A Thousand Miles Down The Nile

Sailing Along Egypt’s Mighty River Uncovers Chapters Of Millennia-Old History

- Nitin Chaudhary

On a dewy morning on the second day of my cruise, I stood on the deck captivated by the scene in front of me. The steel guardrails were cool to touch, the air tasted of sand, and dry, yellow hills of the Egyptian countryside were just visible through the mist. The river—the mighty Nile— appeared almost nonchalant in the face of all the activity around it: boats on the water, dense green foliage on the banks, and flocks of egrets in the shallows. The scene made me think of the millennia of civilisation this river has witnessed—I signed up for this cruise to peek into stories of human history along these banks.

For years, travellers have cruised the Nile. The earliest humans flourished in its floodplains. Over centuries, they coalesced into agricultural colonies that metamorphosed into one of the world’s oldest civilisations, inhabited by commoners and their pharaohs, priests and their gods. A telltale record of this time remains in the temples and tombs scattered along the Nile.

DAY 1

My journey began yesterday in Aswan. Though 6,695 kilometres from source to mouth, cruises on the world’s longest river ply on only 238 kilometres between Aswan and Luxor. On meeting my guide Ashraf at Aswan airport I was told that his main vocation is archaeological restoration, and being a tour guide was a hobby that earned him good money. “Restoration is different from preservation, which is different from excavation,” he added. Clearly, history and its preservation was a big deal here.