Journey down a valley

The Nile has charmed explorers over centuries and lures them even today with its multiple realities the new-build gaudy kitsch of a modern country sewn together with the colonial charm of ancient Egypt

If you slip out of Cairo to thesouth, past the banks of Maadi,tower blocks sweating dust in theevening haze, and under thechoking, snarling traffic of the SalahSalem interchange, the dual-carriagewayseventually thin out, thecars begin to melt away, and finallysmog-streaked and exhausted you'll reach Helwan.

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Built on a giant mound that keptit safe from the Nile's annual floods,the town sits opposite the ruins ofMemphis; by the 19th century, likethe ancient capital that once cast itsreflections out across the river,Helwan's beautiful sulphuroussprings were showering the townwith opulence and exclusivity, atranquil respite for the well-heeledfrom the pulsing bedlam of Cairo25km away.

Gazing gently over the start ofthe old agricultural road, whichthreads its way down through theNile's banks for another 1000 kminto Africa, Helwan at least onpaper seems like the perfectplace from which to launch a lazyself-drive adventure down thelength of Egypt.

The only hitch is that the air isladen with cement dust, the streetsare roaring with the din of grindingsteel works, and inhospitable policemenkeep swarming over the carevery time we stop to spread outthe map. Let the relaxation commence.The Nile, reckoned by most to bethe longest waterway in the world,has been no stranger to travellercynicism in the hundreds of thousandsof years it has been flowingnorth from Rwanda's far-flungNyungwe rainforest, out into themouth of the Mediterranean. Theriver's contradictions have alwaysenraged as much as enchanted; the10th century Baghdad-born adventurerEbn Haukal grumbledover its elusive source,whilst in 1737 FrederickNorden, a Danish Captainsent by his king to investigateEgypt, observed that itwas hard to appreciate theglories of the Nile whilstbeing constantly harassedby boatmen a sentimentno doubt shared today bythose trying to follow inNorden's footsteps.

By the time the industrial revolutionbegan to cast a black pallorover the Nile's blue water, PierreLoti, the late 19th century Frenchnaval officer and novelist, couldmuster nothing but scorn for themodern riverbank, bordered as itwas by factories and shrouded insoot. "Today the foreigners are mastershere, and have wakened the oldNile wakened to enslave it," hethundered in his book The Downfallof the Nile, published a century ago."They have disfigured its valley...silenced its cataracts, captured itsprecious water by dams... Soonthere will scarcely be a river moredishonoured than this, by iron chimneysand thick, black smoke."

With such an appalling write-upby its reviewers, its little surprisethat 21st century tourists usuallyelect to skip out the dubious pleasuresof the Nile Valley altogether,apart from some selective feluccadabbling in Cairo and Luxor. Thevast majority of foreignholiday-makerswho want to take inthose two great citiesopt to scale the bulkof Upper Egypt byplane, soaring downthe spine of Egyptfrom one touristmetropolis to theother in an air-conditionedforty-five minutesof packaged comfort. And it'snot just pretentious carping thatkeeps them off the ground; throughoutthe early and mid-1990s theNile-side towns and villages south ofCairo formed the breeding-groundof the country's deadly Islamicinsurgency, which killed over a thousand including tourists and leftin its wake, a crippling web of policecheckpoints, convoys and securityrestrictions across the region. Addto that the unenviable reputation ofEgypt's creaking road network, withits randomly-scattered gaping potholes,high-speed lorries, crop-carryingdonkey carts and legions ofdrivers for whom headlights areviewed as an unnecessary waste ofenergy, even in the dark, and youcan see why Cairo's car rental outletsare not exactly heaving withtourists eager to drive down south.

Which is a shame

Because it's here on the banks of theNile Valley, where life hums within anarrow band of lush greenery oneither side of the river, before peteringout starkly into barren desert,that Egypt showcases both the fullbreadth of its distant past and theongoing struggles to shape itsfuture. Granted, there are low points the manufacturing smokestack ofmodern Helwan (mutated from itsspa-origins during the Nasser era)being one of them. But there arealso sprinkled gems, and unlike inCairo, where the blinding energy ofthe city can leave the subtler nooksand crannies bleached out to thepassing eye, or in Luxor, where thetouts and hawkers smother everythingof interest in a blanket of plastictrinkets, Egypt's Nile Valleyserves up a manageable space andpace for tourists to navigate thecountry's perdurable relationshipwith the river.

Uneasy co-existence

It was in Fant after night had fallenand the road was thick with shadows,that we noticed the neondeckedminarets hanging ethereallyin the sky. With their bases shroudedin riverbank foliage, they took onthe appearance of soaring daggerssuspended in mid-air, a fitting conclusionto a day dominated by symbolsof higher power on the highway.Alongside its Muslim majority population,Egypt boasts a 12-millionstrong community of CopticChristians and large numbers havefound their home along the Nile;drive south by the river and you'llsee the crosses of churches andmonasteries embedded deep withina long conveyor belt of roadsidemosques, stretching from tiny stoneoutposts to towering Disneyfiedbubble-domes.

Relations between Copts andMuslims in the Nile Valley haveoften come under strain; sectarianclashes over land use have dominatedlocal headlines in recent yearsand our route down to Luxor wouldeventually take us through NagaHammadi, the scene earlier thisyear of a drive-by shooting whichkilled six Christians (and a Muslimsecurity guard) as they left aMidnight Mass on Coptic ChristmasEve. But such tensions feel relativelyisolated in villages like Gebel el-Teir('Bird Mountain'), perched dramatically130 m high on a cliff-top justnorth of el-Minya, a key provincialcapital. An old hitch-hiking sheikhwhom we'd gathered on the way upfilled us in on the history behind thename. Legend has it that on theannual feast day of the villagemonastery, Deir el-Adhra('Monastery of the Virgin'), built onthe site of a 4th century cave chapel,all of Egypt's birds would come torest at Gebel el-Teir for a few days,just as the Holy Family are believedto have done on their epic journeythrough Egypt.

Inside the monastery on the daywe visited were men with microphonescrouched between greatstone pillars flooded with naturallight; outside the whole curve of thevalley seemed to sweep out beforeus, carpet parcels of alfalfa unfurlingeither side of the glittering river,speckled with palm trees, softlychuggingwater pumps, and in onecorner a blindingly-white limestonequarry ascending in powderedridges from the ground.

The reverie was interrupted bythe sudden appearance at our sideof Bishoul, an eleven-year-old whohad proudly given the church serviceand his attendant family the slip,and was now eyeing us with affablecuriosity whilst suckingon a lollipop."Everyone else is fasting,"he confidedguiltily, jerking histhumb at the congregationinside. "Do youwant me to give you atour?"

Within seconds wewere plunging downtiny back alleys andhidden stairwells with Bishoul'sunceasing commentary piercing themuggy afternoon air. "If you like thisstuff," he said, "you should reallycheck out the Red and WhiteMonasteries in Sohag. Now they'rereally cool."

The lure of the south

It was a wrench to leave el-Minya,'the Bride of Upper Egypt' whereour beds were cabins on a 19th centuryNile-moored Mississippi steamer,dinner took the form of sumptuousmeat grills at the incomparablerestaurant Bondoka