Sleepless in Aswan

Leaving Cairo on a midnight train.  Ok, so the train left at about 9pm and it was all fairly mild and undramatic.  But this is what I wrote at about 9am:

"The train, it seems, needed a new engine sometime in the night. Hence we are running 4 hours behind schedule.  But it does mean that we get to see quite a bit of scenery - and it's much nicer than dusty, dirty Cairo. There seem to be a lot of corn fields. And donkeys. There are cars and bikes on the road, but also a lot of donkeys pulling carts.  Despite oil being one of Egypt's major industries, there is apparently a shortage of fuel so for those farmers with donkeys, this is not a worry.  I get the feeling it is not the the fuel shortage that determines their mode of transport The scenery seems to be crops (mostly corn or something similar) or sand. It has something to do with where the flood plains begin and end."

Then I got distracted and didn't write anymore.  We had whiled away the evening playing Shithead (quite good card game despite the name) and, sadly, I ended the game with the toilet paper crown.  I had slept the night much better than I'd expected, still I was quite tired so we lazed about on the bunks until the last possible moment. 

We are staying in a quite nice hotel right next to the Nile.  It has a pool which I tried out today before the camel ride.  But I'm skipping ahead.  After we'd settled into the hotel we were picked up in a motorboat from in front of the hotel and Achmed told us some history of the Nubian people and Elphantine Island.  Some of it was quite interesting, but I didn't really take much in.  Then we went to a 'beach' on the Nile for a paddle, some Nubian coffee and a walk up some sand dunes.
me
We had dinner in JJ's home and we wandered the aromatic (i.e. smelled like farm animals) streets of his village and arrived at his house.  We were then invited to walk around his house and take pictures.  Never mind the younger sister asleep in one of the beds.  We were combined with another group for dinner, which was a very very nice lentil soup (hard to believe, I know), followed by a vegetable tagen, rice, fish, chicken and salad.  Also homemade mango juice and lemonade.  The after dinner entertainment was JJ's description of Nubian courtship and marriage.  He is a bit of a story teller so it was quite entertaining.

When we returned to the hotel, there was a wedding in progress.  Weddings include lots and lots of drums, which is not good when you have to get up at 3.30am.  Surprisingly, I slept quite well until I woke up some time in the night worried about not waking up on time. 

I still haven't told you about the camels, but I'll leave that for the next post as I'm a wee bit sleepy.