The El Feyrouz Hotel

Last year I posted this photo of one of the Nile's many sources, this one in Rwanda. Here's how the same river looks downstream, at Luxor.


That's looking back at the east bank, where the city of Luxor - about half a million people - stands. The east bank is where you get money, tangle with bureaucrats, eat pizza and find lots of scrubby hotels with big painted signs promising cold beer.

I'd rung ahead to a hotel on the west bank, which the guidebook assured me was much quieter. The locals who pointed me towards the ferry terminal all emphasised that the fare was one pound - which I knew from the guidebook, and I wondered about their insistence until it came to boarding and the men selling tickets wanted me to pay two pounds for a return trip. There are no tickets, so I would have had to pay again when I returned.

Luxor seems to be known as the scam and hassle capital of Egypt. Perhaps because I'm accustomed to Mozambique, or just respectful of the sad fact that everyone has to earn a living somehow, I never felt much bothered. For every local with a scam there's another willing to step in with a warning; taxi drivers and felucca (sailboat) captains are quick to step forward with offers, but responded well enough to being politely declined. I should clarify that in my book, shyness about bargaining on a tourist's part does not constitute a scam on a local's part.

Harassment wasn't a problem either. There was a lot of joking around from the men who deal with tourists, along the lines of the shopkeeper who bounded wide-eyed to his door with the line "I must be dreaming!" as I walked past. Either I wasn't in the country long enough to lose patience with it, or I've now travelled enough to know there are worse things to hear from men in foreign countries. Only in one case (a camel-driver at the Pyramids) did I feel the need to tell someone he was behaving badly, and he desisted at once.

Nor was security an issue. The locals with whom I got chatting were always highly amused, and quick to reassure me, when they noticed my Mozambican habit of constantly glancing around to check who was getting close - though I found it interesting that they recognised the mannerism for a security precaution. Many remarked on my travelling alone, but said things like "most tourists are frightened to travel alone" rather than "it's risky to travel alone". (I'm sure they're right, but if the average tourist is opting for group travel for security reasons, it's surely counter-productive - big groups give terrorists more news value.)

Security at tourist sites was generally perfunctory, at least for this obvious foreigner (with interesting exceptions, such as the synagogue in Coptic Cairo). I had to step through metal detectors to enter temples and museums, but no one wanted to search my bag. Tourist police in their handsome white uniforms quietly kept their stations at all the major sites. It was reassuring to have them around, though I never needed them for anything other than directions.

That digression was an appropriately roundabout way of getting to my hotel. The walk from the west bank ferry terminal involved a lengthy discussion with a couple of taxi drivers about the causes of terrorism in Egypt (they both blamed economic conditions created largely by their own government, not anything foreigners did) and a pause for mint tea in a garden cafe (it was a blazing blue-skied day of around 40 degrees), then a short stroll through the side streets.


The El Feyrouz Hotel was certainly easy to find, a big pink cake of a building.


It was a perfect hotel for me - simple, clean and comfortable. The pre-dawn muezzin's call woke me on my first morning there ("prayer is better than sleep") but I slept through it on the second day. There was a lush garden and restaurant.


I enjoyed Egyptian food, which is long on spices and vegetables. A typical meal involves waiters placing a dozen different dishes on your table - aromatic stews, spiced rice, hommus, babaganoush, salads, stacks of flatbread - from which you take your choice. It's great for groups, or those made ravenous by scrambling around temples and tombs in the heat; light eaters like myself spend plenty of time explaining that the food really was delicious but there's just no room for another bite.

I didn't sample Egyptian wines at this stage (more on this later). I was enjoying the experience too much to want to blunt my senses. I didn't even open a book (other than the guidebook) for six days, which must be a personal record. I felt no need to slip into another world when the one around me was so constantly entrancing.