to Thutmose I, for its remoteness, its arid preservative climate and for the naturally occurring pyramids in the surrounding hills. It was probably a bonus that it’s pretty spooky as well. It may have been the heat but it was difficult to shake the feeling I was being watched from afar.

The valley contains the tombs of 62 kings and high officials and the ones that were open were clogged with tour groups. The tomb of Rameses IV featured exquisite decorations, the walls and ceilings of the long, sloping processional passage depicting events in the king’s life and spells from the Book of the Dead which were supposed to protect the king’s soul in the afterlife. I don’t know how many, if any, of these illustrations were actually restorations but the colours were extremely vivid and the detail meticulous.

Unfortunately, the further we descended towards the main chamber the more claustrophobic and heavy the atmosphere became until I was literally stewing in my own juices and my head swam with the funk of pressing bodies and the relentless baying of the tour guides. I was grateful this was the off-season – indeed, it was hard to see how they could possibly cram more people into the valley. I’m afraid an audience with Rameses himself wouldn’t induce me to visit in the high season.

Back outside we caught our breath in the shade of the visitor’s centre and awaited those who’d paid the extra forty quid to visit Tut’s tomb. We’d decided against it for two reasons: we didn’t need another crowd scene and we would be returning to see his funeral relics in the Egyptian Museum at our leisure. Our priority now was to set sail from Luxor so we could drape ourselves across a deckchair, work on our tans and watch the world float past.

By 2.30 we were doing just that. Soon after we gobbled lunch and sprinted to the bow to occupy a couple of prime seats, for which the competition was ruthless, the Legend cast off to join the stately procession of cruisers bound for Edfu. We passed the lazy afternoon lolling elegantly in our deckchairs, sipping colourful complimentary punch and watching the palm lined banks and traditional flat top mud brick houses glide by. If I wondered at all what the peasants were doing, I only had to bestir myself enough to see shepherds playing soccer on the low reedy islands while their cattle and donkeys grazed contentedly around them. Now this was more like it, just the right pace for a couple of frazzed fuddies looking to top up their steadily recharging batteries.

Among all the nationalities represented on the Legend - English, French, German, Italian, Maltese, Turkish, Russian, Indian, Japanese, South African, American and Canadian – we were the only Aussies. Given that international travel is a national obsession I was on the one hand surprised and on the other relieved. I hadn’t come all this way to talk about the footy.

Leaning out of our cabin window, pre-prandial Stellas in hand, we admired the balmy sunset to the mating calls of the Nile fleet. Every cruiser has its own distinctive horn and at dusk they honk vigorously to each other in a joyous ritual of community. The maritime symphony was a strange but not unwelcome soundtrack to the chalky haze now settling on the plateau as the sun slowly slipped from view.

At 7.30 we ascended to the lounge for the Official Cocktail Reception. Several guests had already arrived, some at the bar enjoying a quiet drink and others scattered around the dimly lit alcoves in hushed conversation, all of them dressed to the nines. Much to my amusement, and Tess’s embarrassment, we were conspicuously under attired for the grand occasion in our scrubby jeans and t-shirts.

Beneath the mirror ball in the centre of the dancefloor stood a large table spread lavishly with exotic nibblies and what looked like an attempt on the world record for building pyramids with small glasses full of interestingly coloured liquids. The attention to presentation was impressive and I imagined a small army of kitchen staff taking hours to build the eye-catching display. Pretty peckish after the day’s exertions and glad to see the coast clear we strode straight up to the table and helped ourselves to a drink each with the intention of circling the food and sampling a range of delicacies. A crisply starched Nubian waiter appeared beside us and sniffily invited us to replace the drinks. Probably thinking we were gate-crashers from the wrong end of town he tut-tutted and admonished us with a waving finger like naughty schoolkids. He informed us we were to await the arrival of the senior crew and the official introductions. Chastened, we repaired to the bar for a beer and a bag of nuts.

The room gradually filled and eventually the stars of the show appeared, resplendent in smart white dress uniforms with gleaming gold buttons and braid. They looked a bit like banana republic dictators. The Captain welcomed us aboard and introduced the senior officers, finishing up with the Ship’s Purser Mr Muni – yes, pronounced “money”. The formalities completed, the captain invited us to partake of the sumptuous table and enjoy ourselves with the ship’s compliments.

