We arrived in Aswan after 15 hours suffered in the company of a carriageful of the loudest and most boring Australians I have ever come across. I must be spoiled in the Australians I know, who are interesting and good conversationalists, because listening to these morons would have put me to sleep if they hadn't been shrieking such nonsense so loudly. The seats had quite a lot of room but it just isn't good to try and sleep sitting up. We managed to get a bit of kip but a man came through about once an hour during the journey offering coffeeteateacoffee. From the train to the Unfinished Hotel - it wasn't called that but should have been. There was a lift shaft, but it was open between the corridors and the street! There was enough hacked away wall around our air conditioning unit to allow plenty of heat in from outside! I know they tend not to finish buildings in Egypt, but we had to laugh at this.
In Cairo there was a fair amount of hassle from Egyptian blokes and it continued and began to get to me in Aswan. I know that this is what they all do to western women but it royally pissed me off after a while. It felt like it wasn't really in fun by men who like women (like down Dalston!), it felt like it was kind of disrespectful, like you were fair game if you weren't wearing a veil and obviously you would expect it you western whore. It was like they had no boundaries when dealing with non-Egyptian women and it got very wearing.
Aswan is far south enough to be in Nubian territory. The Nubians are darker than other Egyptians and seem to hail from the areas of the southern borderlands nearer to Sudan. They are all obsessed with Bob Marley and Jamaica, so that the motorboat we took to the island was part of the 'Jamaica Family', had a Jamaican flag and crew who wore Bob Marley t-shirts. My camel boy actually turned to me and gestured to my face and said 'Jamaican?' which amazed me. I don't know if it was a lucky guess or he could read my heritage in my face (he did later on ask me if I was African, I didn't want to complicate anything by trying to explain, 'originally, yes and maybe your ancestors sold mine into slavery' Ooh controversial. My camel ride was quite stressful. I started off feeling quite TE Lawrence but as we dropped further and further behind and my camel persisted in his attempts to cut at right angles to our path across the dunes towards the village and home, I got agitated. The camel was tired and I didn't have the heart to kick it, as my camel boy suggested (he whacked it enough). It was kinda magic though to ride through the dunes like this. I have to watch Lawrence of Arabia again and see how they manage to charge with their camels cos it looks easier than it is!
In Aswan we went to a Nubian home for a meal which was great and one of those things we woudln't have been able to do on our own. We also went on our own to Philae Island to see the temple (sadly choked with pushing and shoving tour groups, one of whose leaders told Ann to move so his group could get a picture of something - ha ha he couldn't have known what a mistake that would be), having to haggle a fare on the boat over to the island (hated it) and being mobbed by a group of cheeky school girls who came up to me while I was posing for a photo and intimated that they did not approve of my appearance, one of them talking to me in Arabic and getting laughs from the others. Don't try and be badass girls, I said, one I'm from Hackney, two, kids don't scare me and three, I know tougher kids than you (some of whom still owe me!). So I chatted to them in pidgin Arabic chuckling about how my last form class would have eaten them for breakfast. Funny the things that keep you going. On the same day we also went to see the Aswan High Dam, pretty impressive, and the Unfinished Obelisk - a bit of an odd tourist attraction, they started hewing it out of the ground but seemed to have left it because of the big crack they uncovered in it. Interesting as far as it goes but once you've seen it there's nothing to do but to run the gauntlet of boring hawkers in the little shopping arcade you have to go through on the way out. 'Where are you from? Where are you from?' they all ask, to try and engage you in conversation. 'From Hackney and I'm gonna kick your ass!' We did go to the Aswan souk as well and Ann was one step ahead of all the stall holders who jumped into our path with their sales patter of 'Closing down sale', 'I'll pay you to look at my stall', 'Everything's free', with her 'I've already got one'. They had no answer to it, it was great!
It was on this day that I banged my head so hard getting out of the taxi that I heard something crunch in my neck so all day I was worried I had broken something! Luckily I woke up next morning! Our tour guide had his own little jingle which he sang every time we got on a boat or something 'Mind your head, watch your step' and bugger me if i didn't knock my head or slip or something every single time he sang it. Psychological? I think so!
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