The previous post on this series is here..
We had reached out cruise boat and had a nice lunch. The plan was to take a nap and do an evening activity. It was optional and 4 of us opted to do it. It was 20 USD per person to do a boat ride on the Nile to the other side past Elephanine island to visit a Nubian village.
Our guide Walid, pretty much begged me not to miss it. He said "you are a photographer! the sunset here is just plain amazing! don't miss it!". So off we went. We started at ~4:30. Walid had told us that it will be at least 2-3hours to go, spend time at the village and come back to the boat by the 7:30 dinner time.
Walid was spot on! This was the most amazing sunset we had seen with the boats, the river and the different types of huts in the villages we crossed.
Here is a slideshow..
There were lot of pictures on the boat ride to and fro.. some highlights and "people pictures"
We got fantastic photos!
Most of these Nubians (folks from south of Egypt and Sudan) who are generally dark skinned were displaced because of the dam. They had a rich social culture of large families that lived in groups. Their houses always had a central courtyard with rooms being added as folks got married. A modular mud house structure with igloo type roofs. They put sand in the open courtyard.
there were beautiful murals on the walls..
Almost all of them had crocodiles for pets as the crocs were their main god.
Walid told us that Crocs were their god(Sobek) for a reason. They would watch how high the crocs went to lay their eggs on the sand banks. Higher they went, more the expected flood for the year a few months later. The crocodiles were an early flood warning system for them. They saved lives. They were worth protecting! They are fed "bread"! they were veggie crocs and were mostly docile and played with the kids. We shopped around the market and were welcomed into a home for tea and coffee. The family was nice. Their kids had a 20 year old croc and a 2 year old baby. I was allowed to hold and pet the baby croc which was just wandering around our coffee table!
it was 1 USD to pet the croc and take pictures. It was free to let it wander around near us!
After that we were asked to check out the view from the roof.. it was like a west mambalam rooftop per the group! The village roads (sand) and the cute shops and fast running race camels made for some amazing experience.
We said bye to the village and went back to our cruise boat watching the reflected lights from the village in the Nile waters..
(our friends were the reason for this photo.. wife did the art direction, husband took the photo)
It was a spectacular evening! We were glad we went on this. . .
Video highlights of this "optional" but should have been a compulsory trip!
After this we stopped at the local Aswan market to get some water bottles (the cruise was charging for large water bottles). Later we found out that the two regular bottles in the rooms every day were free. However there was no way to make hot water for tea in the rooms. They did give us hot water at the bar but we had to tip the guys who gave us hot water at the end of the trip(that was okay!).
We were informed by an apprehensive Walid that we leave the following morning at 4AM and he has set up a wake up call for the group! Again a collective groan went up. There was going to be a long drive in the morning!
When we went back to the cruise, my head was splitting because of jet lag. I dozed off and skipped dinner.. apparently they had made Dal just for the desi familes who had joined that day on the cruise (it has a 200 people capacity and was pretty much full!). There was 8 of us and a group of 6 from Mumbai and another quiet desi couple.
It was lights out for me!
