Egyptian Holiday Cruise Boats, arabaya, buses, faluka, railway engines seen around Egypt.
These various modes of transport were all spotted and photographed around Luxor, Aswan and Cairo (and the River Nile) whilst on holiday in Egypt.
Egypt - Luxor - River Nile Cruise Boats, Buses and Barges and trains: February 2006.
Whilst on holiday in Luxor we got around quite a lot and spotted
several interesting "mechanical..." things to photograph -
arabayas (the local buses), caleches and a nice old Lister engine which
was being used to pump water into the fields for irrigation.
We also found a couple of railway engines plus some carriages to
photo at Luxor station and out in the countryside several narrow gauge
railway wagons loaded up with cane and later we were lucky enought to
also see the small engine. There are of course lots of different boats and barges etc. moving
around on the River Nile at Luxor - needless to say there are quite a few photos of them
below. Also we enjoyed a day trip on a small Nile cruise ship from
Luxor up to Quena to tour round Dendarah
Temple and we
have several photographs of some of the boats and barges seen along the
way as well as several faluka.
These photos were taken at Luxor's Railway Station early evening in February 2006.
We were actually invited up into the signal box and had a chat with the
signalman as well as a good look round there too - the various signal and points
controls were really ancient - can remember seeing these many years ago in
signal boxes on the Southern Region in England. There did seem to be a lot of
modernisation work going on at Luxor railway station.
The first two of the above photos are of loaded sugar cane wagons which we
spotted whilst walking back from
visiting the tombs out in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens - and later on our walk
back we were lucky
enough to see the
engine too. The small engine on the right was busy shunting wagons - seen along the
River Nile whilst on our Dendarah boat trip.
The Caleches roam Luxor's streets braving the impatient taxis and coaches whilst touting for customers.
The majority of them are beautifully painted and decorated - around 11PM many of them head home - we
counted 40 of them racing along towards Karnak one evening.
Arabaya are Luxor's local buses and can be seen racing around both sides of the River -
they are actually pick-up trucks with a fairly low metal or wooden cabin. Some of them have really nice decorative paintwork on the outside -inside the
seats are simply wooden benches.
Arabaya's are the main way of getting around for local people - the fares are just a few Egyptian Pounds - for instance
you can get from the Worker's Ferry on the West Bank to the Valley of the Queens Ticket Office for 5LE.
Above are just a few more photos of transport and mechanical things we saw whilst wandering
around the canals
and countryside over on Luxor's West Bank.
This section are photos of some of the large variety of boats which we saw in the Luxor area of the River Nile -
from small falukas to various barges to the towering often smelly-engined nile cruise boats.
These photos are of some of the large Hotel or Cruise boats which populate the River Nile. One morning
in Luxor
we counted 8 of them moored alongside each other - luckily the
River Nile is quite wide.
Above - the first two photos are of what the locals were calling falukas
and the other two are of the Worker's
Ferry boats which criss-cross The Nile at Luxor.
These small boats are used as ferries - you can hire one for around 10 to 20LE to cross the river instead of using the normal
workers ferry. They will also take you for longer trips down the Nile - for example a several hours trip to Crocodile Island etc.
Hiring one for a trip does involved some heavy bargaining!
There all shapes and sizes of barges and boats moving around on The River Nile
in the Luxor area
carrying anything from sugar cane to tractors to general rubbish (as well as
people).
Aswan. These were taken in and around Aswan,
Southern Egypt during late 2009. It's a very laid back Egyptian City and even
more load back if you do what many people do a lot of the time, drift around
under sail on
The River Nile on an old felucca.. There are several small islands on the Nile
around Aswan and therefore quite a few little local ferries can be seen
scuttling too and fro. Aswan is also the end of the line for hotel cruise boats
which sail down from Luxor since the Aswan High Dam is apparently just a bit too
high to wriggle over for any boat with ambitions of heading further South.
Egypt - Cairo. Quite a few of these photos below were taken around Downtown Cairo - these days
large boats such as the hotel cruise boats cannot get this far up the River Nile. Still there is a lot going on
around the river to make things interesting to watch.
In the northern part of the City there is a nice old bridge which sits atop the original Nile Barrage where the
Nile splits into its two channels Damietta and Rosetta (there are also four small canals there). The bridge
this still has it's tracked lifting gear running right along the sides of the bridge - please see the photograph on the right.
Cairo does have quite a few tuk-tuks whizzing around - you do not find them in
the Downtown area at all but there are lots in the northern part of the city and
they can also be seen around the Coptic Cairo area.
Other bits and peices. These are just a few other "transport related"
photos of things we saw whilst out and about in Egypt. The small signal box was
next to a level crossing where we had to wait for a train to pass - the chaos
was incredible once the train had passed with every vehicle scrambling for that
6 inch of space as everything started moving. The large water pump engine shown
below was on
display at one of the lovely monasteries out in the desert at Wadi Natrun.
These are our Egypt related topics:-
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