Down in Upper Egypt

EgyptAir offered us a choice of three afternoon flights, all of which were scheduled to leave within ten minutes of each other. For several hours on either side of this small handful of departures, nothing left at all. Flying planes in a convoy might have seemed strange to me once. Fortunately, I've stopped trying to understand these things and, instead of puzzling over the logic and worrying about the waste, I now just sip my mini can of Pepsi* and enjoy the extra space in my choice of one of three available planes, none of which was even one-third full.

The only disadvantage of a near-empty plane is that it suffers more from the effects of the hoht afternoon air rising off the baking desert beneath us. The same rules of atmospheric thermodynamics that allows birds to gracefully wheel in ever-higher arcs over the desert floor also apply to 747s, but there isn't anything graceful about our flight, which lurches clumsily through the air. I would never have described myself as someone who’s afraid of flying, but I’m going to start avoiding these Saharan flights. They’re nasty.


The Aswan airport is tiny and, on a Sunday, was completely empty. This didn’t mean that I could make it to the bathroom unobserved by the staff, however. As soon as I left the stall, a newly-arrived attendant handed me a paper towel and I handed him back a one-pound note. I could see right away from the polite-but-disgusted look on his face that I had made a mistake. I realized that I’d used my left hand to pass him his baksheesh. This must have been particularly revolting given where I’d just been. I do really try to not make these mistakes, but I’ve found that there’s a difference between knowing the proper etiquette and having the presence of mind to always observe it. This is why whenever I’ve had the opportunity to eat with anyone local, I literally sit on my left hand.

The taxi cartel at Aswan International is unusually disciplined, and my price negotiations weren't impressing anyone, including Ms. Chadha. When my generous counter-offer of LE50 was refused en-masse by the rank of drivers, I was left without any other plan except to sit there until someone crumbled. Someone did, but it was no surprise when that someone was me. Unless you’re a masochist or on a very tight budget, book a hotel transfer.

I’d read that Aswan’s souq was the best outside of Cairo, and since I was still in the market for a backgammon board, we decided to give shopping a try before anything else. Aswan’s municipal government had completely refurbished the market several years ago. Gone are the narrow, twisting streets with shops and vendors of every sort all haphazardly heaped together. Now the uniformly sized shops sit in neat rows on newly paved streets. It feels like you’re in an exotic version of a suburban shopping mall, though admittedly one with a more interesting food court. The main disadvantage is that in these “improved” open streets, the shopkeepers can see you from thirty meters away, and so have time to position themselves as inconveniently as possible – usually with the aim of separating you from whomever you’re walking with. The shopkeepers recognize that it's easier for a group of people to ignore them and have adjusted their strategy accordingly. In Aswan, you have to fight to stay together.

Overall, shopping in any souq is definitely a more pleasant experience when there's actually something you want to buy. However, after seeing thirty versions of the same backgammon board, we gave up and went back to the hotel. I still have hope that I’ll find what I’m looking when we’re back in Cairo. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way. I'm probably going to end up getting one on eBay, which would be pretty lame after having lived all of this time in North Africa.

We stayed at the Keylany Hotel, which is a few streets off the Corniche. This means that you lose the river view, but it’s quieter, cleaner, and I’m not sure that the price can be beat. It is a shame about the view, though. When I’d thought about the Nile, the scene from the Corniche is what I’d imagined: a ribbon of blue between dun colored cliffs and mountains of sand, thick stands of palms gathered on either side. It was beautiful and the rooftop of the Keylany would have been the perfect place to take it in – it’s been tastefully decorated with wicker and hundreds of fairy lights** (which looked better than I make it sound).

We decided to have a quick drink before calling it an early night (we had a 2:50 A.M. wake-up call to look forward to), but instead managed to get caught in a conversation with a roof full of backpackers. Trying to extricate yourself from a tipsy pair of chatty South Africans isn't easy, but I felt like I was up to it after an afternoon of practice in Aswan’s markets. Instead of letting myself be suckered into listening to an evening of stories even more exaggerated than mine, I followed my fail-safe souq escape tactics: I smiled, didn’t let them get between Ms. Chadha and me, went for a quick exit while ignoring the usual mix of pleas and insults, and hoped we got away without offending anyone too much. I think I’m getting good at this.

*Pepsi is killing Coke in the Egyptian cola wars. I have no idea why. It's very disheartning.
** I've always just called them "Christmas lights", but that doesn't seem to fit here. I've adopted Ms. C's terminology.