As I write this, I’m sleeping on a mattress with 7 other avid travelers under the stars on an old fashioned felucca parked somewhere on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt between Aswan and Luxor.
Surreal?? Absolutely!
If I back up to the start of our adventure, we left our hotel around 10:30am in Aswan to board a simple sailboat for a day of sailing the Nile. For the previous 3 days, we had been busy exploring all the ancient sites including the Giza Pyramids, Sphinx, Philae Temple, Temple of Abu Simbel and the Egyptian Museum. So a chill day was the perfect midweek break we didn’t even know we needed.
The deck had a massive mattress and pillows for everyone, so we spread out and plopped down. We were fortunate to have an amazing headwind that had us gliding down river 25-30 km. Temperatures in early June were already toppling 100 degrees, so we were super thankful for the escape from the stifling inner city heat. The trip was a pure delight as I found myself smiling at each turn of the bow, as we slowly “S” curved our way downstream. Between Bob Marley playing on the speaker, swimming in the chilly waters, playing “Heads Up” trivia and slurping our happy drinks, we had not a care in the world for those 5 glorious hours.
We even had a support boat following our brigade with toilets and serving fresh local delicacies for a truly authentic experience.
As it is approaching 10:45pm, everyone else is fast asleep and I’m still daydreaming about this perfect day half way around the world. And with sunrise at an insane 4:35am, I’m needing to fall asleep soon but know that even with a face mask and earplugs that I won’t be coming down from this high anytime soon!
FearlessAdventures 