Cruising the Nile
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By Tony Stroud Egypt Daily 6 February, 2004 The night train from Cairo pulled into Luxor station before dawn.
Five-fifteen was a hard hour to push the sleep from my eyes, toddle down the companionway, find my footing on the concrete train platform and count my bags before the train chugged on to Aswan without me.
Despite offers of assistance from an endless stream of porters, I spent a lonely few minutes waiting for the transfer man.
I didn't have to take the train to Luxor. I could have settled on a tour with any of several dozen travel companies that would have put me on an airplane for the hour's flight south from Cairo. And, in fact, within two weeks of this very train ride, I would do precisely that. However, the train, and a price the most skilled hagglers back in Cairo's Khan El-Khalili Bazaar would have envied, made this company's Nile cruise itinerary a stand-out.
Besides, going by private sleeping compartment sounded very Agatha Christie.
The early reveille and awkward wait . . . well, once in a while life's most memorable days get off to an inconvenient start. This would become one of them, for as I shortly would witness, dawn in Luxor is unlike anywhere else on Earth.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This is a story about Nile cruises. About Nile cruises in general and two in particular, and what makes a $3,000 trip different from a $1,000 one.
To be more accurate, I should call them cruise-tours because, although it certainly is possible to book a stand-alone cruise, Americans are more apt to take a Nile cruise as part of a once-in-a-lifetime itinerary that includes Cairo and the Pyramids.
I'll tell you about the tombs and the temples, the sounds, the scenery and the sunrises. After all, that's what you take a Nile cruise for. But I also want to tell you about the cruise experience itself: the routine, the food, the entertainment and what the boats are like.
Really, I feel a little sheepish calling them boats. They're small ships, each a floating village in its own right, with lobby, restaurant, lounge, gift shop, bar and pool deck. There are from 200 to 300 of them in various sizes, carrying, in rough numbers, anywhere from 60 to 160 passengers at capacity. But to my mind, ships belong on the ocean and boats, however well-appointed, belong on rivers. So I'll keep calling them boats.
Nile cruises navigate the 125 miles of river between Luxor and Aswan. Standard itineraries operate either upriver, that is to say from Luxor to Aswan, or downriver from Aswan to Luxor; and they come in two durations: four-day/three-night or five-day/four-night. (A few specialized, in-depth itineraries may last seven nights or stray beyond Luxor-Aswan.)
Which antiquities you'll see won't depend on the direction of travel or even the length of the three-night trip vs. the four-night one. (Both cruises I took were four nights and part of an eight-night package.) No, two things determine your sightseeing: the tour company's inclusions and the Nile itself.
Ah, the Nile itself. Its jade-brown waters are never so blue, its farmlands never so green as in those moments just before sunrise. There's the growing light, and a stirring of the birds. Then the sky blushes orange, the barren hills answer in pink, and as the white-hot sun ascends, a purple haze settles in. Act 1, as I've come to think of it, is over in a matter of minutes.
The transfer man had dropped my bags at the boat and, after some downtime in the lobby, handed me off to my guide who shuttled me to Karnak Temple in time to catch Act 2: the freshly risen sun slanting down the Avenue of the Sphinxes, coaxing long shadows from the temple's renowned Hypostyle Hall.
And this, I couldn't help reminding myself, was the cheap trip.
I'm a tenacious comparison shopper. It's not just my lifestyle, it's my job, the reason I was standing there that morning among the hieroglyphs. Many months before I ever boarded that train, I pored over a shopping bag full of brochures from close to four dozen tour companies, studied itineraries, read the fine print, phoned agents who could and could not answer detailed questions about their trips, noodled prices, drew-up coded charts. (What you see on Page 9 is the newest version, which, because of space limitations, contains only a sampling of the companies I started with.)
The idea was to take two Nile cruises, a cheap one and an expensive one, that would be as alike as possible but for the price. For the expensive one, I chose Oak Brook-based Abercrombie & Kent -- seasoned travelers just call it A&K -- because it had guaranteed departures.
For the cheapie, I chose a company I'd never heard of, Travco. It's an Egyptian company (not to be confused with American-based Travcoa) and claims to be one of Egypt's largest, I would later learn. I found Travco through the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism's Web site and dealt with them via fax and e-mail (sometimes with my travel agent's assistance) because Travco does not have any American-based offices. Travco also, in effect, would guarantee my departure in the same way several other tour operators in Egypt do for individuals and small parties: They assign you to a particular boat's embarkation date, then fit the Cairo portion of the trip around the cruise.
Now, there are certain bare-minimum elements that are common to all Nile cruise-tours, visits that would be unthinkable to omit. In Cairo -- which will have to wait for a separate story -- those would be the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the Egyptian Museum. The Khan El Khalili Bazaar could go on that list too.
