Day 7 - Aswan The packaged, cliched, tourist experience is like the common cold in that everyone gets it, it just varies in its severity. But as the wind picks up, a distant call to prayer rings out and the blue waters of the Nile slosh gently I feel at peace with that. Our felucca tacks slowly down river and the winter sun glints off the surface and warms my face. This sort of travel I favour is not, it must be said, relaxing. It is a ceaseless fight to avoid being corralled into the templated trip shaped by the thousands of people that have done it before. "You want to visit this temple?" "Papyrus shop?" "Traditional village?" No, no and no. Confusion ensues. There is nothing else. So many people give up in the face of remorseless, insistent conformity and I don't always blame them. Egypt particularly is not a country that lets you off-road, they've been in the tourism business for millennia after all. The temples are incredible, the villages ...
The horizon leans forward...