Aswan is a serene place where the Nile is more majestic than anywhere else, flowing through granite rocks, and round emerald islands covered in palm groves and tropical plants. It’s a typical tourist town where rip-off prices and nagging vendors force themselves onto anybody looking like a tourist.
The Arabic spring had an adverse effect on the tourist industry in Egypt. Huge cruise boats we docked along each other many hotels we empty. A quick count over 40 of the behemoth cruise liners docked. Nothing much was happening in the town.
Because of the bureaucratic bullshit we had to spend 2 days in Aswan waiting for the bikes to clear through customs. This border crossing ended up being the most costly of the entire trip. Mostly due to fixer payment and Baksheesh that had to be paid. Everything is written in Arabic and thus trying as travelers to clear through custom was impossible.
It’s a lengthy process. First we had to pay for a road engineer, pffff…..a bloody low paid cop now is called a road engineer. We paid a taxi from Aswan to customs, 25km away for him to scratch the VIN numbers onto a piece of paper, which eventually would end up with a ton of other rubbish in a corner of one of the offices. The customs officials at the border were not allowed to perform this very important and highly skilled task.
Then there were four other officials each who had to sign some more useless papers and wrote gibberish in Arabic on the Carne. We then we got issued with yellow temporary number plates that had to be fixed to the bikes.
We were in Egypt and in search of the old Egyptians.
Hey Michnus and Elsabie.
Really cool pictures and writing, I really am enjoying your travels.