Foreigner Train & Photogenic Aswan

After the pyramids, we took the night train to the town of Aswan in southernmost Upper Egypt (confusing--the Nile slopes downward to the Mediterranean so the south is known as "Upper" Egypt). Now, the night train, also called the "foreigner train" because it is one of only 3 trains foreigners are allowed to take to Upper Egypt and is the most popular with its sleeping cars. Due to a terrorist attack aimed at tourists at a temple in Luxor in the 1990s, Egypt has a heavy police presence in Upper Egypt and strictly controls what transportation tourists are allowed to take. Ironically, this creates more of a "sitting duck" experience with all the foreigners crowded onto the same train or in the same convoy of cars which leave at the same time everyday. Thus, you can imagine my delight when I found this bar of soap in our sleeper compartment:

Good luck soap--seriously?! I assumed
it was a bad translation of "bon voyage"
but it did not help settle my nerves...

We arrived safe and sound in the morning in Aswan, the land of feluccas. Aswan is not famous for any specific temple or site and is most often used as a jumping off point to visit the famous temple of Abu Simbel, and is a curious mix of laidback but with lots of hassle. After a necessary nap, we headed over to Elephantine Island, an island situated in the Nile River which is home to two Nubian villages. Nubians are a people more ethnically similar to the Sudanese. In fact, just south of Elephantine Island is the cataract (a set of rapids) which was traditionally the border between Egypt and the land of Nubia, which stretched all the way to what is now Khartoum in Sudan. Not surprisingly, the villages on Elephantine Island were a colorful change from Cairo.

Elephantine Island

Colors!

House

Mini mosque

Laundry

Mud prints

The house of someone important

Croc head!

Bird on the garbage heap near where we met the chief of the village

After wandering through the village and allegedly meeting the chief of the village, we went to the see the ruins of Abu on the south of the island. Judging from the reception we got, I'm pretty sure no one ever visits it. When we got there, it was Nubian man hour as the men of the village don't have much going on so they all hang out there. This just meant that they all tried to be our guide in the hopes of baksheesh. We dodged a few in the actual museum but then got a personal tour guide and guard for the actual ruins. The reconstructed temple in the complex was our second experience seeing painted walls--the only thing I didn't realize with hieroglyphics is how beautifully painted they were back in the day.

Painted temple walls

We saw another example of the painted walls during one my favorite moments in Egypt. As our guide and guard were showing us around, they were only too excited to cross the "do not enter rope" which marked off the portion of the ruins still being excavated. Since it's summer, the Swedish archeologist was not in residence, so the two men uncovered (took off all the bricks placed there to protect it) a beautifully painted section of a temple for us to see. The sheer excitement with which they did this (in anticipation of baksheesh) was just awesome. Don't worry, I got a picture. All I could think of in the moment was, man, the Swedish archeologist would be pissed if he saw this...

Guards breaking the rules

Gorgeous painting

Now this brings me to the subject of baksheesh. In my opinion, there are two forms: 1. traditional baksheesh (Egyptians paying off other Egyptians) and 2. tourist basksheesh (people who work with tourism shamelessly asking for money from tourists). In Egypt you can do quite a lot with baksheesh--my favorite moment pertaining to the former type of baksheesh was watching a car buck his turn at a traffic circle in Cairo by driving up to the traffic cop and giving him money, and then getting waved through. We obviously had more experience with the latter type of baksheesh as evidenced by this tour. And let me tell you, these two guys really earned it.

Yeah...Court's face says it all. This was after repeated marriage proposals.
Apparently the man's wife died this year.

Working hard for the baksheesh

Interestingly, in Aswan we also received the most attention from men on the trip. It was not so much negative attention (there were a few comments in the souk), but because Nubians, like Moroccans, are so reliant on tourism, many men speak English. So we were quite often approached while waiting for ferries or walking down la croisette for solicitations to ride their felucca which often turned into casual conversation. Conversations typically went like this: "What is your name?" "How old are you?" "Are you married/do you have a boyfriend?"

Thus, Courtney and I developed a new sanity-maintaining game called "make shit up"! We would start by answering with fake names that had to fit a pattern. So if Courtney responded first with, example, her middle name then I had to pick up on it and respond with mine. We came up with some good ones including state capitals and states, celebrities, and my personal favorite, "Marco" and "Polo." We also used phrases like "I'm engaged to be married next month." "My boyfriend is a lawyer in Canada and couldn't get time off." "Our older brother is napping in the hotel." The real challenge, of course, is not laughing too much when you say all this...

We added this game to our the list of our other sanity/humor games like the "donkey, kid, or camel?" game. This consisted of trying to identify loud, piercing noises and where they came from. The game often changed depending on geographical area and what animals were local to the area. Then there was our personal favorite, the "Ahmed" game in which we kept our ears open for someone yelling "Yeah (Arabic for "hey") Ahmed" everyday. Amazingly, we only failed to hear it only 5 or so days our entire time in North Africa and the Middle East. No matter how good or bad our day was at the moment we heard it, it always elicited a laugh or smile from us--so thanks to all those Ahmeds out there!

Felucca hour at sunset