Travel: Respite in Aswan

The Times, ZA (Stanley Stewart)

God invented Egypt for people hell-bent on sight-seeing. From the pyramids of Giza to the Valley of the Kings, the Nile is just one darned monument after another. Temples, tombs, pyramids, sphinxes: it can go on a bit.

But at the end of Egypt there is respite. Aswan is the loveliest town on the Nile, and the place where the river is at its most beautiful. For weary souls, who are beginning to overdose on antiquities, there is relatively little to see. In Aswan you can relax on the sun lounger without feeling you are missing one of the wonders of the ancient world. It couldn’t happen to a nicer place.

For millennia, Aswan was the end of the known world. Beyond lay Africa and the Land of Punt. Well into the 20th century, visitors to Aswan felt they had reached the limits of civilisation. That has always been part of its charm. Through the alleys of the bazaar, where one could find ivory and ebony and gum arabic, wafted odours from the heart of the continent.

Yet Aswan has none of the melancholy transience of a frontier town. It is a delightful and sophisticated place. Its inhabitants are tall dark-skinned Nubians with a reputation for honesty and loyalty. Best of all is the river. Threading its way through islands, the Nile narrows here towards the First Cataract between banks of yellow sand and smooth granite. It is the splendid views over the Nile that have made the terraces of the Old Cataract Hotel one of the world’s great venues for afternoon tea. Or for cocktails, as you watch the sun set into the desert on the opposite bank. For a glorious moment the Nile and the sails of the passing feluccas are stained pink.

Aswan is a town of boats. Everyone comes and goes on the water. Villages dot the islands and the opposite bank like riverine suburbs. Cruise ships arrive from Luxor, ferries chunter back and forth, and the feluccas spread their swallow wings to the north winds that have carried boats up the Nile, against the currents, since before the days of Cheops. They are the enduring image of Aswan.

I set off one morning with a boatman for a trip upriver to Sehel Island. Out on the Nile, Aswan vanished in a moment as we entered a labyrinth of islands and rocks. Sentinel herons stood watch on the shores. Here and there the currents quickened, an echo of the First Cataract that the High Dam had largely submerged. The boatman pointed out the local landmarks — the places where they used to tow the boats over the rapids, where the islanders crossed to the mainland with their camels, where a big market was held on Thursday mornings between two sand dunes.

We moored on the sandy shore of Sehel, beneath a stand of acacias. The boatman led me up a path past the village laundry where brightly coloured clothes were laid out to dry on the rocks. The houses were blue as the river.

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