Essential Nile Cruise

the world is changing and so are we we demand more from ourselves and more from our travels new places new experiences the chance to make the most of our free time and our time on the planet this is the series that's here to help you make the most of your travel about Egypt I shall have a great deal more to relate more monuments which beg a description are to be found there than anywhere in the world Egypt is the world's oldest tourist destination two thousand years ago Greeks and Romans were coming here for their winter Sun breaks booing and are in at the monuments and possibly going home with a picture carved on a souvenir urn Herodotus was so inspired he wrote up his travels and overnight became the father of history Julius Caesar got the guided tour on Cleopatra's barge and the Emperor Hadrian brought his boyfriend and tenuous here on holiday it didn't end well and drown mysteriously in the Nile but on the plus side was made into a God I don't think the Egyptians would have noticed one extra god this is a country packed with deities and history wherever you go you're tripping over monuments and they've been attracting writers artists archaeologists looters and of course tourists for centuries tourism is the single biggest earner in Egypt it employs one and a half million people and accounts for an eighth of the Egyptian economy it seems to me that tourists like me and these guys are just as much the lifeblood of Egypt as the Nile itself it flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands like some grave mighty thought threading a dream and times and things as in that vision seem keeping along it their eternal stands the Nile is the longest river in the world an ancient believed Egypt was her gift they weren't far wrong because without the river and its annual inundations Egypt wouldn't exist the ancient Egyptians described their country as a red land and the black land and it's only when you get here you realize they weren't being poetic they meant it literally over there's a desert and look here look at that soil every year the Nile burst its banks smothering the countryside for a couple of kilometres inland with rich alluvial silt this is the black land the Fertile strip that makes Egypt possible and out there beyond the River Valley is the desert a barren dangerous place inhabited by scorpions cobras and jackals the red land the construction masses dam in the 60s means Nile doesn't inundated more but it still supports the country an amazing 96 percent of Egyptians live along its banks i'm here for a nile cruise it's my first time in egypt and it's always been a bit of a boyhood dream of mine to come to the land of pharaohs and mummies and tombs and curses but I think Egypt as well as countries that divide people for everyone who shares my romantic ideas as someone who's told me I'm gonna get food poisoning and lots of hassle so I'm approaching my cruise with excitement but also a bit of trepidation not unlike I suppose the first ever Nile cruises in 1869 Englishman Thomas Cook chartered two boats down the Nile 30 brave sightseer signed up it wasn't all smooth sailing though cook himself nearly drowned but it was the beginning of the modern package holiday these days you can sail at the Orinoco canoe down the Amazon or travel to Antarctica but a nile cruise remains one of the most romantic experiences in the world and hundreds of thousands people do it every year in a lot more comfort and safety than Thomas Cook there are around 300 cruise boats on the Nile this is the Viking premiere it's a fairly typical example of what you can expect from a cruise all your meals are served on board there's a Sun Deck for those lazy days of cruising a bar for the longer nights of socializing and of course the ubiquitous gift shop order something comfortable to slip into later on this is my traditional Egyptian galibier gear now the only problem an outlet like this is when to put your room Pete I've come up the solution but I think it might make it quite hard to sit down okay so it might look like a Demi through soft tribute night but if you think it's not your cup of tea you'd be amazed how infectious it is thank you once you've put on a frock Ania busting some moves there's no turning back it's like lame its cocoon in their tire NASA for the over seven people I put hot in my turbine pump sadder than any pants but I'm gonna go to bed and leave them to it you I'm a bit of a fan of agatha christie so i can't help think of images of death on the Nile as I cruise down it but if you come here expecting 1930 sequins and glamour and Hercule Poirot you might be disappointed so far there's been no sign of any murder Thomas cook may have popularized cruising the Nile but some chose to stay ashore the old cataract hotel in as well was a magnet for Europe's the Seurat II it was here that Agatha Christie wrote part of her classic death on the Nile Dame Agatha also spent time at Luxor luxury lay over the Winter Palace all the greats have stayed here the Tsar of Russia Winston Churchill Jimmy Carter Quon Carlos of Spain it's still a ritzy address more recently Frances Nicolas Sarkozy in Carla Bruni checked in back on water all Nile cruisers follow a classic itinerary departing Luxor they head south to the town of Aswan and Lake Nasser then back to Luxor the reason for this is simple between Aswan and Luxor the vast majority of Egypt's monuments and temples and let's face it we've all come here for one reason to feast our eyes on some serious antiquities pretty impressive I shall never forget my first impression of the palace at Karnak it looked like a house where Giants live a place where they used to serve up men roasted whole elaborate