We spent two lovely days and nights on a sailing on a felucca down the Nile. I had been a bit anxious about this, like were we going to drift downstream during the night, what if we hit a sandbank and were thrown violently into the water in our pyjamas, what would we do all day on a felucca and were there crocodiles in the Nile? This and many other unnecessary worries because they were 2 of most relaxing days of my life. It's hard to describe what filled the days - a bit of reading, dozing in the sun, meals, the occasional stop to paddle in the Nile. I still don't know how it went so quickly. We became even more intimately acquainted with the other members of our tour group. Two friendly Australians of Pakistani origin who always told locals they were from Pakistan and then got a real thump-on-the-back welcome for fellow muslims. I tried, I'm from Jamaica, but it got a lukewarm response unless they were Nubian Bob Marley fans. And two Americans. Two couples and us. But we were by far the best value because we made everyone laugh and teased the tour guide who wasn't very humble.
On each of the two nights we moored on the bank and set up the toilet tent. This was a unique experience. A western toilet seat on a metal frame placed above a hole dug in the ground and surrounded on its four sides by canvas. It was truly a prince among camping toilets but it might just have been more real if there had been woods and a tree to use my she-wee behind. [For those who haven't seen a she-wee, it's a plastic funnel thing that lets women wee standing up and it's very liberating - if you have done some practice! Remind me to show you sometime. I mean show you the she-wee not me using it.]
On the first night our crew and the crew of the other felucca moored nearby got us all out for an evening of singing Nubian songs and dancing around the campfire. With the Nile lapping at the shore, the full moon out and dancing bodies half-seen in the flickering firelight, it really was quite a magical night, shisha and everything.
Next afternoon we stopped at a village which is rarely visited by tourists and you could see the difference immediately - we weren't mobbed by people trying to sell us crap. Except in the camel market, where they tried to get us on their flea-bitten camels for a ride round a crowded enclosure and leered at us. All that marred the two days on the felucca was my growing sickness (of which more later). Who would have thought when I left London, used to working 8 hour days and project managing my life to the nth degree that I would have been so content to lay for 2 days doing nothing? Wonderful.
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