During the cruise, the bare necessities would be:
At Luxor, right in town: Karnak Temple (you'll get an hour and a half, give or take). Unfortunately, some itineraries are dropping the visit to smaller, more intimate Luxor Temple.
At Luxor, but on the other side of the river: the Valley of the Kings (you'll be there long enough to enter three or four tombs; maybe Tut's, maybe not); Queen Hatshepsut Temple, which some tour brochures call Deir El Bahri (maybe you'll climb to the top, or maybe you'll just wave at it from the parking lot); and the Colossi of Memnon (10-minute photo stop).
At Esna: your boat will go through the lock, but what time of day or night that happens depends on river conditions and traffic. (At certain times of the year, river conditions are such that your boat won't go through the lock at all. When that happens, you and your bags will be transferred overland to a different boat on the other side of the lock, to continue your cruise.)
At Edfu, a Nile city between Luxor and Aswan: the Temple of Horus (you get a couple of hours, including transport from the boat by bus, minivan or horse and buggy).
At Aswan: the High Dam (a 10-minute stop halfway across, video cameras not permitted); the Unfinished Obelisk (could be a "stealth" visit not mentioned in your tour materials); and Philae Temple, on an island in Lake Nasser (couple of hours, including the motorboat ride).
On board, there'll be three squares a day, afternoon tea and one evening after dinner given over to a galabeya party, which I'll explain later.
Just about every tour company gives you a lot more than that, of course. Some visits are a waste of time, particularly at Aswan. I'll tell you right now that unless you're the sort of person who frequents rock quarries in your other travels, you should do everything in your power to resist a stop at Aswan's Unfinished Obelisk. There's a reason the thing has remained unfinished for 3,400 years. Same advice holds for Aswan's Old Dam and High Dam, unless you're the sort of person who'd make a special trip to drive across one at home.
I can't fathom why more tours don't go instead to Aswan's modern, new Nubian Museum, an indoor-outdoor affair that displays some Pharonic items and Nubian artifacts the likes of which I'd never seen before. It must be either tradition or habit that keeps the obelisk and dams wedded to a tour of Philae Temple, the shorthand name for the Ptolemaic-era Temple of Isis that was moved from Philae Island to Agilkia Island to save it from permanent baptism when Lake Nasser was created. Despite the wording of some tour brochures, you will reach Philae Temple by motorboat, not felucca.
The felucca sail, if you take one, is a separate excursion. Pleasantly, both my A&K tour and my Travco tour included a sail in a private, authentic felucca.
With A&K, my felucca landed on Aswan's Kitchner Island; and we, that is to say my guide, Hesham Abdullah, and the one other passenger who shared the same itinerary, walked through the Botanic Gardens where families were holding picnics, which the resident cats eyed with envy. My Travco guide, Abdalla Abdin Abdalla, would have taken me there, too -- my Travco trip turned out to be private from start to finish -- but I'd dawdled too long at Philae and we arrived at closing time.
On a route that includes so many sun-baked, tan-on-tan temples, it's a shame that more itineraries don't include a stop on Kitchner Island. I welcomed the cooling shade of its imported palms, the calming greens of its shrubbery, and the refreshing reds and purples of its flouncing bougainvillea.
Yes, many brochures promise that you'll "see" it, at least when they're not getting it mixed up with Elephantine Island. They say you'll see Elephantine Island and the Aga Khan Mausoleum, also at Aswan. But you know as well as I do that seeing a place from a distance and actually setting foot in it are completely different experiences.
From Aswan moving north, many boats make a stop at Kom Ombo for the Temple of Horus and Sobek. The boats dock at the foot of a hill, and it's a 10-minute walk up to the hilltop to enter this Ptolemaic-era temple, whose claim to fame is that it is dedicated to two gods -- tour brochures make a big deal out of this -- and that it also has a shrine with mummified crocodiles in residence (not as interesting as it sounds).
Every guide in Egypt is a card-carrying "Egyptologist," and I suppose there'll always be cases where experts disagree, but then again, there are credentials and there are credentials.
At this temple there were some reliefs that seemed to be a must-stop for all groups walking through. I overheard other guides telling their groups that these were definitely reliefs of Cleopatra 7th, the one Westerners are most familiar with because of the whole Julius Caesar/Mark Antony/suicide-by-snakebite thing.
Both my A&K guide and my Travco guide pointed these out too. But my A&K guide said these probably were of one or two of the earlier Cleopatras. My Travco guide said one was probably Cleopatra 7th, but that this could only be deduced by reading the hieroglyphs of the adjacent figure.
Frankly, I don't claim to know which of these guides was right. Chances are, you won't know either. But I appreciated the intellectual reserve and lack of sensationalism that both my A&K guide and my Travco guide displayed.
