You couldn’t miss the Nour el Nil fleet among the few river barges small enough to stop in Esna. While the three boats ran the length of the dock, they didn’t eclipse the tiny village the way cruise vessels do when they pass improbably at building height, like space ships, through cities.
The boats’ fitting scale would have both practical and metaphorical implications for our trip. These traditional wooden barges looked like they had always been there—which, it turns out, they had. And by always, I mean like 4,000 years, affording a kind of literal access and cultural camouflage (we came to realize as our six days unfolded) that made all the difference when it comes to cruising the Nile. After dropping our bags on the Meroe, the newest of the three, we followed our tour guide through the quiet souk toward the Greco-Roman Temple of Khnum, a partially excavated structure sitting almost 9 meters below ground and dedicated to the ram-headed god Khnum, believed to have created man from his potter’s wheel. Though begun by Ptolemy VI Philometor in the second century B.C., what you see today—the hypostyle hall supported by 18 elaborately carved and painted palm leaf-, grape cluster-, and lotus bud- topped capitals—is the handiwork of the Romans some 500 years later.
It was only when we returned to the Meroe that I realized we hadn’t seen a single tourist who wasn’t part of our group, and wouldn’t until we reached Edfu a couple of days later. I was suddenly very pleased with myself for having canceled another trip to Egypt months prior, when I learned the Nour el Nil was booked. I’d been dreaming of drifting along in one of these dahabiyas—a traditional double-masted sailboat with up to 12 cabins—ever since they launched the first one more than a decade ago. Unlike other Nile River cruises, some 350 big boats whose hermetically sealed cabins, glassed-in dining rooms, nightclubs, and pools tick all the sought-after upscale travel boxes, the Nour el Nil is a more intimate kind of luxury.
But the lack of crowds was also disconcerting, a reminder of just how vulnerable a tourist economy is to the sensationalism of the news cycle, especially in this part of the world. After deciding to take our boys, ages 15 and 12, and my mother-in-law to Egypt this past November, I was surprised that my husband Chris, who is almost as bullish as I am about adventurous travel, got cold feet at the last minute. After all, there hadn’t been a single attack on tourists since 2014, when ISIS targeted a tourist bus on the Egyptian side of the Taba border with Israel that killed four and injured 30. I also was quick to remind him of the everyday violence in our own Brooklyn backyard. We went over Thanksgiving, which is my favorite time of year as an American to travel internationally, as well as the most temperate—short sleeves in the daytime and light sweater in the evening.
But even after we learned of the most recent attack on a Vietnamese tour bus near the pyramids, which took place just a couple of weeks after we got back, we agreed that we couldn’t have felt any safer traveling as a family (and are even considering taking over one of the boats for a joint milestone birthday in 2020). Because while any sudden acts of violence can give even the most enlightened traveler pause—as it did for a moment in Brussels, Paris, Nice, and Barcelona—we are far likelier to give in to our unconscious biases and fears, ignoring statistics and rational thinking, in cultures that feel truly foreign to our own. (No matter how many times we hear that we are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist, we never quite believe it.)
Fear, when it shapes our knee-jerk nationalistic foreign policy, threatens political and economic stability to catastrophic ends. Egypt’s tourism economy—dogged by a vicious circle of political unrest and terrorist attacks—suffered a 60 percent drop from 2016 to 2017 in the aftermath of the Coptic church bombings in Alexandria and Tanta. Egpyt can ill afford another setback in the aftermath of this most recent attack.
The situation, however fragile, invites you to slip right in to an age-old legacy of cultural pilgrimage. I thought back to our first day in Cairo and our visit to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. It houses roughly a quarter of a million works of art and artifacts spanning more than 3,000 years from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period. Charmingly disheveled, you get a sense of what the museum must have looked like when it opened over a century ago, from the uncrated treasures in view, as well as the countless artifacts you know are sitting in the basement, like that famous last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. More striking, perhaps, than seeing up close the masterpieces from every western civ course you’ve ever taken—the golden mask and throne of Tutankhamun, the Mummy of Hatshepsut and the Three Triads of Menkaura—is how transporting the museum itself is to the era of The Grand Tour. If you squint, you can imagine heat-flushed Brits in three-piece suits standing in the same dust-filtered light that makes everything feel like a Merchant Ivory film. Later, as we took in unobstructed views of the Sphinx without having to wait our turn at the railing for a photo op, it hit me that there are probably about the same number of visitors here today as there were back then. Although our guide Hossam told us he felt optimistic about tourism’s return, he’d also seen too many fellow tour operators take on second and third jobs in different industries, or abandon their businesses entirely, in order to make ends meet.
