There were 18 in our group; it was actually a good number of people. It gave a good atmosphere when going out for meals/drinks or sitting around chatting. Finishing up in Aswan, we split into two groups, with 9 on each Felucca sail boat.

Initially I was sceptical about sailing on a river, struggling to imagine how it would be big enough if you needed to tack going up wind. But, the Nile is far the biggest river I have seen. It is about 100 meters wide and apparently up to 50 meters in depth in places. The power of water that is flowing down it makes for a swift current to swim against. It also allowed us to actually make group drifting with the current. The winds were not excatly in our favor while on the Nile, light winds meant we didn't make the full distance we were hoping for. So on the last day we pulled into the closest town to jump on a bus to continue our journey.

The sail boats were large enough to accommodate the 9 of us comfortably, even at night when we were sleeping on deck. The cruise was really one of the highlights of the trip. It was simply relaxing, refreshing and a bit of a laugh at times. Early morning swims in the Nile to freshen up, local kids appearing out of the sand dunes on the banks to wave, and tying up at shore over night to sit around a bomb fire simply made
it a good time.

We stopped on day two to Kom Ombo temple, you can see about Kom Ombo and Luxor (the ancient city of Thebes) in the next post. All up we spent 3 nights sleeping on the deck of the Felucca.