on gold plates like larks this is a temple of karnak it was like the st. peter's of ancient egypt moneyed powerful and huge it took thirteen hundred years to build now if my builder still had long I'd probably get rid of them but to be fair to these guys they were working on something of epic proportions land temples all told covered an amazing two hundred and sixty square kilometres that's a big temple the dramatic centerpiece is the hyper style hall a forest of pillars 134 in total karnak was dedicated to egypt's number one god a moon each year the priesthood carrying a statue down this ceremonial way and then take it up the nile for a little romantic holiday with his wife the goddess moot a moon spent a month enjoying his conjugal right here at the temple of luxor look over here this one the best bits of luxor temple up there is a tiny mosque and if you're wondering why those doors are so high up because when the mosque was built in the 14th century it was sand right up to there the holy temple was covered in sand it wasn't discovered until the 1800s they dug it out and that's why it's so well preserved self preservation of course was a big thing for the ancient Egyptians especially after death on the west bank opposite luxor is the valley of the kings and royalty chose this grubby little gulch as their eternal resting place because it was all part of a cunning plan now the pyramids might have been good for impressing the neighbors but they weren't the subtlest way of hiding your worldly goods for the afterlife over the years most of them were broken into by looters so why in forward a few centuries and the Pharaohs decided to bury themselves here in this little Valley hidden away in the hills and there was no danger the men who worked on your tomb would let the mummy ask the bag so to speak cuz you had them done in as a kid I loved our dear mummies all that gore about how they were in bomb that had bits removed and and the whole idea of a curse being put on people and also that fact that whilst they're lying there you feel at any point they could they could rise up and were here at lux Osmani fication Museum there's not much sign of movement everything's under wraps and I mean everything the Egyptians were obviously passionate about prepping the afterlife organs stashed in jars and surprisingly the brain whisked out and thrown away while the heart was kept the reason that they threw the brain away or kept the heart is because they believed that the soul resided in the heart so um like Celine Dion they believed the heart would go on this is the most impressive of all the sites around Luxor the temple of hatshepsut beautifully situated in a natural amphitheater it was here in 1997 that 60 tourists were gunned down by Islamic fundamentalists it's shocking think about something so terrible happening here in what is probably the most breathtaking sight on the West Bank it definitely casts a shadow but the result has been that the Egyptians are incredibly security conscious everywhere you'll go you'll see a big security presence tourism is the country's lifeblood they want you to feel safe you ah another day on the Nile all this is hard work the temples and tombs drift by and Ed foo were treated to the best-preserved temple in Egypt built by the Ptolemies the family of the famous Cleopatra you know this place I'm it's silly but coming to Egypt was actually a bit like going to New York you think you know it all from films and TV before you arrived but trust me actually being here is fun something else we've arrived at as one Egypt's southernmost city on the first cataract here the shallow waters are littered with boulders and rocks that make the river unnavigable if you're sailing upstream this is the end of the road as one is frontier territory like all frontier towns as one it's a real mix of different cultures you get a sense that this is where the Middle East meets Africa Sudan is just to the south all around you you can feel the diversity of Egyptian society this is a Coptic cathedral 3 percent of Egyptians are Coptic Christians the word comes from the Greek for Egyptians and it reminds us between the 4th and 7th centuries Egypt was a Christian country the birthplace of monasticism for hundreds of years this whole area along with a sizeable chunk of Sudan was known as Nubia and today most of the people in Aswan are Nubians I'm on my way to visit a traditional village on camel whoo here we go well hey the building of NASA's damnit as one spell disaster for the Nubians their homeland was flooded and the people dispersed to other parts of the country or resettled in villages on higher ground their way of life never recovered so this is hagatha taya yes she's hagupit here she is the owner of the nubian house do I say Salaam the only cos a welcome thank you very much thank you very much so and yes sir can you ask her that does she miss her old way of life homey silac he'll enter Lamas Niguel - and also delighted we to an island off the photo youth homes el Talia no Dan Ali oh oh you're not gonna tell you what I missed the houses we had behind the dam they were much bigger like a life was much quieter here it's busy and crowded also we don't live as one family anymore there are relatives scattered here and there Nubians always lived as one family getting together celebrating together that's all change and kind of dim you nicely so their way of life has changed so I guess also their way of making a living this is your mother figure hey I just get theater we're losing our traditions there was more black in the home and outside it now our children want to wear all different colors for the red yellow white our gold jewelry has always been traditional