Cruising the Nile was an unexpected delight. I was so focused on the ancient history I’d completely overlooked how pleasant the river can be. It offers pleasant air, cooled by its waters. Life slows down.
On this visit to Egypt, we experienced floating on the Nile three ways. We rode a pleasant open air launch in the early evening. We sailed on a Felucca in the afternoon. And, we spent three days on a Nile cruise ship.
Our first experiences were in Aswan. After Philae, we boarded a motor launch to cross the river, where we were to dine with a Nubian family. But we didn’t expect a thirty minute boat ride. It was warm, with cooling breezes, and the river was lazily moving flat water. Felucca dhows plied the waters back and forth, never hurried. Palm trees lined the shores.
We passed along from the east bank to the west. On the west side, Sahara sands come right up to the river. We also ran through some resident islands. Kids being kids! Some were trying to figure out how to make a sailboat with whatever they could find. One thing I learned about Egypt, is that Ancient Egyptian relics are everywhere. Here, in the river, there are hieroglyphs for navigation marks on the rocks!
The following afternoon we embarked on a pleasant sail aboard a felucca. These are shallow drafted wooden dhows and can easily carry 15 passengers. There is something about sailing. It was super relaxing!
When we sailed in between islands, the overall depth could be 15 feet, but there were 12 foot rocks – which we passed over and the captain pulled up the centerboard. He knew exactly where they were. We didn’t hit anything.
This is a stretch of river featured in the film Death on the Nile. There were scenes from the Old Cataract Hotel, and we passed right by. Today, you can have a nice sunset drink on the bar overlooking the river! Al and Allie did just that.
In one sequence we seemed to be in a little felucca sailboat race, so I had to do a little narrative.
As I hope you will agree, sailing around Aswan is a must-do experience! In future posts I’ll show our Nile Cruise Ship. It is definitely a great way to see the river.
Cabin Fever Chronicles - Getting Outdoors with Rod 
Oh yeah, the narrative takes it. Super super cool about using hieroglyphs to navigate.
Crystal! I’m super excited you picked up on that! Like the hieroglyph navigational marks, Egypt is littered with evidence of ancient society – stuff that would be in museums is all over the place.
Rod C. Richards
Blog: http://www.cabinfeverchronicles.com/ Cabin Fever Chronicles
It reminds me of a photo I took in Greece, where at the edge of a plowed field was a small chunk of carved marble column in the rubble at the side of the field. I couldn’t believe no one cared that there were ruins and they were just getting plowed. But like you say, it was everywhere there.
Crystal, I have another one I’ll share. It’s not on the blog yet. When we were walking around the Nubian village, there was a rose granite statue of a pharaoh sticking out of the middle of the street! Only the chest was visible but they said it went down over 10 feet below the street!
Rod C. Richards
Blog: http://www.cabinfeverchronicles.com/ Cabin Fever Chronicles
Oh gosh, that’s crazy!
I’m at work and it’s pretty slow today so I checked out your reading list. I never write about books I read, but I do keep a list every year. I’ve been working down the top 100 novels of the 20th Century list. But sometimes the Little Free Library has something for me. There I found Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (which was so sex-prolific over and over I wound up going ahead 200 pages to find much of the same, and basically put it down), Farlander, a 4-book fantasy collection which was so rich I just loved it, Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte, which had some linguistic sequences I found just fabulous, and now Imajica – another fantasy series.
Rod C. Richards
Blog: http://www.cabinfeverchronicles.com/ Cabin Fever Chronicles
Thanks for your list. I have not heard of Farlander or Imagica, and I’ll check them out. The one I just finished was We Are Legion, which was not the best fantasy series, but funny and clever. Wuthering Heights about did me in, I thought it was so awful. I’ll have to give it another try. I hated Pride & Prejudice the first time I read it, now it’s one of my favourite books!