All hell broke loose.

The guests, a moment ago so genteel and sophisticated in all their finery, swarmed the table like hyenas to a carcass and reduced it to a shambles in seconds. We were the only exceptions. Taken unawares, we had no option but to stand back and watch the melee. Food and drinks flew everywhere as the scavengers circled the table piling up their plates, elbowed their way through the scrum with nary a “pardon me” and retired to shovel down their plunder. It was an obscene spectacle.

Disgusted, we tip-toed through the mess on the floor and retreated to the empty downstairs dining room, where we pigged out with only slightly more decorum than the mob and retired to the cabin.

We woke early. I leapt out of bed as I’d done in Cairo and threw open the curtains expecting to gaze in wonderment upon the sun rising over the timeless Nile. Instead we gazed upon the cruiser moored alongside. Despite the irritation we felt genuinely refreshed and that our circadian rhythms had completely synchronised to Egyptian time. We were in good fettle for the two-temple day ahead, during which we would witness the decline of Ancient Egyptian culture in stone.

 

*

 

Egypt hasn’t always belonged to the Arabs. It used to belong to the Egyptians, who ruled it for about three millennia before Alexander the Great annexed it to his Macedonian Empire in 332BC. The powerful mystical traditions of Pharaonic Egypt, epitomised in Karnak, faded away in less than three centuries under the dynasty established by Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s Greek generals.  Cleopatra VII, who looks more like Granny Clampett than Elizabeth Taylor on her coins, was the last Ptolemy. Heiroglyphics was well and truly a dead script by the time her naval forces were destroyed supporting the ambitious but doomed Marc Antony in the Battle of Actium in 31BC. Cleo and Antony committed suicide in Alexandria; Gaius Octavian, the victor at Actium, became Caesar Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, and Egypt became a Roman satellite. The Arabs didn’t come along until the AD640s when they conquered the fertile province for Islam and liked it so much they stayed.

The Greco-Roman structure at Edfu was dedicated to the nine Ptolemy rulers and reflects the decline of strict Pharaonic tradition in its recessed carvings, a visually dramatic but lazy alternative to the embossed sculptures of the great Egyptian temples. The further we travelled from the centre of Karnak the steeper the decline in Egyptian civilization and the more thorough its absorption into the ruling ideology. We spent an hour clambering over the mud-brick ruins before boarding the bus and squeezing through the narrow streets back to the boat.

We lost the race for the best position on the sundeck and had to endure the sight of a large Turkish woman in, or mostly out of, a purple lurex bikini and her Moby Dick of a husband soaking up the rays on our own personal deckchairs. We harrumphed off to the pool deck to rest up for the visit to Kom Ombo a few hours sail upriver.

The two most interesting things about the Kom Ombo complex were the poignant hieroglyphic calendar etched in the wall of the temple to remind the Egyptians, who by now had almost completely lost touch with their culture, when to hold their religious festivals, and the Nilometer which was used by officials to assess taxes – the higher the reading, the higher the taxes. The sunset was a sight to behold from the temple walls but couldn’t hold us for long. We had to hustle back to the Legend for the big gallabiyah party.

Determined not to look like a couple of low-rent ring-ins tonight we accoutred ourselves in fetching gallabiyahs hired from the ship’s store and swanned upstairs to discover that, naturally, we were the only yobs in fancy dress. I felt a little less conspicuous when the South African chap arrived with a bath towel wrapped around his head, but my personal prize for the silliest headdress went to the little French fellow who rocked up in a bright green satin affair fringed with gold dangly bits.

The evening’s entertainment got underway quickly with a round of pass the parcel under disco lights. Three Turks each won a bottle of water wrapped in tinfoil. Next came the Mummy Game where five couples were selected from the audience. The object was for the woman to swathe her partner in dunny paper with the best effort adjudged by audience applause. Gosh it was cute. The Turks cleaned up again. I didn’t see the prize, but a couple of loo rolls wouldn’t have gone astray because they’re as rare as rocking horse poo in Egypt. We took our leave before they got to Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

The Legend slipped into Aswan overnight and we awoke to the sound of the muezzin and the sight of the sun rising over the Nile. The Begum’s Palace, perched like a nipple atop its bare breast of a hill on the west bank and bathed in copper light, dominated the view from our cabin window.

