Day 94
Sleeping location: Dahab Hotel, Sohag, Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 135 / 7401
Estimated climb (m today/total): 100 / 57900
Escapes: 2
Day in three words: Nile Five Oh
The day started with a bizarre coincidence. We have been buying a brand of processed cheese which we call “boy cheese” as the name is in Arabic and the box has a picture of a cartoon boy on it. When I went on a website there was an advert for that very same cheese; whilst I firmly believe that you get targeted advertising based on what your phone hears you talking about, we weren’t even calling it by its proper name. Very puzzling. The monastery provided us with a tasty breakfast, with pocket eggs and everything, to round off their amazing hospitality. We tried to give them some money when we left but the lady wasn't having it. Go Jesus!
The day went pretty much the same as the Nile Routine mentioned yesterday. Coffee was taken in a pretty big town called Asyut, where a big water channel we have been following for 300km went into the Nile (or, strictly speaking, came out of it) and we got to follow the river itself. Like with the Dead Sea or the Bosporous, it was a great feeling to cycle along this incredibly famous and exotic body of water. Asyut had a string of four great signs in about 200m: “Cook Window”, “Happy Dolphin Master”, “Toof and Shoof”, and finally an advert for a property company featuring a lion wearing a sharp suit and a crown. The first one is even better because there’s a fast food chain in Egypt called Cook Door for some unknown reason; they were obviously going for some brand thievery Newtella style.
The police after this were very annoying and got even worse when they refused to let us take a quiet back road, which was also a shortcut, because it made life more difficult for them. I got very pissed off at this and metaphorically went to my room for the next 15km, putting on some angry music and cycling off at a furious pace that soon left me well out of sight of them and Rebecca. This escape made me very happy and I enjoyed imagining the annoyance of the captain, who was a twat. Eventually I was detained at a checkpoint, where we had a lunch of boy cheese and Virgin Mary pickled onions, ticking off the iconic foodstuffs of Egypt. Rebecca had purchased Oreo and “Borio” biscuits* and we did a blind taste test to determine which was best. Brand snobs will be happy to know that Oreos won, but only after a recount for Rebecca.
We got to Sohag as night was falling and decided to go for a hotel. The last lot of police were very annoying and always hassling us about what we were doing. We picked a hotel but they wanted us to go the roundabout “car” route when there was a much shorter “bike” route. At this point we just decided to ignore them, told them clearly where we were going, and left them in our dust. “Unfortunately” the hotel didn’t exist in the specified location, so we “had to” immediately leave and go to another one. “Thankfully” they found us here, and the captain came out the car with a face like thunder, which I made worse by cheekily doing the slap on the hand gesture on myself. This made us a lot happier than it should have. We couldn’t stay at three hotels due to price/fullness/nonexistence, so in the end we gravitated towards the inevitable conclusion: Dahab Hotel. The third hotel we’ve stayed in with Dahab in its name. It was basic and tiny but otherwise fine and cheap. Rebecca cooked a very tasty and spicy coconut noodle dish in the room, which was shoveled into pittas to make my favourite cooked (ie not bought) meal of the trip so far.
*In case it wasn’t already clear, trademark law isn’t worth much in Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 135 / 7401
Estimated climb (m today/total): 100 / 57900
Escapes: 2
Day in three words: Nile Five Oh
The day started with a bizarre coincidence. We have been buying a brand of processed cheese which we call “boy cheese” as the name is in Arabic and the box has a picture of a cartoon boy on it. When I went on a website there was an advert for that very same cheese; whilst I firmly believe that you get targeted advertising based on what your phone hears you talking about, we weren’t even calling it by its proper name. Very puzzling. The monastery provided us with a tasty breakfast, with pocket eggs and everything, to round off their amazing hospitality. We tried to give them some money when we left but the lady wasn't having it. Go Jesus!
The day went pretty much the same as the Nile Routine mentioned yesterday. Coffee was taken in a pretty big town called Asyut, where a big water channel we have been following for 300km went into the Nile (or, strictly speaking, came out of it) and we got to follow the river itself. Like with the Dead Sea or the Bosporous, it was a great feeling to cycle along this incredibly famous and exotic body of water. Asyut had a string of four great signs in about 200m: “Cook Window”, “Happy Dolphin Master”, “Toof and Shoof”, and finally an advert for a property company featuring a lion wearing a sharp suit and a crown. The first one is even better because there’s a fast food chain in Egypt called Cook Door for some unknown reason; they were obviously going for some brand thievery Newtella style.
The police after this were very annoying and got even worse when they refused to let us take a quiet back road, which was also a shortcut, because it made life more difficult for them. I got very pissed off at this and metaphorically went to my room for the next 15km, putting on some angry music and cycling off at a furious pace that soon left me well out of sight of them and Rebecca. This escape made me very happy and I enjoyed imagining the annoyance of the captain, who was a twat. Eventually I was detained at a checkpoint, where we had a lunch of boy cheese and Virgin Mary pickled onions, ticking off the iconic foodstuffs of Egypt. Rebecca had purchased Oreo and “Borio” biscuits* and we did a blind taste test to determine which was best. Brand snobs will be happy to know that Oreos won, but only after a recount for Rebecca.
We got to Sohag as night was falling and decided to go for a hotel. The last lot of police were very annoying and always hassling us about what we were doing. We picked a hotel but they wanted us to go the roundabout “car” route when there was a much shorter “bike” route. At this point we just decided to ignore them, told them clearly where we were going, and left them in our dust. “Unfortunately” the hotel didn’t exist in the specified location, so we “had to” immediately leave and go to another one. “Thankfully” they found us here, and the captain came out the car with a face like thunder, which I made worse by cheekily doing the slap on the hand gesture on myself. This made us a lot happier than it should have. We couldn’t stay at three hotels due to price/fullness/nonexistence, so in the end we gravitated towards the inevitable conclusion: Dahab Hotel. The third hotel we’ve stayed in with Dahab in its name. It was basic and tiny but otherwise fine and cheap. Rebecca cooked a very tasty and spicy coconut noodle dish in the room, which was shoveled into pittas to make my favourite cooked (ie not bought) meal of the trip so far.
*In case it wasn’t already clear, trademark law isn’t worth much in Egypt
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