Day 4 Abu Simbel/Aswan

The next morning, we were without our guide, which presented itself as a rather promising prospect. For one thing, it meant we'd see what we had to see without the running commentary such as it is, and for the other, we were on our way to Abu Simbel. We were taking a short flight because, as I was later told, driving meant a long desolate 300-km journey through desert, a mandatory police convoy and the likelihood of encountering roadblocking waylayers from the bush who hate tourists and the West. To be honest, I don't blame them. Being invaded must come easy to them, and that's just pathetic.

Our EgyptAir (logo: the Falcon head of Horus) Boeing-737 waits for us and transfers us over a true land of arid death with a few lakes, over 30-minutes (which includes apple juice if you're interested) to Abu Simbel. I sat next to an Egyptian guide who pointed out the monument to me as we descended into the airport. The four sitting colossi looked like little wooden toys, but even from up there, I remember being able to make their faces out perfect, mouth, eyes and all. We landed at a busy little terminal -- the Abu Simbel is the second-most visited tourist destination in all of Egypt after the pyramids -- and houses the massive 20-metre high facades of King Ramses II and Queen Nefertari. Built in the 13th Century BC, it was ostensibly a monument aimed to intimidate the already subjugated Nubian backdrop. In the 1960s, the entire monument, reinforced with injections of resin, was sliced up and moved up-hill to save it from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, an artificial reservoir 600-km in circumference built for the Aswan dam.

What I personally found more beautiful than the Greater Temple that lies between the four colossi, was the smaller temple that Ramses built to honour Hathor, within the larger complex to the right. Supremely and arrogantly adorned with Ramses striking down faceless enemies, the two temples ostensibly served as a warning for the raw power that lay downstream on the Nile. As we slowly walked through and gazed up at every square-inch of the Temple's insides, it was amply clear that Ramses II -- the old man whose corpse I'd seen in the flesh just 48 hours before -- was a brilliant and paranoid megalomaniac. As an aside, I noticed a small falcon making superb use of a brief updraft to float virtually stationary over the temple before riding the current's wake down across the other side. Horus!

We walked all the way around the monument along peculiarly pristine Lake Nasser (infested with fish at this time of year apparently) back to the main entrance, and then followed a seemingly endless retinue of gift-shops until we got our bus back to the airport and back to Aswan. Phantom was there to receive us and he drove us back to the hotel where we picked up Meleka. The colour, it appeared, had returned to his face even though most of our trip lay promisingly before us. He got into the bus and we were driven back to the Nile promenade, this time to get on board Emilio, a luxury cruise boat for our three-night sojourn down the world's longest river. The boat, one of about fifty that steam out of Aswan all the time, was plushly furnished -- it had cabins better fitted out than many hotels I've seen, and from its large windows, was, well, the Nile. If anyone was tired (not me) from the Abu Simbel stop, it was all quickly forgotten once we got onto Emilio, Italian-owned.

Lunch on the minus-1 deck at water level was the first thing we did. Sadly, the food was hopelessly poor though the three days, though by this time -- as I've said before -- I had ceased to be hopeful of anything as long as bread and tahina remained a staple. Tragically, this was not the case on the boat, and I had to wait two whole days before seeing any of the stuff. Meleka dropped his first bombshell when he told us that we wouldn't be sailing that afternoon as was originally planned, though he did not explain why -- and I don't remember any of us asking. The result: we were spending our first Nile cruise night on board a ship alright, but docked cosily at Aswan through the night and scheduled to pull out from its rigging a full 24-hours after we'd gotten on. Personally, I was mightily depressed, but then decided it was probably the best possible opportunity to get off the boat and take in a little Aswan on the street. Therefore, I carefully weaseled my way out of the Sound and Light show at the Philae Temple that everyone else went for and headed out instead into Aswan.

I ventured down a market alley opposite the dock and after buying cigarettes and a notebook for this journal, met Abdul, a Nubian who owned the cigarette shop and a two-terminal cybercafe right above. I used the internet for an hour, and uneasily tuned back into the real world. Not much happening except for Navjot Sidhu and Shibu Soren being handed down guilty verdicts. Yawn. I walked for a couple of kilometres down the promenade and found a police chowki of sorts and stopped to have a chat and a smoke. All of them spoke manageable English. One of the cops dispatched his constable across the street to bring me a cup of hibiscus tea and a tumbler of Okk, the local spirit, a sort of brandy really but smelly as hell and bloody strong, but drinking it felt good in the whipping evening breeze, so I energetically downed the helping and only politely refused another. The police here are paid well one of them tells me. Egypt also has a special police regiment designated for "Tourism and Antiquities", a service especially important after the terrorist bombing in Luxor in 1997.

I ambled back to the ship and joined the group in the bar lounge after dinner for an evening of whirling dervishes and a bellydancer. The latter dragged my uncle onto stage, while I smoked from a vantage point near the entrance. Later, men and women from our group would pass judgement that since she only shook her hips -- and not her stomach -- the artist was mediocre. Later over scotch, one of us, who was fitted out in a smashing designer shirt for the evening of entertainment, attributed her disinterest in him to the fact that she was a phoney. It had been a strangely long day, or at least it felt that way. I went up to the sun deck of the vessel for a quick smoke and then went to sleep quickly in my room.