nubian designs now the answers want to wear different designs like the women in Cairo that they see it on the television they know more about the outside world want to be like European ladies before they didn't know anything but Nubian life as a method lover I think Olivia slipper do you feel sad that you've lost your old way of life and Owen look at the beginning we were sad Lord sir now we're happy singing oh yeah so hug ever there how do you feel about tourists like me coming and poking around your house the National MS I'm an animal human and that's we're happy about the tourists we depend on them most of our men husbands sons and brothers work on the feluccas motor boats cruise ships or as waiters their lives depend on tourism and then indeed his company used to be farmers but they no longer have the land so they work in tourism Hadassah she is saying she is very very happy because you are here and she want you come here every day every day I'll take you up on that thank you very much the building of the dam and flooding of Lake Nasser didn't only affect the people some of the country's greatest monuments were also under threat 18 temples would disappear beneath the waters the 1960s saw a feverish international program to rescue them all looks solid stinky perfect if a sound of antique chanting were to be born along the quiet air if a procession of white robed priests would have come sweeping round we should not think it's strange unfortunately the experience Emilia Redwoods described is lost to us the achingly pretty Temple of Isis on the island of Philly has been rebuilt on a new landscaped outcrop the real filet is lost beneath the waters and if you think this is impressive how about rebuilding a whole mountain a three and a half hour drive south phasma on the shores of Lake Nasser the early morning rays illuminate the facade of ramasees the Great's jaw-dropping temple of the Sun this is a wonder of the ancient world metha wonder the modern the whole mountain is hollow a man-made backdrop to the main event in a race against time UNESCO cut the temple into 1041 blocks and moved it 61 meters uphill to here it took four years to complete but I think you'll agree it was worth it the tombs and temples can be deceptive time doesn't stand still here in Cleopatra's day Egypt's population was only 7 million this was a richest country in the Mediterranean today 76 million people live here that's a huge burden for a country where 97 percent of the land is desert many visitors complain of hassle to understand it you have to understand something of daily life in modern Egypt a lot of people seem to be leading very basic lives as I've been traveling along of spotted scenes on the riverbanks which which could have come from any century it is it seems actually and it hasn't seemed much in that sense people living in farms still following the same ways people they live much simpler life here much slower rhythm people are more relaxed here also if you think people are like they seem like poorer that most of their being they come here and thing are they are poor they don't have enough to eat no they have enough to eat so what would an average Egyptian in a day if you look at it like 600 Egyptian bound months so 20 Egyptian like 3 euros per day 3 years a day and how much would apply the milk often bunch of milk let's say will cost at least 2 years so a lot of people aren't earning enough to get ion and then tipping becomes very important it is so important especially if you're working tourism we will expect him to be tipped and tipping could be let's say 50% of their income by the way the British brought this idea of dipping into Egypt and they called it back sheet so explain back sheesh to me I keep hearing it mentioned as I'm wondering about yeah the so in Egypt was a British colony and the soldiers will come and giving the children money and take take Bakshi it's bochi bochi bochi which an Indian word means gratitude or money for nothing and then it became an easier way of earning money that's what I love people using it now but who brought it to Egypt cause a lot of people who come over here are quite worried about the idea of getting lots of hassle of people being very in-your-face and asking for things all the time it comes because we have different nationalities we come to have Spanish for example and Italians and they like this way of buying and like you know the interaction we go into the shop and they keep like bargaining the price down and they are maybe they don't want to buy anything at the end of the day but unfortunately some of the vendors that you see they take it on everyone the British they want to load they want to see and then they want to Bay and they want to see fix it price no it's a different culture so you've got a haggle it's a different culture you got to haggle here in each it's a different culture Luxor souk is the place to exercise haggling skills it's unashamedly aimed at tourists thanks Bobby yeah thank you it's not as impressive as ones but it's rated by many as the best suit in the country outside Cairo yeah I'm looking for product yeah yeah can you do product no no don't change the bun my crews have come to an end and I've retreated to the Royal Bar at the old Winter Palace this is where the clamor of the old Nile is kept alive and well the world outside might change but in here piano plays on you

Channel: Experience Egypt

Views: 190,627

Rating: 4.2895107 out of 5

Keywords: sharm el sheikh, ancient Egypt, Hurghada, sharm el sheik, egypt holidays, el gouna, Taba, pyramids of Egypt, cairo, egypt, egypt pyramids, hurgada, dahab, red sea, holidays, ETA

Id: nGJ8OhqGYCs

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2013