From Kom Ombo, again moving north, the next stop is Edfu for the Temple of Horus. This is another of the Ptolemaic-era constructs remarkable for its state of preservation. Its mighty pylons, flanking the entry, are intact, and many of the chambers are covered with the original stone slab roof. The shrine in one of the innermost rooms is still there. You don't want to miss this one.
At Esna, some tours stop to visit the small, Ptolemaic-era Temple of Khnum, sometimes called the buried temple because much of it is below the street level of the current-day town. Both my A&K and Travco tours stopped here. I hate to say it, but if you start feeling that if you can take only so many temples, this might be one you'd rather skip. To get there, you walk through two blocks of souvenir vendors hell-bent on selling you something.
There's a steep climb down wooden stairs to the temple, whose columns and walls are showing signs of salt damage. My A&K guide blamed this on the High Dam's causing the water table to rise.
At Luxor, the next and final stop if you're northbound, both of my tours on the West Bank went to the Valley of the Queens and entered three or four tombs. Nefertari's, reputedly the most beautiful, was not one of them because it was closed at the time. Both went to the Valley of the Kings and entered three or four tombs. With A&K, the separate ticket for admission to Tutankhaman's tomb was included. With Travco, I paid about $8 extra for it.
At Hatshepsut's Temple, the A&K van made a 5-minute photo stop in the parking lot. With Travco I entered the site, climbed all the steps to the top, had time to look around and got an explanation about some of the reliefs.
A&K made a West Bank stop that Travco didn't include: Medinet Habu, where my guide showed us Ramses III's temple, the remains of the adjacent mud-brick palace and the receptacle that once served as the pharaoh's toilet.
In Luxor itself, both tours included Karnak, though only A&K included the sound and light show. Both also took me to Luxor Temple, but A&K doesn't include it on its new itinerary.
All in all, a lot to see.
With a Nile cruise, there are more shore excursions in a shorter period than with ocean-going cruises. There's a lot more tramping on and off the boat. Though there are many similarities in life aboard all cruise ships, there are some endearing differences on the Nile.
For example, after sightseeing in hot and dusty places -- even in winter, daytime highs are in the 90s, and inside the tombs it feels even hotter -- passengers on many ships are welcomed back with chilled washcloths in the lobby. This was true on my A&K boat, the 80-passenger Sun Boat IV, which also added glasses of iced lemonade to the ritual, and on my Travco boat, the 160-passenger Crown Jewel.
Sometime during the cruise, there'll be a tour of the ship. At the bridge, the captain will be in constant radio contact with other boats and likely will be wearing a turban and a galabeya, the traditional long-sleeved gown-like garment, and come from a long line of Nile river captains. In the kitchen, they'll be preparing for the next meal, and in the engine room it will be so hot and loud -- three engines at 380 HP each on the Crown Jewel -- you won't understand a thing.
It wasn't until after the tour that I could hear well enough to find out more about Nile cruise boats in general, and the Crown Jewel in particular, from assistant manager Yasser Salah.
He talked about how the kitchen uses only mineral water for cooking, and has separate refrigerators for vegetables and eggs, a separate freezer and butchering room for meat, and prepares and bakes all its own breads in a separate baking room. He told me how a boat the size of the Crown Jewel will have three captains, 10 sailors and a crew of about 90, who work in 45-day shifts or 70-day shifts with no days off. (He didn't have to talk about the armed tourist police -- I always noticed two -- who would board at each stop and take up positions in the bow.)
He also said each ship has its own treatment system, with pH testing, for the passengers' bath water.
Speaking of bathing: My hotel-room-sized cabin on Travco's Crown Jewel had a real, hotel-sized bathroom with a full-size bathtub. In contrast, the bathroom in my cabin on A&K's Sun Boat IV was of the travel-trailer variety: Open the bathroom door and enter a step-in shower fitted with a tiny sink in one corner and a full-size toilet in the other.
Outside the bathroom, my cabin's decor showed more of a designer's touch, felt more "finished," aboard A&K's Sun Boat IV. It had space enough for two twin beds, a nightstand between them and a dresser with stool. I had a picture window.
My cabin on Travco's Crown Jewel was done in color-coordinated fabrics, had a mini fridge, windows that ran floor to ceiling and space enough for two twin beds, a nightstand between them, a dresser and a breakfast table with two chairs.
Comparing the two ships, it seemed to me that A&K's Sun Boat IV deck plan devoted more space per passenger to decor-conscious public areas. But that's not to say that Travco's Crown Jewel was by any means shabby or tacky or second-rate. No, no. If these were hotels, I'd equate the A&K Sun Boat IV's appointments to a Four Seasons (with a Motel 6 bathroom) and the Travco Crown Jewel's appointments to a Marriott Courtyard.
Both boats had attentive staff, twice-daily cabin service, laundry and dry cleaning for a pittance and alcoholic drinks for a king's ransom. Both had only one dining room -- pressed tablecloths and cloth napkins at every meal -- and all passengers ate at the same sitting.
