Eventful Egypt continued

A week ago we left Cairo with the intention of travelling all the way to Aswan in a single day. That master plan was upset by Jerry's accident, but it turns out it was just a pipe dream anyway. It has taken us all of the last week to make the 1000km journey.

Admittedly, for the first few days after the crash we were held up in the same place - the small town of Bani Suef just a hundred kilometres south of Cairo. Our guidebook informed us that "there's nothing particularly interesting to do or see in Bani Suef", and with the exception of an excellent cake shop, they were right.

By Wednesday, after four days of R&R, we were all looking forward to getting back on our bikes. And with Jerry's leg in reasonable working order we set off on our southerly course following the Nile Valley. What an interesting landscape to ride our bikes through. Vast sandy desert bisected by a channel of verdant fields and palm trees that hug the edge of the glistening blue river. Sahara meets the tropics in just a few feet. Marvellous.


Despite the breathtaking scenery, I wasn't enjoying the ride as much as I'd hoped. My new tyres were taking a long time to bed in, limiting my speed and my cornering ability (two of the more enjoyable aspects of riding a motorcycle). When they did eventually smooth off, the freedom of the open road was interrupted by a series of police checkpoints. In Egypt, the authorities are so concerned about tourist safety (following the '97 Luxor bombings) that they insist on escorting tourists as they travel through. Normally, great convoys of tour buses are escorted from one sight to the next. But we weren't part of the normal tourist crowd and so warranted special attention.

Each checkpoint took it upon themselves to give us a personal escort. What a privilege you might think - being treated like royalty. Not so. The novelty of having a police car lead the way soon gave way to a sense of frustration (at the loss of freedom) and coughing (from the diesel fumes being spewed out of the back of the clapped out old trucks). After one afternoon and an evening of this, we arrived in Sohag - a dingy Nile town about halfway between Bani Suef and Luxor. That night, while staying in a flea infested hotel, we agreed that we'd had just about enough of the escorts and would do our utmost to get rid of them. The following morning we woke up to find three bored traffic cops waiting for us in a navy pickup truck. Unlike the previous day, our escorts were well organised. Damn.


As we moved from one district to the next, a new navy pickup truck would be waiting to lead us on. It was quite an efficient process for the first few cars, but our third escort was frustratingly slow. Driving at 30mph behind a smoke spewing truck was too much for me. So, with the Great Escape theme playing in my head, I pulled up beside the police driver, gave him an appreciative salute then gunned the throttle. We lost them after a couple of kilometres and for the first time in what seemed like days we had our freedom back. It lasted for a good 20km too before we arrived at the next checkpoint and picked up yet another escort.

Arriving in Luxor late that afternoon, we navigated our way through the dusty streets to find the Amon Hotel - a quiet air conditioned sanctuary on the west bank of the Nile. As is customary, we arranged to park out bikes in the safety of the hotel's courtyard. This involved riding them up two steps and around a narrow garden path. Tyson went first and I followed, nearly dropping my bike on the tight turn. Around the corner in the courtyard I could hear Buffy (Jerry's bike) ticking over quietly. Suddenly the engine went from a quiet thump to a loud roar. A few startled shouts and a crunching sound followed. Rushing around the corner, I expected to see Jerry's bike on its side in the garden - a standard low speed drop. But Jerry and Buffy were nowhere to be seen. Not in the garden, not in front of the hotel, nowhere. Nowhere outside anyway.

Peering through the hotel's front door I couldn't quite believe my eyes. Buffy and Jerry were both lying on the floor on the other side of the lobby, below a big dent in the wall. The roar from the engine was apparently the sound of Jerry clearing not just the garden steps, but the garden path, the doorstep and the lobby as well.

Jerry was thankfully unhurt, though his legs were shaking in disbelief at what he had just done. Actually, everyone seemed stunned. I couldn't quite understand it until I was told just how Jerry had managed to plough all the way up the garden path and into the hotel. This picture - snapped by a startled Tyson just before he jumped out of the way - shows what happened.


Not only is Jerry doing a monster wheelie, but if you look closely you can see that his back tyre is clearly off the ground too. An amazing stunt, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that the bike is fully loaded and was completely stationary just a second before this shot was taken.

Though Jerry was unhurt, the same couldn't be said for poor Buffy. The lobby's stone wall had left its mark on her face (the front fairing and headlight assembly), giving the impression that she had been slapped around a bit. Initially we thought the fairing was so badly damaged that it would have to be discarded, but some reconstructive surgery at the local mechanic left Buffy looking much better, though still scarred.

With the bikes back in working order, we spent the following day taking in the sights of Luxor. The ancient city is covered in ruins, and it would take days to visit them all. For me, the unquestionable highlight was the tomb of King Tuthmosis IV in the Valley of the Kings. Unlike many of the tombs, an early death left King Tuthmosis' tomb unfinished. The walls are plain, with few paintings and even fewer hieroglyphics. But that stark beauty just adds to the sense of majesty of the sarcophagus, which sits illuminated and alone, deep in the pillared tomb. As pure a taste of ancient history as you're likely to get.

In the Valley of the Kings the touts were out again, but with no restriction on where you can walk (as was the case at the pyramids) their powers were diminished. Ours had grown though and in one amusing incident, a tout tried to sell Tyson an Egyptian figurine for an exorbitant amount of money. Tyson's response was to try and sell the tout back a tacky bit of Canadiana. No sales were made that day.


Now in Aswan, we've spent the last couple of days finalising the paperwork for the Wadi Halfa ferry, which we'll catch tomorrow. It's with mixed feelings that I leave Egypt. We've spent two full weeks here and seen some amazing sights. But the experience has been coloured somewhat by the suffocating bureaucracy and the profit-seeking attitude of the locals. Roll on Sudan.