The next morning, we caught a 6 a.m. flight to Luxor, where we met a guide Adel, sent by the Nour el Nil. Cairo is to New York City as Luxor is to colonial Williamsburg, which is to say clean, efficient, and optimized for tourism in the best possible way, with an airport that puts most American ones to shame. We were among the first visitors that morning to enter the spectacular and remarkably well-preserved Temple of Karnak, whose ambitious construction spanned the Old Kingdom in 2600 B.C. all the way up to the Ptolemaic Dynasty, and is the most important religious complex in Ancient Egypt, not to mention the largest in the world. Though traditionally thought to be the site where creator-god Atum created himself and then the god Shu and goddess Tefnut by spitting them out of his mouth, the existing structures honor other gods—Osiris, Montu, and Isis, whose origin stories and filial tensions play out over columns and walls throughout the region—and a succession of Egyptian and Roman rulers.
It was impossible not to relish the absence of crowds as we meandered through the golden morning-lit colonnades at Karnak, but I couldn’t quite ignore the implications of this glorious solitude: the cruel irony that destabilized economies, which give rise to repressive regimes and vast economic disparities in its population, are ripe for the kind of radicalization we fear the most. A depressed tourist economy undermines security and, eventually, the preservation of cultural patrimony. In 2013, looters took advantage of the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that ended President Hosni Mubarak’s leadership and stole more than a thousand artifacts from the Malawi National Museum in Minya. El Sisi’s recent uncontested landslide electoral victory, in which none of the viable challengers even made it to the ballot, is reminiscent of the kinds of elections, which secured dictatorships in the decades that precipitated the Arab Spring.
There is something about being on the river, however, that transcends politics and time. The Nour el Nil sails from Luxor to Aswan over six days, a 150-mile drive that normally takes three and a half hours, and that’s about all they tell you at the outset. The idea is for those of us who are accustomed to planning every last bathroom break to surrender to those who know better. The staff have mastered the art of the unprogrammed. But it turns out that serendipity, that holy grail of immersive travel, takes planning. The kind of planning that draws on the collective wisdom of two expats who understood how to translate the culture to Europeans and Americans and an Egyptian who could navigate the logistics, culture, and politics of running a business and building a staff. To say nothing of the coordinated and often invisible network of farmers and fisherman as well as guides and drivers along the way.
One morning at breakfast when I asked Eleanore Kamir, one of the company’s three owners, to define what sets the Nour el Nil apart, she answered with typical Gallic sangfroid, “We do what we like.” When in 2008 the French-born global wanderer and interior designer, who’d been living in Egypt for the better part of three decades, partnered with Egyptian boat maker Memdou Sayed Khalifa and Mexican-born Enrique Cansino to revive the lost art of traditional dahabiya, the trio set out to give a certain kind of traveler what they didn’t realize they wanted—the gift of doing nothing. That is, between visits to some of the most culturally significant sights in the world. Displaced by the arrival of the railroad and steamships, not to mention tied up by the Great Depression, this inefficient—however dreamy—means of transport fell out of favor. Memdou, a 30-year sailing veteran, harvested pieces from older boats as they were dismantled to incorporate into their fleet of new builds, which, save for their steel hulls, are faithful wood reproductions of the original ancient vessels.
