Felucca on the Nile
by Adrian Cole
Since 1849 Thomas Cook
has been cruising the Nile. Although the name may evoke images of
sunburn on European beaches or 17-year-olds making out in
discotheques, the company was at the forefront of opening up what
has since become one of the most outstanding tourist attractions
of the world: the river Nile. Muhammad Ali’s Janissaries watched
the early steam ships carrying European nobility up and down the
waters of the Nile at the beginning of Egypt’s process of
modernization. Back then, Europeans went primarily to view the
ruins of antiquity—both Roman and Ancient Egyptian. Scant
attention was paid to the wonders of contemporary Egypt, with the
possible exception of flora and fauna, and the contemporary
Egyptians themselves featured as little more than picturesque
scenery or servants.
One of the first customers to take part in this adventure was an
unknown nurse from London called Florence Nightingale, who, en
route to the Crimea to take up her legendary place in history,
spent two months sailing between the Mediterranean and the borders
of the Sudan. As one of the earliest female travelers in that
region, she was constantly chaperoned by Turkish soldiers while
ashore, and they kept the curious, and occasionally threatening,
crowds at bay. She would sit under her umbrella and contemplate
the marvels of the Pharonic era. At sunset she took up her
position on the deck of her steamer, a diary open on her lap,
while her eyes feasted on the scenery, devouring the morsels of
past civilizations standing mute on the banks of the longest river
on earth, while Egrets flew low over the water.
Today, this sort of experience is still very much available,
although in somewhat degraded form. First of all, you are not
alone; hundreds of floating hotels now exist to transport tourists
down the Nile, and they are especially thick on the waters between
Luxor and Aswan, the country’s two greatest tourist spots. The
curious and occasionally threatening onlookers are still there,
although they are perhaps less threatening, since many have
realized that looking on is a waste of time when they can fashion
cheap reproductions of Nefertiti and hawk them to you for a
killing. Hence they are making a much better living off their
heritage than their predecessors ever did. Having said this, what
you encounter on the shores of the Nile is extreme poverty, for
such is Egypt, especially outside of its great metropolis of
Cairo. For locals, these glitzy riverboats transporting coddled
Westerners with their gadgets represent incomprehensible wealth,
sliding by, only the merest fraction of it rubbing off on the way.
If the floating hotel is not your cup of tea it is still possible
to avoid the crowds and at the same time witness the Nile up close
and personal—on a Felucca. The slightly hardier traveler can hire
a personal ship and captain and follow the dictates of the wind.
Walking down the Corniche at Luxor we came across a Felucca
captain sitting on the wall mending his sails. We asked him if he
would take us up river, perhaps a night or two, toward the Roman
remains at Kom Ombo, an imposing ruined temple. Ali was the man’s
name, and he looked to be about fifty, although bearing in mind
the exposure to sun and wind in his life he could well have been
ten years younger. We agreed to pay him around one hundred and
fifty Egyptian pounds, an amount arrived at after five minutes of
good natured haggling. This was a good price, well below what a
couple of nights on a floating hotel would cost; but there were to
be no creature comforts: we were paying for Ali’s time.
We met him early the next morning, and by seven we were installed
in the twenty-five foot wooden vessel. The Felucca is
traditionally a unique type of gaff rig, with a tall, slightly
raked-back mast, a large mainsail and a smaller jib. Its hull is
beamy and deep, designed as it is for cargo, which we were to
experience first hand. The first day brought us a stiff breeze and
we tacked from side to side, upriver, briskly, each tack bringing
us within feet of women on the banks of the river washing heaps of
clothes. Ali laughed at when we drank water from bottles, voicing
the oft-heard line: “He who drinks from the Nile will return to
the Nile.” I wanted to tell him that they’d be lucky if they ever
left Egypt. He scooped up a glass full of river water and held it
up to the light, exhibiting all kinds of detritus floating in it,
and, extolling its purity, drained it in one, as if taking a shot
of the best Russian Vodka. Setting the glass down, he exclaimed in
English: “Good!” We negotiated that for the duration of our time
aboard we would not touch the water unless it was thoroughly
boiled and used in tea.
