Egypt February 2-17, 2025

Monday, February 10, 2025 - Dahabiya Nile Cruise: Esna, El Hegz

We had another table overlooking the Nile and the Valley of the Kings at breakfast in the La Corniche dining room, but there weren't as many hot air balloons to see this morning. The wind must be different, because the ones that we did see were flying a different route.

For breakfast this morning, we enjoyed omelets, "white cheese", cake, sun bread, beef sausage, orange juice, and coffee. The white cheese here was different than what we had at lunch yesterday, it had a different consistency and taste. That is because it can be made with the milk of different animals and seems to be locally made and sourced.

We went back to the room and put our bags out in the hallway, and they were collected and brought downstairs. We checked out, paying our mini bar and room service tab, and Amir greeted us. We got into the van and were driven to nearby Esna. The entire ride was green and lush. Small boat cruises such as ours start in Esna so that they can avoid going through the locks on the Nile and travel 200 km upstream to Aswan.

When we got to Esna shortly after 10 am, we embarked on the Dahabiya Safiya for our 4-night Nile Cruise. The dahabiya was moored south of the old Esna Locks, and we had to climb over several other boats' decks to reach it. The dahabiya staff was very attentive to Craig and helped him to cross the boats and get onboard.

A dahabiya doesn't use a motor; it has two sails (one at the bow and one at the stern). The Nile flows from South to North, and the prevailing winds blow North to South, so sail power can be effective for upstream travel. When it is not windy, a small tug boat pulls the dahabiya. The Safiya can accommodate 20 passengers, but our sailing only has 8 tourists and two guides. Four of us are English speakers and we have an English speaking guide, Amr. The other four are French speaking and have their own guide.

We were greeted with cool hand towels and a glass of lime/mint/soda to drink. No shoes are allowed on the boat, so we took them off and put them on the shelves at the bow of the boat right next to the stairs. We are the first tourists to have arrived, so we had plenty of time to get acquainted with the boat and its amenities. The boat was constructed of gorgeous varnished wood.

There are indoor and outdoor common areas on the main deck. In the outdoor dining area, there is a coffee and tea station where you can help yourself to a hot beverage, and a fridge full of complimentary soft drinks. There are water dispensers and they gave us each a branded metal water bottle to use for the duration of the trip. They are a green company and are trying to reduce single-use plastics. All food and beverages are included, but there is no alcohol onboard for sale. We learned that we could have bought some in Luxor and brought it with us, but we hadn't known that in advance. There are no places in Esna to buy alcohol.

Toward the stern of the boat on the main deck was a hot tub. Craig and I looked at each other and each had the thought that we would like to try that at least once while on the cruise.

On the lower deck are the cabins, as well as the crew quarters and the galley. The crew were seated on the deck eating their breakfast at the bow, and they were very friendly, even going as far as offering for us to join them. We would have done so had we not just finished our big breakfast at the hotel. At the stern there was a lounge area where you could relax and watch the world go by.

Rather than room numbers, the cabins are each named after one of the stops on the journey. Our cabin, Kom Ombo (named after the temple of the crocodile god Sobek), is quite spacious and comfortable. More like a hotel room than a cabin. It had a nice en suite bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower. Hot water comes from a solar-heated tank.

The corridor on the lower deck is in the interior, which gives all cabins big picture windows, which even open to let in a breeze. The cabins are only a couple feet above the water level, so it really gives the feeling of being one with the river. We got settled in our cabin, put on our complimentary slippers, and then walked around the boat.

There is wi-fi on the boat, and they gave us the passwords (separate wi-fi for upstairs and downstairs). We sat on the deck, enjoying coffee and hibiscus tea. After a busy, jam-packed start to the trip, we looked forward to a relaxing few days with small shore excursions and just enjoying the romance of sailing the Nile. We chatted with Amr and got to know him. He is really down to earth and funny, while also possessing much knowledge about Egyptology. Touring with him would feel like being with a good friend who is showing you the highlights of his country. This is exactly the kind of guide that we love.

The rest of the guests (Mark and his daughter Jenn from the USA, and Jeanne and Karim and their two teenaged boys from France) were a little later than their expected arrival time. They arrived at around 1:30 pm. Because the boat had a schedule to keep, we had to leave for our afternoon excursion as soon as they arrived. This meant that they felt a bit discombobulated, as they didn't have a chance to get settled into their cabin or even really see the boat before taking right off again. We empathized with them; we have been in that situation before and it is not ideal. They did not feel prepared to do an excursion directly following their ride from Luxor. However, even if they felt unprepared in some ways, they were prepared in others. They had been aware of the alcohol policy, and had brought some wine and beer with them.

We got into the minivan that had brought them, and drove a short distance to the Temple of Khnum in Esna. Khnum is a ram-headed god who created humans on his potter's wheel. This is a temple that was built by the Greeks and Romans. It was built on top of an earlier Egyptian temple, built by King Tuthmosis III. The temple of Khnum is 9 meters below today's street level, and only the hypostyle hall remains intact (it was added by the Roman Emperor Claudius). It doesn't look like much from outside, as part of it is obscured by scaffolding. But there are some nice carvings on the exterior, including images of Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian in Egyptian garb, with their names in cartouches. There are images of the spoils of battles: hands collected from the dead so that they could count the casualties.

But the unique and stunning thing about this temple is the coloration of the interior columns, walls, and ceilings. These have been cleaned but not repainted, and the restoration has left them so vibrant. There are 24 columns, and each are unique. There are beautiful ceiling paintings, including the sky goddess Nut, who swallows the sun each day at dusk and gives birth to it again the next day at dawn. This temple really gives a feel for what temples actually looked like back in their heyday. They were not drab sandstone, but instead every surface was elaborately colored. It is stunning and, despite being a relatively small site, was one of my favorites.

