GILDED WATERS

Paula Hardy boards one of the last remaining dahabiyas on the Nile for a different perspective of Egypt's storied river

A blue tug draws our vintage dahabiya out into the wind and our captain unfurls its distinctive 12-metre-high sails. As the fabric billows, the tug sets the double-masted houseboat adrift. The water slaps against the hull and frogs croak in chorus. As the sun sets, the Nile turns to liquid gold; originally, the boat, too, would have been covered in gilding-dahab means gold in Arabic. We glide by papyrus islands sheltering yellow-footed cattle egrets and black moorhens, where water buffalo wallow and farmers tend fields of sugarcane. The sky turns vermilion, then lilac, then the deepest indigo behind palm trees whose gently swaying fronds look like the raised arms of temple supplicants.

Like a carriage on the Orient Express, the 100-year-old Set Nefru is exquisitely crafted. There are fewer than five such beauties left on the Nile and all the others are privately owned, one by Parisian shoe designer Christian Louboutin. Set Nefru is the recent acquisition of AI Moudira Hotel, filled with Middle Eastern antiques, away from the mayhem of the monuments on Luxor's rural west bank. It's a worthy caravanserai for the great Nile road, where cosmopolitan travellers can find respite on their journey south.