By early afternoon we had reached what turned out to be Ali’s
village (not by chance). He took down the sails, claiming it was
too windy to go on, (judging by the age of the sails he was
probably right), and beached the boat on a mud bank. For the rest
of the afternoon he proceeded to pick watermelons in what we
assumed were his fields. The village, perched on a slight rise on
the edge of the river, looked over a few acres of farmland which
produced onions and watermelons. There was also a small
boat-building enterprise which created Feluccas in a small inlet
between the fields.
We napped in the felucca for a while, finding enough room in it to
stretch out on our sleeping bags. Rigging a small awning from the
mast, we were able to keep the sun off us, and when the heat had
diminished a little, we set off into the village. We wandered for
an hour or so among mud-brick houses and into the hinterland
around the village where we saw water buffalo working irrigation
pumps: large wooden wheels mounted on top of pivots, turned by the
motion of the animals walking incessantly in circles. This motion
brought water from the river up through small irrigation channels
into the fields, which supported sugar cane. We were invited into
someone’s house for tea, and found ourselves in a small courtyard
of a mud brick house, populated by several small children, a
couple of older women, and a large number of chickens. The
traditional strong black tea, heavily sugared, was accompanied by
a large plate of fresh dates. The children giggled at us and
examined our hats and dark glasses, while the women pounded grain
for bread.
We stayed for dinner, joined later by Ali (who turned out to be
the owner of the house) and his two sons, who had finished their
work in the fields. Dinner was chicken and beans, and as we ate
Ali’s sons extracted an English lesson from us: “Is it: Would
you like a ride on a Felucca? Or: Would you like to ride a
Felucca?” I briefly imagined the Felucca as an exotic
water-creature, a Loch Ness Monsteresque anomaly splashing through
the Nile. After diner we bid them all goodnight, and went back to
our floating hotel, where we slept on hard wooden floor, attacked
by rapacious mosquitoes and inquisitive spiders.
The next morning we were woken at 4:30 a.m. by Ali and his sons,
their arms full of watermelons. At first, we thought they wanted
us to eat them; then we realized they were loading the harvest
into the Felucca. It became clear that our cruise had been
hijacked by the watermelon harvest, and we would have to share our
quarters with the fruit. Over the next hour or so Ali and his sons
loaded the boat with what must have been 150 enormous melons. They
insisted that we shouldn’t help, and soon the pile of melons
towered above us. Ali’s sons pushed the boat into the water as he
raised the sails and we set off across the river. We lay,
half-asleep, while the Felucca cut through the water heading
upriver. Above us the Egyptian sky was filling with light, the
sail full and smooth against it. An hour later, pulling up on the
opposite shore a little upstream, we found ourselves, still
semi-conscious, in the middle of a market, with men unloading
goods from Feluccas and camels craning their necks into the boat
to sniff at the produce. From our beds in the bottom of the boat
we watched hands unloading the produce, the pile of melons rapidly
diminishing, faces occasionally peering in to look at the Hawagas—foreigners—and
grinning widely.
Later that afternoon we reached Kom Ombo after spending the day
dodging the floating hotels, racing other trading feluccas, and
observing the comings and goings of the river at water level:
local, overcrowded ferries transporting humans, animals, and
produce from one side to another; boys shouting greetings as they
fished and played along the reeds on the riverside, women washing
clothes, modestly turning away when we came too close. As we
arrived at our destination I realized we had witnessed and
experienced in 36 hours far more than we would have in a week
onboard a commercial cruise (although we were ready to take a taxi
back to Luxor and check into an air-conditioned hotel). The Roman
ruins were one thing, but our experience of the human scale of the
Nile overshadowed them completely.
© Adrian Cole, 2004
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