Home » Egypt » Cycle to the Summit Part 9 - from Cairo to Aswan

We leave the bustle of Cairo to pedal along the Nile for Luxor, Aswan, and the ferry across Lake Nasser to Sudan. The ride is spectacular - the river is lined with palm trees and subsistence farmers wave as we speed past on the smooth roads. Upper Egypt is still considered a bit dangerous for tourists (a legacy of the Luxor massacre), so we are escorted by police wagons as far as Luxor, where we have to take a night train to Aswan.

Cycle to the Summit Part 9 - from Cairo to Aswan

Toby Hammond
2006-06-25 19:11:53

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28th January - Badrasheen to Beni Suef 84km
• Tuesday 29th January - Beni Suef to El Minya 127km
• Wednesday 30th January - El Minya to Asyut 135km
• Thursday 31st January - Asyut to Sohag 107km
• Friday 1st February - Sohag to Nag Hammadi 91km
• Saturday 2nd February - Nag Hammandi to Luxor 126km

We spend the next six days pedalling south along the banks of the Nile, hampered by the best efforts of the tourism police, who are still very twitchy about tourists in the area since the Luxor massacre ten years ago. So on our way between Cairo and Luxor, we are rarely without a police wagon driving alongside us, complete with two gaping armed soldiers in the back, -at each town or checkpoint they handed us over to the next ute. At one town we were chaperoned by no less than 3 police wagons and 2 tanks, which we thought seemed a little excessive. We are a curiosity to the locals in any case, but to our dismay and embarrassment, several of the police escorts insist on using wailing sirens, and blocking the entire road, creating tailbacks or dangerous overtaking, and not making our journey along the Nile a relaxing one.
In the evenings, we are usually glad of the police to help us find a cheap hotel (there are very few hotels at all - these towns in Upper Egypt are not visited by tourists). Their duty is not complete with that, however. We are never allowed to leave the hotel without their accompaniment, we have little freedom to choose where to eat or what to do, and are usually hurried back to the hotel.
I heard somebody poetically describe the Nile valley as 'verdant' the other day, and it's a good description. Only when you're up above the valley do you realise what a swathe of lush green land is there, - thanks to the Nile. Outside of this corridor, Egypt is dusty, dry and very barren. The agricultural success is thanks to intensive irrigation. Water is drawn up from channels and ditches running ...