Day 104
Sleeping location: Nobaleeh Hotel, Abu Simbel, Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 119 / 8195
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 59100
Insect troubles: numerous
Day in three words: The mighty Sahara
Upon awaking we found that 8 moths had taken shelter inside the tent, and had to be carefully shooed away. Soon after another concerning pest arrived in the form of hundreds of tourists on their coaches to Abu Simbel. They wandered around like sheep and gawped at us whilst we ate breakfast. One guy took a picture of me whilst I was brushing my teeth. If this is how they act towards the locals, no wonder they seem to hate tourists.
We set off with a nice tailwind again, although this meant that there was no cooling breeze since we were travelling with the movement of the air, so we got very hot very quickly. There were also little green flies everywhere, which landed on any patch of exposed skin and gave you a little nibble for some unknown fly reason. By now we were in the “proper” Sahara, nothing but golden sand as far as the eye could see. It’s an incredibly unforgiving landscape, with no protection from the hot sun for tens of km at a time. Every so often was a dead camel, which had been stripped of everything edible, leaving only bright white bones and papery skin. It was all very beautiful in a kind of stark way, and there were frequent “seas” of mirages in the distance. Cycling across the world’s biggest desert is another one of those incredibly exotic and evocative things that I keep mentioning, and something you never would have imagined was possible.
At our late morning coffee stop they were showing an insane TV show which was possibly the same one as we saw on the ferry to Egypt. It was welcome respite from the baking sun so we watched for a while and enjoyed a lot of cold drinks. After this was yet more desert until Abu Simbel. Just after the last checkpoint was some kind of “valley of death” with about 20 camel and cow corpses in various stages of breakdown, all within a km or so. The whole area absolutely stank of death, it was bizarre and horrible. The town itself was quite nice, it sits on the shore of Lake Nasser and is quiet and leafy. We went to the temple/camping/ferry area to see what was what, but it turned out there were no boats to Sudan the next day and we were too late for the last one that day. We decided to get a hotel in town, see the temples the next day, then leave on the first boat the following day. After a bit of haggling and exploring we settled on a reasonable room with impressively high ceilings and sexy leopard print blankets, which were needed because of the mighty air conditioning unit.
For dinner we went on a date to a fish place, which gave us a lot of tasty fish but also seemed to charge suspiciously high prices. Sadly we had already eaten when we learned the price, and don’t know the Egyptian market rates for fish, so we had to accept it after some only moderately successful haggling. Alcohol is illegal in Sudan and we don’t want to risk smuggling it in, so we used up the terrible Egyptian whisky in a cocktail making competition (with the limited resources available). I went with whisky, pineapple soda and harissa, and Rebecca used whisky, two cinnamon sticks and some ice cream. We both thought our own were the best, so it was ruled a draw.
Distance (km today/total): 119 / 8195
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 59100
Insect troubles: numerous
Day in three words: The mighty Sahara
Upon awaking we found that 8 moths had taken shelter inside the tent, and had to be carefully shooed away. Soon after another concerning pest arrived in the form of hundreds of tourists on their coaches to Abu Simbel. They wandered around like sheep and gawped at us whilst we ate breakfast. One guy took a picture of me whilst I was brushing my teeth. If this is how they act towards the locals, no wonder they seem to hate tourists.
We set off with a nice tailwind again, although this meant that there was no cooling breeze since we were travelling with the movement of the air, so we got very hot very quickly. There were also little green flies everywhere, which landed on any patch of exposed skin and gave you a little nibble for some unknown fly reason. By now we were in the “proper” Sahara, nothing but golden sand as far as the eye could see. It’s an incredibly unforgiving landscape, with no protection from the hot sun for tens of km at a time. Every so often was a dead camel, which had been stripped of everything edible, leaving only bright white bones and papery skin. It was all very beautiful in a kind of stark way, and there were frequent “seas” of mirages in the distance. Cycling across the world’s biggest desert is another one of those incredibly exotic and evocative things that I keep mentioning, and something you never would have imagined was possible.
At our late morning coffee stop they were showing an insane TV show which was possibly the same one as we saw on the ferry to Egypt. It was welcome respite from the baking sun so we watched for a while and enjoyed a lot of cold drinks. After this was yet more desert until Abu Simbel. Just after the last checkpoint was some kind of “valley of death” with about 20 camel and cow corpses in various stages of breakdown, all within a km or so. The whole area absolutely stank of death, it was bizarre and horrible. The town itself was quite nice, it sits on the shore of Lake Nasser and is quiet and leafy. We went to the temple/camping/ferry area to see what was what, but it turned out there were no boats to Sudan the next day and we were too late for the last one that day. We decided to get a hotel in town, see the temples the next day, then leave on the first boat the following day. After a bit of haggling and exploring we settled on a reasonable room with impressively high ceilings and sexy leopard print blankets, which were needed because of the mighty air conditioning unit.
For dinner we went on a date to a fish place, which gave us a lot of tasty fish but also seemed to charge suspiciously high prices. Sadly we had already eaten when we learned the price, and don’t know the Egyptian market rates for fish, so we had to accept it after some only moderately successful haggling. Alcohol is illegal in Sudan and we don’t want to risk smuggling it in, so we used up the terrible Egyptian whisky in a cocktail making competition (with the limited resources available). I went with whisky, pineapple soda and harissa, and Rebecca used whisky, two cinnamon sticks and some ice cream. We both thought our own were the best, so it was ruled a draw.
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