First item on the day’s agenda was a trip to the High Dam. It’s a classified military zone so were given just enough time to leap off the bus, shoot a few happy snaps with Lake Nasser in the background, and climb back on. Here’s a curious thing about Lake Nasser: it’s so big – 500 miles long by up to 25 wide in places (800kms x 40kms) – it’s created climate change in Aswan. During the height of summer when temperatures hover in the high 40sC the thermal mass produces an intense humidity which makes life here almost unbearable. Desperate to stem the subsequent migration to Cairo the Egyptian government built row upon row of slummy low-rise apartment blocks on the fringes of the city mainly to house the Nubian population displaced by the lake. This would have been a magnanimous gesture if they’d remembered to install air conditioning.

We took a superannuated launch across to the island temple of Philae. The Nile here is wide and picturesque, studded with granite islands and outcrops and the trip was exceedingly pleasant in the warm morning sun.

Like its more celebrated neighbour Abu Simbel, the temple of Philae also had to be relocated stone by stone to avoid total destruction during the High Dam’s construction. Over a ten year period, from 1974 to 1984, it was systematically dismantled, removed from its submerging home and painstakingly reassembled on a higher island. The high water marks are still obvious about halfway up the massive columns.

We took to the water again in the afternoon, this time aboard a felucca. Manned by a muscular Nubian and his 10 year old son, the SS Pyramids cut a lazy figure eight past Elephantine Island and the Geziret al-Nabatat, or Island of Plants, where the lush botanic gardens with its teeming birdlife created a feeling of cloistered serenity.

As we tacked leisurely around the islands Bessim revealed something of his own story. He was 24 years old and had studied Ancient Egyptian history at university. His family had emigrated to America but he had remained in Egypt to complete his studies and marry the woman of his dreams. The conversation with Reba and Motas in the Coptic Quarter came to mind as he explained how his romantic plans were dashed when he and his intended were discovered by her older brother dining unchaperoned in a restaurant. There was a scene and that was the end of that.

“Now I am doing this job and saving my money to join my family in America,” he concluded with a shrug of resignation. Just then the good ship Pyramids heeled over sharply in a random gust, snapping the spar and scaring screams out of the women, including Tess who spent the return journey clinging to the seat with white knuckles.

Back ashore, we took a late afternoon turn through the streets. We’d been in Egypt almost a week and yet apart from our brief stroll in Luxor this was the first opportunity to wander around at leisure and absorb the atmosphere. We found ourselves several streets back from the quay in a quarter of grimy grey buildings. The narrow, broken footpaths were crowded with vendors selling everything from cigarette lighters to silverware, from sideshow toys to granite statues. Young men whizzed by on motorbikes spewing smoke. Boys carried silver trays laden with glasses of black tea from door to door. The few women were futilely sweeping the dust from the stalls. The swirling aromas of spices and sizzling lamb were enough to awaken memories of Jerusalem’s Old City where Bastock and I had haunted the the covered souk twenty years ago. I realised I couldn’t wait to return.

 

*

 

The steamy, aggravating ninety minute wait at Aswan airport for the flight to Abu Simbel was relieved considerably by Taki’s presence. He was also an alumnus of table 14 in the Legend’s dining room and at mealtimes had, like 99% of Japanese you meet, smiled politely and kept largely to himself. He was late 20s and on a week’s vacation from Moscow, of all places.

“In eighteen hours I will be back in minus 20 degrees,” he said a little ruefully. He was the Moscow correspondent for a Japanese newspaper and supplemented his income with freelancing. The paper had hinted that his prospects would be greatly enhanced if he learned Russian, which he managed to do in eight months. Satisfied, the paper packed him off to his prestigious post. He also spoke Chinese and excellent English. In the last six months he had interviewed Yeltsin, Lebed and Gorbachev and had some interesting observations on the state of affairs in the Kremlin. Basically, the Kremlin was crumblin’ and many of the predictions he shared came to pass in the months immediately following our little chat.

