NILE RIVER
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A number of options are available to those seeking a Nile cruise. Most common are the larger, modern cruise ships, which include both ultra-luxury, five star vessels and less costly, more basic craft. In addition, there are a number of more traditional Nile cruise boats that ply this route, including elegant river steamers of the sort that characterized Nile touring earlier in this century. Though considerably smaller than their gleaming white successors, these boats can be every bit as comfortable and luxurious. Those who have a flexible schedule and are willing to undertake more adventurous accommodation should certainly consider hiring one of the dozens of feluccas that glide about the river at Aswan and Luxor. These graceful sailboats dominated Nile water traffic for centuries, ferrying about Flaubert, Rimbaud, and all of the region's earliest tourists. |
No river in the world has such an enduring
place in the history of humankind as the Nile. For more than seven thousand years it has
served as a highway of kings and a lifeline of entire peoples, as a mythic muse for poets
and a legendary inspiration to romance. Ever changing and seemingly eternal, the Nile
holds out to those who travel its waters a scene of stunning beauty, placid rhythms, and
palpable, ancient majesty. To cruise the Nile is to follow in the wake of pharaohs and
empresses, to partake of some small measure of myth, and to experience a journey that you
will remember for as long as you live.
Today,
as always, the Nile stands at the center of the life along its shores, defining a great
north-south axis that is plied year-round by picturesque feluccas and luxurious cruise
ships alike. And while it is possible to sail the hundreds of miles from Cairo in the
north all the way to Aswan, the majority of visitors choose the more compact passage from
Luxor to Aswan. Along that shorter stretch, which extends for something approaching 150
miles as the river rises and narrows toward Aswan, lies an extraordinary concentration of
ancient sites. The temples at Esna, Edfu, and Kom Ombo, each so stunning that they would
be world-famous if located anywhere else, are here dwarfed by the astonishing power of the
region's most celebrated remnants of antiquity. 
In the
south, above the entrancing port of Aswan, are the great island temples of Philae and the
colossal wonder of Abu Simbel, its enormous seated kings rescued from the rising waters of
Lake Nasser. In the north lies Luxor, whose power defies adequate description. The Valley
of the Kings is here, with the great tombs of the pharaohs and the breathtaking
architectural wonder of the Temple of Hatshepsut. Here also lies Karnak, royal Egypt's
most magnificent statement of its own glory, an enormous complex of massive temples and
towering monuments that seem truly to be more fit for gods than for humankind. Exploring
Karnak even superficially can take at least two days, and one could spend weeks rambling
about the echoing vales and hidden, jewel-like tombs of the Valley of the Kings.
Accordingly, cruises from Luxor to Aswan (or vice-versa) last anywhere from 4 to 8 days,
with as much time spent walking among the ruins as drifting along the spellbinding Nile.
For
those with a little more time, the Aswan-Luxor cruise can be extended northward to Cairo
itself, an experience that adds immeasurably to your experience of the quiet rhythms and
timeless pace of life along the river's shores. The longer cruise takes between 11 and 13
days and carries you along the lower Nile, a broader, more somnolent river. Its banks are
less frequently punctuated by ancient monuments, but the scenes that glide slowly past the
deck rail are no less hypnotic.