Cairo to Aswan

Looking backwards a couple of days, written while overlooking the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya in Istanbul:

July 6:

I've spent at least an hour now watching the tracks at the Cairo railway station and I've only just seen my first train. In spite of this lack of activity, or perhaps because of the bottleneck, the quays are packed like sardine cans. Women, children, men, soldiers -- of whom there are many, though most bear the sleepy expression of men not given serious duty -- all crowd the stone benches and gritty floors. Many sit with their legs hanging over the lip into the track space. Others wonder unconcernedly across the tracks to the station for a drink, navigating with ease the scrap metal, shattered bricks and consumer jetsam spread between the tracks. When finally a train does pull in, it's discharged its passengers and taken on a new load literally before it pulls to a halt: the doors open as the first car of the train reaches the station, and people climb into and out of open doors and windows as though they're being chased. I don't envy the weak or uncoordinated their fight to board, let alone for seats.

D., my Australian fellow traveler, and I have joined forces to head down to Aswan for the next couple of days. Aswan's a small town a ways down the Nile, possessed of the usual complement of shoreline restaurants, spiffy hotels, and beckoning bazaar streets. We'll stay there for the evenings and hop a tour bus for the 250 KM trek to Abu Simbel, home to Ramses II's temple to himself.

It's a good thing we've got so much to look forward to, since pretty much all this train's got going for it is fitful air conditioning. Bugs crawl happily into and out of grates, the seats don't recline, the private cars are hardly private, and when the conductor offers us different seats he grins expectantly and rubs his fingers together: "Baksheesh?"

We settle in to sleep for the 12-hour ride.

July 7th:

16 hours later (yeah, 16) we reach Aswan and are met by an emissary from the hotel, who swiftly negotiates a cab for all of us. D. and I check in, grab a couple of single rooms, desperately flip the air conditioning on to combat the 40 degrees Celcius ambient temperature, and grab lunch across the street. It's Kirshi (sp?) -- a uniquely Egytian, as far as I can tell, blend of lentils, three kinds of noodles, rice, tomato sauce, crunchy fried onions and, for the more adventurous, a murderously spicy sauce to taste. Delicious!

We walk through the bazaar, steadily less patient with the shopkeepers who leap up at the first sign of attention and ask what you're looking for. It isn't possible just to browse: let your eyes rest too long on one shop and you'll be whisked away on a five-minute tour of all of the owner's wares, then press-ganged into a purchase by a man who cannot stop smiling. I've never said "No, thank you!" so firmly or so often in my life.

D. suggests that Egyptians must view bargaining as an extension of ordinary conversation, in contrast to the Western view of money talk as a separate and vaguely discomfiting beast. Looked at this way, the pushy vendors are marginally more tolerable, but it's still enough to put you off shopping for awhile.

We walk and drink liter after liter of water while we burn the hours before our 2:30 wake-up call for the Abu Simbel bus ride. On a whim, we hop a motorboat ride across the Nile to the tombs that fill the hills overlooking the town. In this, as in all things service-related for foreigners in Egypt, we succeed only after extensive negotiations with the boat owner. Once across the river, we find that the tombs closed at 5 PM, and it's already 6. "No problem," say the older, clearly unaffiliated civilians hovering mischievously at the entrance. "We the chiefs of the Tombs. Have keys. You want to visit?" Maybe we could have hit up the tombs after hours. We're struck by the facial illegality and the hassle of it all, though, and so we pay a nominal bit of baksheesh to a nearby guide to take us up and over the tombs to the stone hills that provide a vantage for the river and the city. He obliges, and we slowly rise above the Nubian Village on this bank (vehemently separated from the Arabic town on the other side of the river), its appearance that of a tide of buildings lapping against the sudden desert. We scramble upwards and are rewarded with the promised view, rock promontories providing a steady spot on which to rest and bask in the distance and the evening sun. A few pictures with just us and the guide and we head back down to the boat, across the river, through the streets and to the hotel to sleep before our early morning.