Meals aboard Travco's Crown Jewel were all buffet, with a diverse selection of meats, vegetables, salads, breads and desserts. There was an omelet station at breakfast and a made-to-order pasta station at either lunch or dinner. The preparation was more home-cooking than gourmet, but the passengers I talked to seemed satisfied, and so was I. Wait staff was attentive -- when I skipped dinner one evening, the dining manager called my cabin, worried that something might be wrong -- and one evening a waiter performed magic tricks at each table.
On A&K's Sun Boat IV, breakfast and either lunch or dinner were buffet. The third meal of the day was ordered from the menu and was more gourmet than home-cooking. One day lunch was a cookout on the aft deck. Surprisingly, some of the other guests I spoke to thought the meals were not so remarkable. I can only imagine, of course, but I think this might be because A&K's prestige attracts the sort of travelers who make a hobby of being hard to impress. I thought the meals were very good.
Like most all Nile cruise passengers, I had a chance to spy out the lobbies of several other ships. This happens because ships tie up side-by-side, sometimes five or six deep to a single dock. Passengers on the boats farther out must walk through the lobbies of the nearer ships to get to shore.
Flabby German men in Speedos, sunburned French women and tipsy Japanese are part of the scenery, too, or were aboard Travco's Crown Jewel, which was running with almost a full passenger load. I was the only American, and it wasn't a problem.
On A&K's Sun Boat IV, there were only 16 passengers other than myself on my sailing: two well-to-do Egyptian families with children, five retired Americans who spent a lot of time talking about things back home, and a too-too-chummy English antiques dealer.
Both ships had a galabeya party, where everyone is encouraged to buy an outfit from the ship's gift shop and wear it for an evening of traditional Egyptian music and dance and passenger photos. Food on the galabeya evening on both ships was traditional Egyptian and Middle Eastern fare -- falafel, hummus, kebabs and the like -- served buffet style. Again on each ship, Nubian dancers performed on another night.
With A&K, I had the same guide, Hesham Abdullah, throughout the trip, a service that has since become an optional upgrade. (And some of the tour inclusions have changed also.) Honestly, I thought having the same guide throughout was one of the advantages of going with A&K -- that and the fact that a side trip to Abu Simbel is included. It would have been an add-on option with Travco.
Abu Simbel is the famous pair of temples built into the mountain that were moved to higher ground to escape flooding when Lake Nasser was created. It's a half-hour flight from Aswan and best appreciated, I think, at the end of a Nile cruise if you're a save-the-best-for-last sort of person. In that case you'd want to book a cruise that begins in Luxor and ends in Aswan. You'll be at Abu Simbel about two hours.
I said I'd have to save Cairo for another time, but since we're making price comparisons in this story, it's important to at least mention the Cairo hotels of both companies.
A&K uses the Conrad International, an upscale, newish and impersonal business/convention hotel with spa across the street from the Nile. This hotel has several restaurants and a pool, but inadequate gift shops, despite the so-called shopping mall next door. Nile-view rooms are pleasantly furnished (except for the hair dryer that was installed in such a way that it could not be plugged in).
Travco booked me into the Pyramid Park Inter-Continental, an aging but friendly tourist hotel with spa services, a half mile from the Pyramids. This hotel has several restaurants, a large swimming pool, lots of lawn space and trees, and so-so shopping. Rooms are spacious, clean and well-kept, but due for an update.
With Travco, I had four different guides: Hazim Fahmy in Cairo; Khayra Seif in Luxor and Esna; and Abdalla Abdin Abdalla in Edfu, Kom Ombo and Aswan. The fourth, Sally Moustafa Kamel, led me around Alexandria, a day trip by car from Cairo that was part of my Travco tour package.
Before the trip I had wondered whether my guides would tell me the same history about the same sites -- I was looking for consistency -- and for the most part they did. An exception was on the West Bank at Luxor, where my Travco guide pointed to some warehouse-like structures and identified them as the grain storage bins that the biblical Joseph had ordered built. When I asked my A&K guide about those same structures, he said they were houses for the temple priests, and from a different time period.
Like I said before, I don't claim to know who is right. But I can say that the morning I pulled into Luxor on the train, my Travco guide made a comment I'll always be grateful for.
We had finished at Karnak Temple and moved on to the smaller, more intimate Luxor Temple. She wished, she said, that I could see it at night. Details that are imperceptible in the harsh light of day become dramatically apparent in the wash of spotlighting at night.
So I went back on my own that evening, just about sunset. There was the scent of jasmine on the approach, the crunch of gravel beneath my feet, and a throbbing in the air as from the surrounding mosques the call to prayer went out: startling and mysterious and old. And I walked among the carvings and the columns and the statues and the sphinxes, into the past.
After all, that's what you take a Nile cruise for.
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