The overall vibe, however, is anything but orthodox. Eleanore’s haute-bohemian mix of striped fabrics on low-slung couches and antique French chandeliers aligns with an overall casual yet rigorous approach to service, which is attentive, yet somehow not servile. When we set sail and I sat on the top deck for the first time, I tried to pinpoint the novelty of this experience beyond the obvious physical beauty and gravitas of the place, and the feeling that scenes unfolding along the river looked much as they had in Biblical times (we would see a near-identical dahabiya to ours in a hieroglyphic relief in a temple that would later confirm this fact). As striking as what was there—impossibly well preserved temples and traditions—is was what wasn’t. The silence, but for the quiet lapping of water, the near balletic choreography of men in traditional white and pale blue-striped galabeya manning the tiller and sails, negotiating for fresh fish with fishermen in tiny wooden boats that pulled up alongside ours, and arranging dining chairs around the long table for family-style meals without so much as a shuffle. The boat, which has no engine, let alone a PA system—and, thankfully, spotty Wi-Fi—is pulled by tugboats only when there isn’t enough wind for the giant signature red and white striped sails to unfurl.
Then there was the way the boat sidled up without any fuss to the bank of a town just south of Esna, and how the staff quietly let us know that we would go for a short moonlit walk through a rural farm village. When I asked what we were doing there, one of the crew said, “We are invited for a tea in someone’s home.” You could go, or not. No forced fun. No big announcements, just a slight quickening of movements on the part of the staff as they settled a makeshift gangplank onto the bank. When we returned, it was time to eat, a seemingly effortless dinner party on deck signaled only by the lighting of the candles and faint ringing of a bell. At first our family of five stuck together. By the second day I watched my sons, sitting at opposite sides of the table and helping themselves to seconds of the local perch, engaged in conversation—one with a retired educator, and the other a 40-something graphic designer. Two months after our trip we are still in touch with a handful of the group, and my younger son and I try to reproduce the cucumber and tomato salads, lentil soups, and yes, the falafel as best we can from our Brooklyn kitchen.
We started our first morning the way we would every day thereafter, with an early morning swim followed by a rolling breakfast of crèpes and fried eggs, as each couple emerged from their cabin. The trick to swimming in the Nile, we learned by watching Eleanore as she slipped out of her galabeya and worn Chanel quilted flats and headed barefoot down the path, is to walk opposite the river flow and kick with the current back to the boat. Later that morning, though never in haste, we made our way on foot from the boat along the east bank of the Nile to the former capital of Upper Egypt, El Kab. Once again, we had it to ourselves. The highlight of the region is the tombs, some of which date to New Kingdom period (1550–1069 B.C.). The depictions are well preserved, most notably those belonging to Ahmose, aka “Captain-General of Sailors” under Pharaoh Ahmose I. More interesting, perhaps, than the detailed accounts of daily life and battle scenes is the ubiquitous “Luigi was here” script-style graffiti left behind by Italian and British tourists from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Averaging one major excursion a day of cradle-of-civilization-grade sites, it turns out, is the perfect cadence. After lounging in a hammock, reading, drawing, playing scrabble and backgammon, followed by a multi-course but never heavy lunch, you are then ready to have your mind blown by the Temple of Horus at Edfu. Because the very act of gliding along the mythical river feels purposeful, a near religious rite of time travel and cultural immersion. That my 15- and 12-year-old sons never once said they were bored, even though they were the only kids aboard, is a testament to Nour el Nil’s masterful pacing.
If ever there were a reification of the “getting there is half the fun” adage, it is this experience, and doubly so when you realize the best way to get to the Greco-Roman temple at Edfu is by horse-drawn carriage. In their breezy style, staff members instructed us to get into to a black 19th-century-style carriage in pairs and to negotiate a certain round trip rate upfront. Catching a glimpse of my longhaired 15-year-old with the guileless grin of his former five-year-old self, as our rickety carriage lurched forward, was worth the trip alone. At full gallop, it felt like the wheels might fly off. It’s only on foreign soil that a parent forgoes her cardinal seatbelt-sunblock-helmet rule and stands the chance to model a kind of pluck that our otherwise frictionless American lives never allow.
Thanks to the desert sand that covered the temple after the cult was banned, the Temple of Horus at Edfu, built between 237 and 57 B.C., is one of the best-preserved ancient structures in Egypt. Dedicated to the falcon god, the vengeful son of Isis and Osiris, the settlement itself was established as a cult center and cemetery site around 3000 B.C.