One interesting detail in the wall carvings that we had not noticed before is the depiction of three dimensions. Instead of just depicting people side by side in two dimensions, the artists here show depth and people standing behind one another.

After admiring the beauty of the temple, we made a quick stop at the next door Wakalat (Wekala) Al-Jiddawi, a caravanserai where merchants would stop when they came through Esna. It was constructed in 1792 AD and as such is much newer than most of what we have been seeing thus far. Esna was at the crossroads of trade routes at the time. It had storage rooms for goods as well as places for merchants to stay. There were small doors would open to shops. The caravanserai was recently restored to its former glory.

The Wekala was built in two floors of mud bricks. On the ground floor there is a group of shops for displaying goods, while the upper first floor was used as a rest house of merchants, and it can be reached through two staircases on the northwestern and northeastern sides. The main facade of the Wekala overlooks the famous temple of god Khnum in Esna temple, and in the middle of the entrance block, which is topped by a pointed arch with three pointed arches inside, and decorated with brick.

- AhramOnline

We walked upstairs to the roof of the caravanserai. No matter how many signs they posted to watch your head, I still managed to lightly hit my head in the stairwell. From the roof, we had a view of the Egyptian temple of Khnum, a Christian church, and a mosque. It was very cool to see these three very different religious institutions in one frame.

We walked back to the dahabiya at 3 pm. It was a nice walk along a rather busy street which ran parallel to the river. We passed mosques, banks, and shops. I was delighted to see a cat along the way.

We were greeted with cool hand towels and the lime/mint/soda every time we got back onto the boat. We took off our shoes and put them in the same spot on the shelf where we had put them when we first arrived, being the creatures of habit that we are.

Then we set sail. Our tugboat towed us up the Nile at a distance, so the sound of its motor is not too loud. It was exciting to actually be cruising the Nile. We had been waiting for this.

At mealtime and excursion time, the staff go through the boat ringing a bell and calling out, for example, "Luuuunch tiiiiiime!" We had a lovely buffet lunch with our fellow passengers in the outdoor dining room. Lunch consisted of rice, grilled chicken, beef meat loaf stuffed with veggies, tomato and cheese salad, bread, pasta with spinach sauce, and yogurt with mint, with fruit for dessert. We had cans of Fanta to drink.

Lunch finished at around 4 o'clock, and we lounged on deck chairs in the late afternoon sun. There were games and books for the use of the passengers, but Craig and I preferred to just sit and watch the landscape pass us by. Some of our fellow passengers played Uno or spent some time relaxing in their cabins.

The sun set around 5:40, and the sky turned orange as we moored for the night along the banks of the Nile outside the village of El Hegz. The small size of the dahabiya means that it can moor just about anywhere, unlike the larger Nile cruises, which are restricted to several ports.

They laid out a gang plank, and at 6 pm, we went ashore in the dark for our second excursion of the day, a visit to a local home in El Hegz village. Debris from nearby palm trees lay strewn on the ground as we walked along dirt paths to get to the house.

Some tourists had wandered by this particular house one day, and the owner had invited them in. They had a nice visit, and word got around. The owner of Dahabiya Safiya asked if they could have a formal relationship and take guests there for a cultural exchange. The owner of the house's adult daughter Asmaa began to receive tourists on a regular basis. Asmaa didn't know English, and her neighbor gave her a hard time, saying that with these tourists visiting, she should learn English. This motivated her, and 3 years ago she taught herself English with the help of "Mr. Google" and Duolingo.

Asmaa sat with us outside and offered us tea (mint or hibiscus). We chose mint, and we sipped the tea as we chatted and she answered our questions. She told us that the home was built in 1933 by the British for her grandfather, who worked in the nearby water pumping station. Water was pumped from the Nile to houses in the village.

There are paintings on the exterior of the house to commemorate her parents' visits to Mecca by airplane and by boat. Then she invited us inside for a look at the interior of the almost 100-year old house. She no longer lives here herself, but her single relatives do. They have a cat to chase mice, but he doesn't have a name. We saw a water jug with a pointed bottom propped up on a stand made of rebar. Amr explained that this was a zeer pot, a clay pot which acts as refrigeration for drinking water. It is an ancient method that is still used today, both in homes and in the countryside, where zeer pots can be found witha cup on top of tem, so that those walking by can have a cool drink in the hot Egyptian climate.

The owner of Dahabiya Safiya helped Asmaa to start her own sewing business, and now she has professional grade sewing machines and a small team of women working for her. They produced the tissue box covers on the dahabiya and embroidered the logos on the uniforms of the dahabiya staff. When we all heard this, we asked if we could see the workshop. We wanted to support her small business. She said that she would be happy to show us, and we walked the short distance to her apartment where the workshiop is located. She showed us the various tablecloths, tote bags, pillow covers, and purses that she and her team produce. It so happens that my purse zipper broke yesterday, so it was the perfect time to buy a handmade purse that I can use for the remainder of the trip. (Shout out to Jenn and Mark who spotted me some cash as I had left my money in the safe in the dahabiya). After 90 minutes, we walked back to the boat.

I paid Jenn and Mark back the money that I borrowed as we sat down for a nice buffer dinner at 8 pm. We enjoyed mushroom soup, rice, au gratin potatoes, potato salad, chicken, beef with mushroom, and bread, with an Egyptian bread pudding called om ali for dessert.

I posted to Facebook and Instagram. We went to bed at 10 pm, since we have an early 7 am excursion tomorrow.