Taki consulted his guide book and suggested we sit on the left side of the plane for the best views along Lake Nasser and then the Abu Simbel site as we approached for landing. This was easier said than done. Let’s just say the boarding procedure was less than orderly.

With no warning or explanation we were herded with about 150 Americans into a sweating mass at the departure gate. We stood thus for forty long minutes during which I was reduced to mentally gagging the incessant Americans in a variety of inventive and increasingly violent ways. Twice the tarmac bus pulled up outside, waited and drove away again empty. I’d graduated to fantasies of seizing a weapon from one of the guards and exterminating the entire terminal by the time we were finally processed through the door.

No sooner were we strapped in than the captain dropped the clutch and plane wheelied off the mark so suddenly I thought we were leaving the ground there and then. We raced down the taxiway in 11.4 seconds, swerved round onto the runway at such a precarious angle I swear I saw sparks flying from the wingtip and roared almost vertically into the sky. Whatever had been going down in the cockpit while we sweltered in the terminal had clearly irritated our pilot because it was the most extraordinary take-off I ever hope to experience without actually dying. Excitement factor 10.

I’d like to say we left Aswan forty five minutes late and arrived in Abu Simbel fifteen minutes early but I’d be exaggerating. That’s only because the whole thing is one of those “Welcome aboard, prepare for landing,” flights anyway and in 30 minutes we were banking for final approach to Abu Simbel. Lake Nasser, a vast and beautiful inland sea, had dominated the view since Aswan but now the temples of Abu Simbel appeared on the shoreline below us, cast in late afternoon shadow.

Larry Leadfoot barely backed off the thrust as we hit the ground and sped to the terminal at something just shy of Mach one. He pulled up so hard the first ten rows went through the windscreen and the plane’s nose was so close to the terminal window when at last it came to rest you couldn’t have passed a cigarette paper between them. That’s what I call Style.

Like everywhere else in Egypt career opportunities are severely limited in the village of Abu Simbel. The surrounding landscape is positively lunar so unless there are big bucks in rock farming it has to be tourism or fishing. Lake Nasser is definitely not short of fish, and bloody big fish too. It is the home of the current World Record Freshwater Catch, a Nile Perch weighing in at 100kgs. Nothing, however, prepared us for the bizarre sight as we bused through the village of streets full of dead fish, as though the tide had abruptly receded and left them all stranded.

The temples of Abu Simbel are dedicated to Rameses II, the great Pharaoh who stands head and shoulders above the rest and not just because he’s got the biggest statues. He lived to 97, about three times the average lifespan for the period, and ruled for 74 of those years which gave him plenty of time to build many of the great monuments, including the columned hall at Karnak, that help keep the modern Egyptian economy afloat. Easy to appreciate his deification when you reflect that several generations were born, lived and died without knowing any other Pharaoh.

The immense statutes of Rameses are grafted on to the front of a fake mountain. You can actually go behind the scenes and see how they did it. A doorway carved between the two temples leads to a short tunnel which in turn opens out into a vast concrete dome laced with steel gangways and catwalks. It feels James Bondish; it’s no great leap of the imagination to visualise the arch-villain plotting global domination from his HQ deep in the bowels of a movie set mountain. Very cool.

We climbed to the very top landing and emerged though a portal to the gorgeous vision of a crimson sunset over the lake. In many ways, Abu Simbel embodies Egypt; we seem to have done little else since arriving in the country but marvel at monumental cutting edge engineering, both ancient and modern.

Night had fallen before Captain Cowboy, who hadn't calmed down in the meantime, launched us for Cairo. In keeping with the fine tradition of Egyptair in-flight service our snack was an archaeologically significant slice of glaced fruit cake from the First Dynasty of Air Travel served with a dolly’s cup for dwinkies. Fortunately, we were unable to eat anything because our seats were so confined our knees were up around the ears of the poor buggers in front and ingestion would have required the use of an orifice not accustomed to it. It was hard to do anything at all. I gave up the idea of making some notes when I realised the contortions involved in merely extracting my pen from my pocket were possibly life-threatening.

Ahmood was at the airport to meet us and by 9.30 we were back in the El Gezirah.

Next time: From Tourists to Travellers...