I know what you’re thinking: the adventure hadn’t started yet? And the answer is no, no it has not.
We had originally planned to do a short, five or seven day trip to Egypt. The epic-ness escalated because after examining Nile cruise options, I realized that they looked uniformly terrible– like a Vegas hotel on wheels, complete with theme nights and a large number of passengers. I had quickly narrowed our options down to two cruises: the Steamship Sudan or a dahabiya cruise with an outfit called Nour el Nil. Though it was the longest cruise with the fewest “major” sightseeing stops (and also the most expensive), we ended up going with Nour el Nil because it stopped at places the larger cruise ships couldn’t. And as you will see in the next five to six posts, it ended up being one of the most amazing trips we have ever taken.
While most Nile cruises start in Luxor or Aswan, we would need to drive about 45 minutes south of Luxor to the town of Esna. Because dahabiya are small boats and reliant on wind (or tug boats) for power, leaving from Esna saved us quite a bit of time and also a wait at the locks of Esna. Our guide told us that in the golden days of Egyptian tourism, the wait at the locks could take 4-6 hours. There are dramatically fewer boats sailing now, but even without the heavy traffic, the car ride still saves significant time.
We walked through the market and back alleys of Esna, and more than any place in Egypt we visited, this felt like “the real Egypt.” So much so, we were the only tourists and foreigners in sight, and walking through the market with our huge cameras felt a bit uncomfortable and voyeuristic. Here is a shot of my mom, Tom, and a watchful Severin waiting to push into the hustle and bustle to go around a donkey cart laden with fresh cilantro, dill, and other herbs:
After looking at temples and other incredible sights for the last three days, there was something about walking through REAL life that felt so nice. Not least of which because the photos tell more of a story– a middle-aged woman shopping, shopkeeper shouting, political posters in the background, and the seasonal produce stacked into neat piles–
For some reason, the baskets of popcorn really struck me as one of the more unusual items to see for sale in a market…if it were just for sale as a snack, I would have thought to see people munching it. If it’s to take home, why not just sell the kernels so people can pop it fresh? Stale popcorn is so unsatisfying…
After about 15 minutes, having passed through the homewares, produce, and meat sections of the market, we came upon narrow alleys with old mud brick houses and marvelous wooden doors:
One of the houses was painted to tell of its owner’s hajj– something we would see a few more times when we disembarked into small, Nile-side villages. Obviously we don’t read Arabic, but after it was explained to us once, it was pretty easy to identify the pattern. In addition to the text there would often be a painting of black cube, the Ka’aba in Mecca.
It is fairly common to see what we now know as the Star of David in Islamic architecture. I didn’t realize this before our trip, but the six-pointed star is only a relatively recently (as in the last 200 years) associated with Judaism. It’s hard to see, but there is a cat butt in the window:
After our somewhat frenetic walk, we finally arrived at our destination…but we’ll save that for next time…