I wake up and there are cows outside my cabin window. This is a mild surprise because we were not near fields when we moored last night. The crew had changed our mooring earlier in the morning and the boat rides so smoothly that I didn't feel it. The day proceeds in a relaxed manner with nothing planned until noon. For long stretches this morning there is no traffic visible upstream or down and we have the Nile to ourselves. The banks are arid with sandstone bluffs behind a narrow belt of palms. No good farming land in this stretch and so there are few villages.
One stop later in the day is a visit to a Nubian village. Nubians are the darker skinned ethnic group of the southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Huge numbers of them were relocated when their villages were flooded by the building of the Aswan Hugh Dam in the 1960's. The villagers are farmers who live a life mostly neglected by the government, and we tour the town with a cluster of young boys trying to sell us camel bone necklaces to bring in extra money for their families. As we walk I like to photograph doors that have character and this village is a treasure trove of doors with soul.
The evening is a radical departure from the tranquil Nile of the morning due to the many huge Nile cruse boats that lumber by - maybe a hundred or so, all on their way to Aswan, where we will be tomorrow. As I lie in bed at night, they are rocking us gently with their wakes.
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