Egypt in (more) pictures

These additional photos from Egypt will have to speak for themselves for the time being.......click on them for better views. I hope you enjoy them.

Down the Nile with Chuck Berry, Agatha Christie and boat called Relax

Well, no one got it. Or was it just that I offered no certainty of a prize? The room arrowed in another image of this hotel - the Old Cataract at Aswan on the Nile - was, or so I am assured, taken by Agatha Christie to inspire her during her writing of Death on the Nile


But Egypt, my Egypt for a memorable nine-day winter break, was about much more than that. It was even about more than the incessant begging, and hassle from street vendors with merchandise that you'd never wish to possess, that dogged us from Cairo airport to the Valley of the Kings to the Aswan Dam and the Pyramids and back to Cairo airport.




Our first guide, Ibrahim, had a great answer to the problem. Just feign deafness, he said; do not on any account engage in conversation, even to say: "No thank you."
It saved us from destitution and handed me a half-decent headline for my midweek column at The National. You can read Deaf on the Nile by clicking here.






About Memphis, I have a little story to pass on. Long distance information, you might say, informs me that many years ago, the excellent folk-rock band Fotheringay were playing a concert in Manchester.

Their first album had included a traditional song, Banks of the Nile. Throughout the concert, a group of fans kept yelling for it. Sandy Denny and the boys clearly didn't want to do it.

Come the encores, Sandy shouted: "Do you want Banks of the Nile?"

"Yeah!" the audience called back. And the band launched into Memphis, Tennessee. Someone suggested at Salut! Live that the band must have known that the city of Chuck Berry's song took its name from Memphis on the Nile, Egypt's first capital. Oh no they didn't, came the reply from Jerry Donahue, who was the band's guitarist. It was just a coincidence.




M and Mme Salut! are not cruise people. They had never been on one, or even thought seriously of going on one.





They have changed their minds. Sailing down the Nile - does the fact that the river flows from south to north make it "down the Nile" when you go from Luxor to Aswan? - was as relaxing an experience as I can remember (the fjords of Musandam, only last month, were certainly soothing, but I knew then that a five-hour drive awaited me at the end of the day's cruise).

There was even a cruise within a cruise. For a small sum, we took a small boat on to the river while berthed in Aswan to get some terrific views from the water of Agatha Christie's hotel, a glimpse of the river birdlife and some stunning locations on the island opposite the port.


The boat was even called Relax. I did, even though the two-man crew encouraged me to take lengthy turns on the tiller, which I rather enjoyed (while suspecting their sanity in entrusting me with such a task).

The Nile cuts through a beautiful corridor of the country. Any visit to the Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel and the Pyramids is likely to leave a profound impression.




But I have one question, suggested by Billy Bob Z Redneck III and his wife Cindy Lou........



Just why did they go and build the Pyramids next to that electricity pylon?

37

As anyone who has visited Salut! Sunderland in the past 24 hours will know, the United Arab Emirates - Salut!'s home for 14 months or so - was 37 yesterday.

The country was born two weeks after M and Mme Salut! had the second part of their wedding; that event took place at l'église Sainte Jeanne d'Arc in Le Mans, a church honouring poor Joan of Arc and said by Mme Salut! and others to have been built by Henry II as a sort of "I'm sorry" after the murder of Thomas à Becket. (The legal knot had been tied in the more prosaic setting of Bishop Auckland Register Office a fortnight earlier).

So before I get down to news of recent travels to Egypt, here are a few of the pictures I took last night as Abu Dhabi poured on to the streets to celebrate its 37th anniversary.



Thousands were out on and around the Corniche. My drive home normally takes seven or eight minutes, but last night I abandoned my car several streets from home after getting nowhere in half an hour.




Everything was good-natured and colourful, with people hanging precariously from cars, klaxons hooting and families picnicking on available bits of grass along the promenade.



And people from all over the world joined in; with some estimates suggesting that 160 or so languages or dialects are spoken here, a street party with only Emiratis as guests would be a necessarily quieter affair.

But what of Egypt, from which I returned in yesterday's early hours?

Salut! thoroughly enjoyed being nowhere near a computer screen for eight days. We knew nothing of the grotesque events in Mumbai until the siege was virtually over.

Sailing slowly down the Nile turned out to be one of the most relaxing holidays I have taken - all the more so because the persistent street vendors and beggars of Luxor and Aswan could not reach us on our cruiser.

I will bring words and pictures very soon. For now, let me just see whether anyone knows what happened in the room arrowed above? No competition on this occasion - I'd hate Louise and Bill to think I was trying to attract readers to Salut! - unless I change my mind...