Tag Archives: Nile

Hatshepsut 11
DEPARTURES

The Temple of Hatshepsut, Egypt – Pictures Of A Bygone Era

Leave a comment

On our last-minute splurge to Luxor, we spent several hours at the Temple of Hatshepsut.  The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut is a spectacular tribute located on the west bank of the Nile.  The site has been immortalized in legions of photographs of the region, Indian movies have songs shot in this picturesque location and more recently the site was witness to the massacre of several tourists in 1997.  Our guide, as previously mentioned showed no desire to accompany us and so we actually enjoyed happening upon images and statues unexpectedly.  Do drop in a line if you have visited the site or simply tell us what you think of the place based on this visual journey.

Hatshepsut 1 Hatshepsut 2 Hatshepsut 3 Hatshepsut 4 Hatshepsut 5 Hatshepsut 6 Hatshepsut 7 Hatshepsut 8 Hatshepsut 9 Hatshepsut 10 Hatshepsut 11 Hatshepsut 12

Faluca 9
DEPARTURES

Capturing An Egyptian Faluca Ride in Pictures

Leave a comment

Read any guidebook on visiting Cairo and hidden among its pages will be a recommendation to take a Faluca ride along the Nile.  As most of our readers know, these recommendations sometimes pan out beautifully and at other times are overhyped.  Take a look at these pictures and let us know if you have done this/would do this in Cairo.  Our simple Faluca ride was spiced up with some unanticipated  adventure…if you’d like you can read more at  http://bit.ly/XOaX5g.

Faluca 1 Faluca 2 Faluca 3 Faluca 4 FAluca 5 Faluca 6 Faluca 7 FAluca 8 Faluca 9

FAluca 10

Faluca
DEPARTURES

A Faluca ride on the Nile – A lovely evening with a dash of adventure

Leave a comment

By: Lakshmi

For many years, Frommer’s travel guides have been our go to resource to get ideas on “must do’s” on trips.  ”You shouldn’t leave Cairo without taking a sunset cruise on the Nile in one of these traditional sailboats (the Faluca)”, opined our guidebook.

Our first evening in Cairo, we asked the concierge at our hotel to write down “docks near the Four Seasons hotel” in Arabic, so that we could take a cab and be seamlessly transported to the spot from which we would take our Faluca ride.  As soon as we got in our cab, our cabbie was eager to converse with us.  Between the few words of Arabic that we knew and the handful of English words he could muster, he communicated that he was very excited to have Indians in his taxi.  We would find this to be an oft expressed sentiment during our time in Cairo, finding that the Egyptians have great love and affection for all things Indian….the music, the movie stars, the politicians and the people.

When we mentioned that we wanted to do a Faluca ride, the driver immediately suggested we ride with a friend of his and he would personally broker a great rate and an even better experience.  We kept insisting on him dropping us off at the docks near the Four Seasons, but he just decided to drive on.  We drove for several miles along the Nile and then he stopped the taxi and made us get out.  This was not a thickly populated area, and other than a few locals, we did not see anyone who remotely resembled a tourist.  We spurn guided tours and often take off on our own, but this time a sense of nervousness was setting in.  Was I being stupid and putting my kids at risk?  My colleagues in the US insisted that we always travel as part of guided tours with adequate security, and here we were off the beaten track with a cab driver who was brokering a Faluca ride with a friend.

He asked us for more money than the guidebook recommended and a few seconds later guided us to our Faluca that would be navigated by a teenager.   We scrambled on to the Faluca and were gently rowed away to the lilting tunes of an Egyptian melody.  The sound of the waves in the water, the beautiful melody being played, the everyday life along the banks of the Nile, the apartment complexes smushed together with colorful laundry flying on the balcony….it was Egyptian life encapsulated in a large frame.  Just as we were feeling more relaxed, watching the sun go down gradually, we were greeted by the loud noise of party goers singing and dancing on an adjacent boat.  As the boat passed by, we could glimpse young adults in their colorful attire, swaying to beautiful music, the happy smiles, the joyous beats, the clapping and the thumping.

Needless to say, my fears were baseless.  The ride was lovely and at the end of it, there was our cabbie waiting with the biggest grin on his face wanting to know if he had helped us have a memorable evening.

He drove us back safely to our hotel, not before offering to be our personal driver throughout our stay, including driving us to his home town of Alexandria.  The adventure certainly reaffirmed that the best experiences are to be gained when they are taken off the beaten track with a basic trust of mankind.