On a Nile Cruise with Alison Rice
Posted On
29.02.08
For relaxation, atmosphere and sightseeing, the Nile is a river that delivers. Alison Rice offers advice for first time travellers.
You can meet three types of tourists outside Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Some are ticking a ‘must-see’ box and filling time between sunbathing and partying. Others will be spending long days scrutinising every wondrous mark and stone. And those of us in the middle are just so caught up in sheer wonder at tremendous sites and ancient culture, we can almost ignore the dust and heat, the queues and dawn starts.
Between Luxor (ancient Thebes) and Aswan in Upper Egypt the Nile is full, not with crocodiles, but with boats built to ferry us gently up or down river, stopping at temples and tombs en route and offering us calm, relaxing afternoons snoozing on deck.
The boats are different from any ocean-going cruise ships. Cabins vary from cramped and basic to top boutique hotel standard with plasma screens and swish bathrooms and boats with gyms, spas and full size pools.
Floating along in a tiny felucca is for hardy budget adventurers – you sleep on deck and jump ashore when you need a bathroom. Your captain is your cook and tour leader.
Next in price come the enormous, pack ’em in cruise boats. From the outside, they look like Soviet housing blocks and cabins can be cramped and evenings noisy – especially the fancy dress parties with the inevitable ‘mummies’ in loo paper. Be warned that an Egyptian 5* rating can sometimes only muster a UK’s 3*.
Some of the better (and therefore more expensive) 5* boats are pretty big too but they have airier cabins (some with balconies), good cooking, large decks and knowledgeable guides who speak various European languages fluently.
Dahabiyas are new to the river. They are replicas of 19th-century two-masted sailing cruisers with just a handful of cabins (perfect for private hire for a week). The food is cooked to order and you travel with an experienced guide who can bring alive the temple experience, however much or little you know of Rameses and Rah and the great figures whose temples and tombs make up what must surely be the world’s largest open-air museum. Antique furniture and libraries lined with mahogany panels add to the romance of the dahabiyas. They glide along slowly and regally and often under sail. They have their own private mooring spots, so you are spared from sharing parking space with all the big boats – often moored up four deep.
Whatever boat you float along on, the banks of the River Nile make for the most relaxing holiday wallpaper. Palm trees and white egrets, oxen and sand dunes slip by. Children wave and camels groan. Biblical-looking men robed in galabeyas pass by on donkeys. Kingfishers swoop and women cook smoky suppers outside flat mud brick houses. Surely a scene a Pharaoh might have sailed past – just maybe not with the satellite dishes gleaming in the African sun.
Alison Rice is a travel journalist and broadcaster. She has cruised along the Nile five times and admits that there comes a point on every trip where she gets that All Templed Out feeling. But a glass of mint tea or something stronger - hold the ice - soon revives her enthusiasm for columns, kings and hieroglyphics. She also admits to never having read to the end of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.
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