Ash here - am in Madaba, Jordan at the moment but will try to bring blogs up to date so will write about:
Wed 15th April. We boarded our Felucca sailing boat not too early on the 15th. The idea was to sail down the Nile, which i expected to be a pretty good opportunity to see what life along the Nile R. would be like. We certainly had a great time but really didn't get to travel far from Aswan and experience the kind of river life and sights that I was hoping for.
It was wonderful but we didn't really get as far as I would have liked. The weather was a little flukey at first so we didn't get very far. Unfortunately, when the weather improved the local Nubian captain pulled over and wasn't interested in continuing sailing. The excuse was that bit was dangerous but it seemed like perfect sailing weather to me. The positive thing about this was that J and I went for a walk along the banks of the Nile and stumbled across a local village. It seemed deserted and they didn't have any English language but we suspected that the men were away working somewhere. Janet sat under a tree with a local woman and helped her collect seeds from the tree above, which had dropped them to the ground. As far as we could tell, she would pound them to a paste and make some flour, etc. We saw what looked like these seeds a few days later in the market.
Despite this, we had a wonderful time. the company, food and social interaction was excellent.
The local Nubian vegetarian food was 5 star, brilliant, plenty of it and all freshly cooked on the boat. We had some grog supplies and Janet and another woman managed to get quite pissed together on beer, red wine, rum, arak(a local aniseed drink) and drambuie? in excellently made local coffee.
Given that we had pulled in for the night, constructed a bush toilet which you had to stagger along a gang plank to get to , this was a pretty good feat on their behalf. I, of course, behaved myself.
We were amazed by the constant toing and froing of the Nile River boats through the night. I also was pleased to be awoken by a beautiful Call to prayer in the early morning before dawn. The dulcet tones rang out through the countryside and along the river. I must say that the call to prayer isn't always so beautiful but this was easily the best one that I have heard yet. (The one in Petra was a shocker, I was not impressed to be startlingly awakened by it at 4.30 am).
We slept on mattresses, very comfortable , talked amongst ourselves and watched the Northern stars. Next day we climbed on our bus and headed to Luxor. more of that in my next post. I will add some pics of the day and night on the Felucca. Ash
