Reversed Dark Star Safari

At four in the morning I woke the neighborhood revving the engine. Too bad, I had a convoy to catch. Just outside town around 30 microbuses, a couple of coaches, some cars and one ‘motosiekl’ gathered for the ride to Abu Simbel. I had heard and read horror stories about these convoys. Guided by the police all the vehicles drive in a closed group at neck breaking speed. 280 km through the desert without pausing. I was not really looking forward to that. But that is how it was. So at 4:00pm the group began to move. Soon we passed the last checkpoint and were in the dark moonless desert. I drove 70 km/h and was immediately overtaken by the microbuses and the cars. These were all bringing daytrippers to the temple of Abu Simbel so their drivers knew every stretch of that road, I did not. As long as it was dark I didn’t dare to go too fast, as some parts of the road were partially covered with thick layers of sand, blown on the road by the everlasting desert wind. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I ended up in there. After 150 km of one cylinder KTM vibration I decided to take a break. I couldn’t care less about the convoy. I stopped at a makeshift roadside ‘restaurant’ just before sunrise. The light was soft as the sun was to come up. A silent boy stood next to a heavily loaded pick-up on top of which the rest of his family was asleep, he watched me and as the sun appeared above the horizon he pointed towards it and started smiling.

Around ten I arrived in Abu Simbel. All the tourists had already visited the temples and were all ready to take the convoy back to Aswan. I was too tired to visit the temple so I went in town and had falafel breakfast in the tiny town, before driving to my hotel. This would be my most expensive hotel in Egypt, at 60 euros a night. I would be staying in the hotel of Mister Fikry. He was a Nubian artist who build this hotel in true Nubian style. The entire house was build according to the Nubian tradition and using authentic materials (only the electricity and the fans were non-Nubian). I was welcomed in one of the cool open rooms of the hotel with a refreshing ‘charcadee’ (hisbiscus) juice. As I stripped out of my motor gear I met Evan and Rebecca. They had seen me in the convoy and were the only other travelers staying overnight in Abu Simbel. We ordered some beers, for them the first beers in a long time as they had come from Sudan. Their journey was coming to an end, I learned, as they were approaching Cairo. “And where did you come from, then” I asked. They came from Cape Town. Overland traveling. They were doing a reverse ‘Dark Star Safari’. I was silenced for half a beer, trying to imagine what it must have been, five and half months of overland travel from Cape Town to Cairo. Somehow it clicked, they were happy they had made it through Ethiopia and Sudan; I was relieved that I had made it to Abu Simbel; that called for a little celebration. The beers were going down easily and were followed by a simple Nubian style lunch, followed by some more beers, followed by the realization that Evan and Bec were in the wrong hotel. Their budget place was just across the valley, but their taxi driver must have had a commission so he dropped them in the ‘wrong’ place. We decided to go and see the sound and light show that night at the temple. I am not really the kind of guy to settle for that kind of traps, but we had so good fun that I would give it at try. Beside it is probable the most exciting thing you can do at night in Abu Simbel.

The light and sound show was absolutely worth it, even if I ended up listening to the entire story of Ramses II and Nefertari in Japanese. Didn’t matter, the light effects made up for what I did not understand. We went back to the hotel and ordered a bottle of wine and a sheesha. And talked and talked, another bottle of wine, a new sheesha, more stories, the final bottle of wine, the final sheesha, until Evan and Bec realized that they had two wake up in a couple of hours to get the microbus back to Aswan.

The next day I did nothing more than looking at Lake Nasser, enjoying the Nubian food and music and going through the library Fikry had assembled over the years as part of his Nubian House. Late in the afternoon I went to the town ‘centre’. The entire atmosphere in the little town was so different. Although I was still in Egypt, I really felt in Africa for the first time. Nubians have more affinity with the Sudanese than with the Egyptians (Abu Simbel is only 40 km from the Sudanese border). You could feel this African vibe, nobody was being pushy (tourists don’t bother to come in town, they only ‘speed’ visit the temple), and they were just interested in my journey and in the bike. Everybody was just doing straightforwardly nothing and nothing had to be done. A Sudanese man had his little coffee stand, where he would prepare freshly grinded coffee in little clay ‘amphorae’, which were filled with straw, coffee and water, heated on some coals. Delicious. Kids would climb on and off the bike, they all wanted to know how much my bike was worth, how fast it was and if I did not want a goat fur as saddle cover, instead of this dull black plastic.

For a moment I seriously considered to alter my plans and to go south, cross Lake Nasser into Sudan and wind my own ‘long way down’ to South Africa, after all I am going nowhere and nobody is waiting for me. Nowhere. Never.