CAIRO (dpa) – Africa’s longest and arguably most important river, the Nile, is never a quiet river at the best of times. Native feluccas, small sailing boats, transport wares from harbour to harbour, ferries bring passengers from place to place, Egyptians paddle packed canoes to sell their produce at the markets on the dusty riverbanks.
And in the middle of all this activity, more and more magnificent cruise ships can be seen steaming majestically up and down the river.
Cruises on the Nile are becoming ever more popular with tourists: In the year 2000, for example, some 786,000 Germans alone booked holidays in Egypt, of these one seventh took a Nile trip and numbers are expected to rise dramatically.
A recent study, commissioned by the Association of German Travel and Booking Agents (DRV), based in Berlin, confirms this trend. According to DRV figures, 57,491 people booked a Nile cruise last year, compared to only 18,725 in the year 1999.
“This is an increase of 207 per cent,” says DRV spokesman Christian Boergen. German tourists have in the meantime become the most numerous of the 5.5 million holiday visitors worldwide to visit Egypt.
Anyone booking a cruise, however, is faced with the agony of choice: Should it be simple or luxury, a paddle-wheel steamer, a vintage wooden ship or one a bit more modern? Whatever the choice, the cruise guests will find on all of these ships an acceptable standard of comfort. Excursions to historical places of interest are organised and on many of the cruisers the price is “all in”.
Most of the big German travel agents offer cruises on the Nile and many of them have some of the cruise lines exclusively under contract. Market leader Phoenix, based in Bonn, for example, has at present 11 cruisers under contract and for the coming winter season, three more are planned, the “MS King Tut”; the “MS Zena” and the “MS Al Fostat”, which is currently still under construction.
German travel agent giant TUI, based in Hannover, has altogether eight ships under contract, including, for example, the art-deco five-star vessel “Crown Princess”.
For fans of the whodunit, the “Sudan” is an absolute must. The more than 100-year-old wooden paddle-wheel cruiser was the setting for the detective film “Death on the Nile”, starring Sir Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow, Jane Birkin, Bette Davis, David Niven and Angela Lansbury. German fans however will be disappointed as the company Seti in Cairo has been marketed the ship in neighbouring European countries only for the last three years.
A felucca trip on the other hand offers a different kind of Nile experience, appealing perhaps more to the adventurous, for comfort is a commodity rarely to be found on these sailing craft. Normally passengers sleep on deck.
Trips are booked on site and are usually fairly cheap. “Here the trip itself is of more interest than the standard of the ship,” says Martina Bier, who works in the Egyptian Tourist Office in Frankfurt.
Cruises on the Nile offer almost everything which would be provided on a classical sea cruise. Many of the Nile ships have swimming pools on deck, meals are provided several times a day and opportunities are provided for trips to the many interesting historical sites along the riverbank, such as the Valley of the Kings, Lake Nasser, or the temple ruins of Karnak, Abu Simbel, Esna and Edfu.
Or one can just laze in the deckchair and do sweet nothings as Egypt passes by on both sides of the ship. In the afternoons, tea can be taken at five’o’clock in the classical English style, in the evenings oriental dancers provide entertainment.
River cruises on the whole, not just in Egypt, are becoming increasingly more popular. According to a DRV study of cruises, a 35 per cent increase to 187,270 was registered in 2000, achieving a turnover of some 386 million marks (170 million dollars) – which in itself was an increase of some 42 per cent over 1999.
The Nile is, next to the Danube, the most popular river for ship cruising. Tour organisers are adapting themselves to increased demand and at present 230 ships cruise the Nile. The classic cruise route is Luxor-Aswan-Luxor, leading at times to chaos at Luxor’s airport and at berths on the riverbank. Sometimes ships are parked two and three deep at the passenger embarkation points.
This overcrowding has persuaded some organisers to rejiggle their routes. “In order to defuse the situation a little, we will be offering the route Aswan-Luxor-Aswan,” says Kai Kraemer of Phoenix Tours. Aswan has the advantage of having a larger aiport than Luxor, which will go a long way in easing congestion.
At the same time Egypt’s minister of tourism Maduh el-Beltagui wants to limit the number of cruise ships to 300 in order to maintain the overall high quality of the cruise fleet.
And the quality of the cruises is indeed high, a fact which is not reflected in prices, which are comparatively fair compared to classical sea cruises. A typical Nile cruise – often including the costs of excursions – will cost some 435 dollars.
But prospective cruise participants should not be bamboozled by the star rating system in Egypt.
“We usually recommend European travellers not to book anything under four stars,” says Martina Bier. “A three star ship does not as a rule offer the same quality as a three star hotel on shore” – a fact which is reflected in the many complaints received and which is forcing organisers to introduce their own star rating system for their catalogues.
Nile cruises seem not to attract the younger traveller. According to DRV figures, the average of international Nile cruise participants is around the 57-year-old mark and German travellers even some years older than the norm. The average age on sea cruisers is some 50 years.
The river – Father Nile – is 6,671 kilometres long and flows through seven African countries before emptying into the Mediterranean sea east of Alexandria. The cruise ships however limit themselves to the sector between Luxor and Aswan.
The terrorist attacks in Luxor and Cairo in 1997 have left their mark and a stretch of river in middle Egypt is still barred because of sporadic flare- ups between Moslem fundamentalists and the police.
Even the road flanking the river is a no-go area for security reasons, but according to the German Foreign Office, the Egyptian government is making great efforts to ensure that foreign tourists may travel unscathed through the country.