“You know, none of the other boats can stop here,” Eleanore said of our next stop, Gebel Silsileh, a rocky gorge between Kom Ombo and Edfu, the narrowest point along the Nile, where sandstone cliffs jut from the water’s edge. Not by coincidence, we arrived at the magic hour, with just enough daylight to walk up through the small tourist-free village and make our way through a mile or so of sand dunes. Some of the photos we took that day at sunset, the sun disappearing behind the peaked dunes, were so on-the-nose postcard perfect they almost look fake. The next morning, we walked through the sandstone quarries, where the ancient Egyptians cut stone for some of the most important New Kingdom temples in Luxor, and toured the small shrines built by Merenptah, Ramses II and Seti I during the New Kingdom. The immutability of the landscape tricks you: You can almost picture these slabs of sandstone floating up the river to Karnak.
On our second to last full day we hiked a couple of miles through a palm thicket along the east river that landed us in a tiny local cafe. I had to laugh as I walked behind my husband and younger son as they lifted their galabeyas, having abandoned all other attire one day into our journey, to step over fallen branches. More exuberant than the bright turquoise wall color was the clanking of dominos as they hit the table from wildly gesticulating clusters of men at play. Though we were clearly not locals, our group was small and nimble enough not to disrupt the quotidian scene. An older gentleman gestured to my younger son to come join him. My son stood leaning in over the man’s shoulder and giggled excitedly whenever the volume rose. The key to immersive travel, as Nour el Nil gets just right, is a light footprint, which allows you to be invisible enough to experience a place without the mood-killing raised paddle of a tour leader signaling that it’s time to go.
Before we arrived in Aswan, where we would disembark, Eleanore warned us that there would be many more boats than we were used to: “big ones.” As we pulled alongside the blue-tinted mirrored facade of a five-story luxury river liner, the spell was broken. We toyed momentarily with staying aboard with our new Nour el Nil family for one more magical candlelit dinner, but decided to check into the Old Cataract hotel as planned. The setting of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, the Old Cataract is the kind of grand dame whose historic romance supersedes the modern luxury high-rise addition. (The tower, though, makes up for its architectural incongruity with stellar views from the balconies.) And even if you never left the pool area, which overlooks toy-like wooden sailboats backlit by the setting sun and the historic Nubian village across the Nile, you can’t avoid the cultural contact high of an ancient panorama as far as the eye can see.
The next morning, we took the first flight out for a day trip to Abu Simbel, which defies all description in terms of scale, drama, not to mention narcissism of King Ramses II, whose smaller temple dedicated to his favorite wife, Nefertiti, is also covered with paintings and engravings of himself. Which, come to think of it, is not all that different from the self-congratulatory modern-day strongmen we seem to be seeing all over the world these days.
On the 30-minute flight back to Aswan, I sat next to a middle-aged tour guide leading a group of Australian women. I asked him to recommend a local lunch spot where he might go with his own family or with friends, not where he would send tourists. He laughed and wrote down the name of a place near the souk, “Not fancy, okay? I take some clients there, but the food is for me the best.” I asked him whether he thought tourism was picking up and if Americans were coming back. “It’s getting better,” he said. “I think Americans are more scared by what they see on the television, but they are the most excited and surprised, more happy than the British or the French, when they finally come.”
The restaurant he recommended, El Masry, it not a complete hidden gem (we did see another table of tourists), but it was exactly what we were looking for for: kofta and kabob and plate after plate of vegetables, rice, hummus, and pita. It’s the kind of place that’s lit by bare fluorescent tubes with a proprietor who slumps over an analog cash register while barking orders through the window into the kitchen. I paused on my way out to ogle a steaming bowl of dumplings swimming in a clear broth, made green by an assault of fresh herbs, which was being served to a pair of older men who’d no doubt been exchanging grunts over meals for their entire adult lives. Registering my interest, the owner ladled a sample in a small bowl, blew to cool down a spoonful, and proceeded to feed me and my older son a couple of perfect bites. When I offered to pay, the owner shook his head and waved us off.
I was reminded of our first night on the boat, when we went to the private home of a local villager for tea. As I entered the kitchen and jumped in to help a mother and daughter carry out trays of drinks to the group, it struck me, as it often does when I meet people around the world in these unguarded settings, that we humans are more similar than not. Without missing a beat, the host piled my tray with glasses. She thanked me with a nod and a smile like you would give a cousin, not a stranger you need to impress. It was the greatest compliment a traveler could ask for.
