Cruising the Nile (Egypt)

When you take a Nile Cruise, you get to see the banks of the Nile between the cities and see a lot of farmland and lush areas (as well as other boat lobbies, lol) that you wouldn’t normally see. You additionally may transit through a lock, and get to interact with enterprising locals.

This is a view from our ship along the Nile, very different from all the beige you see in the cities and archeological areas. There were lots of fields with cattle and tree-lined areas.

You also will likely get to see the lobby interiors of many other boats, as the available docks cannot support as many ships as cruise the Nile, so they line up with their lobbies in a row so you can walk through other boats to get to yours if it’s not dockside. This means you have to pay attention to which dock you arrive at, as you may have been the ship directly on the dock when you left, but when you return, your ship now may be the 6th ship out, so you have to know which other ship(s) to go through to get to yours. When a ship leaves, the remaining ships are just rearranged, and anyone who will be leaving earlier than others often moves to the outside of the stack. If one in the middle pulls out, the others just sidle back together and reconnect their lobby entrances and exits again.

If you are near a city, peddlers may come to your boat in rowboats. They’ll hang out in the water yelling to you what they have to sell and showing shawls and t-shirts or other items. If you look at them, they will keep trying to get you to go back to the edge so they can talk to you. If you do want something (or if they want to send you something for you to look at, even if you aren’t interested), they’ll put it in a tied-up plastic bag and toss it up to you. You can either return the item or put money in the bag and throw it back to them.

Local children have a similar solution for getting money from people on small boats. They paddle up to your boat on a surfboard and hang on and sing while your boat continues to sail. They cross back and forth over the width of the Nile gliding along with boats, or paddling by hand to get to a different boat. Where we were, it was a medley of Frère Jacques and Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) and a couple of other songs.

If you take the traditional Nile cruise from Cairo to Aswan, you’ll also get to go through a lock if that is something you are interested in, ask when you’ll go through so you can go on deck and watch.