Update #12
Crossing Lake Nasser was, by the slimmest of good fortune, not the uncomfortable experience I had been promised. Firstly, the manager of the Aswan office of the Nile River Transportation Company, Mr Sala, had managed to find me a berth on account of two people possibly cancelling. The second moment of luck was meeting Joop and his girlfriend Rian who were taking their land rover from Holland to South Africa. Being Dutch, I guess that meant they were efficient because in some ways I was not. They had secured a first class cabin by telephoning Sala a week before they arrived in Aswan, whereas I had not even marked out my pitch on the floor of the top deck. They invited me to sleep on blankets on their floor, which I gratefully accepted.
Everyone is allocated one free meal ticket and for a further supplement of 8 Egyptian pounds (1 euro) you were privileged with a small square slice of macaroni pie and proper plates; in my world this counts. There was an excellent atmosphere in the dining room and as a cool breeze flowed evenly through the porthole, I thought that given where I was, life doesn’t get any better than this. Being on the road is a way of life that depends heavily on being able to get good food, find adequate accommodation and friendly people should you need information. Only when this is in place can you look around. The irony is that when you are ready to divest yourself out of the nosebag of the endless hubris of officialdom, there isn’t always anything out there to see. For 17 hours Lake Nasser was simple a lake
In the distance, the shores looked the same hour after hour. In a heat haze as strong as the one I was experiencing just then, had there not been an edge, the water and the wind would have been as one. It is a classic way when the horizon joins the water, like being in a sensory deprivation chamber and takes your breath away at how little there is to see.
Suddenly, Abu Simbal appears on the side of the lake – raised by the Egyptian authorities and Unesco – 60 metres from the base of the valley before it was flooded, and it stands magnificently. Further along, the boat comes to a halt at the Egyptian / Sudanese border, an area marked by experience because there was nothing I could see that separated the two countries. Captain Taha knew where it was. He had sailed this boat since he was a lad, his dad before him and his dad before him. There were crew on board who had never been anywhere other than Aswan, Wadi Halfa and Lake Nasser.
On the bridge, the Captain allowed the young girls to butterfly around for the amusement of his crew. Sudanese girls are astonishingly beautiful. Big eyes, high cheekbones and deep black faces. Whereas an Egyptian woman would be offended if a photograph were to be taken, these girls were desperate to see how beautiful they were.
Floor space on the boat was a luxury even though this boat was not much better than a floating toilet. It was a quiet time, a lull before the storm. I was very nervous about what lay before me. Geographically it was still unknown and I did not know if I would get my R1 across the Nubian Desert. Summer had started in Sudan and temperatures were known to rise above 50 degrees centigrade.