Trying to Turn Back the Clock

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I love Egypt. It's a fascinating country, partly because the pace of change there is generally excruciatingly slow. This is particularly true in the countryside, where life for most peasants is pretty much the same as it was a hundred, or a thousand or three thousand years ago. However, as the following story shows, even Egypt isn't totally immune to "progress".

Sue and I first visited Egypt for Christmas 1970. The highlight of the trip was a couple of days spent in and around Luxor - and the highlight of these days was a visit to the Valley of the Kings. We crossed the Nile by ferry and then hired a horse-drawn carriage to take us to the Valley. It was a wonderful experience, especially as there were very few tourists in Egypt at that time.

Six years later, while we were living in Libya, we decided to visit Egypt again, this time with our daughter Emma and our friend Mustapha. Once more the highlight was to be a carriage ride to the Valley of the Kings. So you can imagine our disappointment when we arrived in Luxor to find out that it was no longer possible to tour the Valley by carriage. All the carriages now stayed on the Luxor side of the river and the only way to visit the Valley was in a coach full of other tourists. Not at all what we'd had in mind!

Those of you who know Sue will not be surprised to hear that she wasn't going to accept this state of affairs. We wanted to tour in a horse-drawn carriage and that was what we were going to do. The first step was obviously to find the man who had driven us around six years earlier. Undeterred by the fact that all we knew about him was that his name was Youssef and he used to drive a carriage, Sue told various people we met that we needed to see him as soon as possible. And, this being Egypt, Youssef appeared later that day at the restaurant where we were eating.

After greetings and handskaes all around, Sue explained that we wanted him to drive us around Valley of the Kings the next day. Youssef explained that this was impossible because he was now based on the Luxor side of the Nile and carriages were no longer allowed on the other side. Sue brushed his objections aside. She told Youssef to bring his horse and carriage to the jetty the next morning and we would find a way around the problem.

And we did. The next morning, we rented a felucca (one of those wonderful Nile sailboats) and hired a crew of workers to load the horse and carriage onto it. As you might imagine, this involved quite a few workers. It also involved scores of spectators, who stood on the bank shouting encouragement and (contradictory) advice to the workers. But it worked, although the poor horse looked totally bemused by what was happening.

Youssef crossed by felucca

Then, while Youssef accompanied his horse in the felucca, we took the normal ferry across the river.

Sue and Emma on the ferry

We met up on the other side and then proceeded to tour the Valley in style in Youssef's carriage. Progress be damned! Some things are just better the way they used to be.

Youssef introduces Emma to Hatshepsut's Temple