After few troubles with the custom officers of Egypt, we hitchhiked to the little town of Dahab. It is on the peninsula of Sinai, on the Red Sea side. Every day we dive or snorkel to explore the beautiful underwater world : a long barrier of corals with multicolored fishes. It's Ramadan and the low season. We like so much the calm of Dahab that we stay there two weeks : just enough time to pass our PADI diving certificate, hike two days in the mountainous and dry desert of Sinai, and rest a little bit !

 

We go back to the road and the troubles with the police start again. Egypt is a country of cops with checkpoints every 50 km! They make us get off a truck and violently refuse to let us hitchhike. The next day, Sebastian decides to take a bus ... and me, as a lucky girl, I get a ride by the son of the police commander and then by a local bus, which allow me to cross the Sinai desert without any control !!! I arrive in Cairo 5 minutes after Sebastian!

Newt morning we rush to the Sudanese Embassy to apply for visas. But it is closed for the week of Eid, the biggest Muslim celebration at the end of Ramadan. We must wait one week. The same evening, we read in the news that more than hundred pacifist demonstrators have been killed by the military transition government in the morning in Khartoum. And we were asking innocently for visas at the same time at the embassy ! I understand better why there were so many policemen around the embassy!

Is this the beginning of a civil war in Sudan? Is it too dangerous to travel there? What are the B plans to avoid Sudan?

We spend one week by a german lady and his cats, trying to find answers to these questions.

We visit the empty capital and the pyramids of Giza. Karim takes us to the Nile Riverside and the ghost alleys of the Souk. Ouf's mother prepares us an excellent meal of Eid (I met her in Canada 3 years ago!) And Afaf a lunch. We meet again a buddy from Cyprus...

Then people come back from Eid Vacations and Tahir Square gets busy again. The crowd invades the corridors of Mogama, the migration office. Refusal of visa extension. They need a proof of residence ... We look for a copy shop ... Nothing is open before noon in the center.

I seat on a step, my head in my hands and my nerves in crisis. "Why should we take so much energy and money to extend a visa when none of us really want to stay in Egypt?" I read on travelers' forums that the situation was calm again in Sudan. I have the deep conviction that I have to go to there. Sudden change of plan: We move away from Mogama and catch the subway to the embassies of Sudan and of Ethiopia. I don't manage to convince Sebastian to come with me. He does not make me change my mind either. Sebastian does not want to take any risk by crossing Sudan and don't want to visit Egypt any longer. So he flies to Ethiopia. We decide to meet again in two weeks ... 3000 kilometers away from Cairo!

I leave the capital right after meeting with the director of Nile Valley Corporation who accepts to take me for free on the ferry from Aswan (Egypt) to Wadi Halfa (Sudan) in exchange of a video. There is a road between Egypt and Sudan, but it is forbidden to private cars and tourists must take a bus with police escort. Hitchhiking a boat seems to be an easier option. Also cruising on the Nile is kind of mythical! But just out of Cairo, troubles with the police start again. They don't want me to hitchhike. I alternate between playing idiot or lying.

 

I make a stop in Luxor to visit the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. I had already been to Egypt in 2005, but I am happy to refresh my memory! I order a burger, they give me dry bread with three pieces of meat ... The Jordanians warned me ... The Egyptians have a big reputation of thieves in the Middle East. Every day is the opportunity of a new argue with an Egyptian who "wants the kebab and the money of the kebab". That's why this country is so unloved by backpackers (and Sebastian).

I cover my head with my scarf and wear a long-sleeved shirt to continue my hitchhiking world tour to the south. The strategy works. Inside  a normal car, I go unnoticed and the police does not stop me. What an ironie that the veil becomes an accessory of freedom! The faces of my drivers are getting darker miles after miles, and then black around Aswan. While looking for a place to pitch my tent near the port of Aswan, a young Egyptian family invites me to stay at their place. They offer me their food, their bed and introduce me to the whole family. Tents are getting set up in the dusty street because tonight (from midnight to 5am!), it is wedding night and the whole village is invited.

I end up stuck with my apple juice brick in a compact crowd of women greeting me and taking pictures of me. But I steal the show from the bride just for an hour because my hosts don't enjoy the crowd (and me either). We end up having a dinner at home at 3 o'clock in the morning. We do not speak the same language but we communicate with smiles, signes and pictures. This was my favorite and last night in Egypt !

The next day, they come with me to the harbour and I embark on a rusty ferry ... which quickly takes the appearance of a boat of refugees. Passengers put down their mattresses on the bridge and hang bedsheets everywhere to protect themselves from the sun and its 45 degrees . This photogenic mass diverts me a lot and I spent the night under the stars. It take us 24 hours to descend the Nile, to admire the desert coastline, the sunset and the sunrise, to chat with the adorable Sudanese passengers, to pass along the temple of Abu Simbel and to sleep next to May, the other unique tourist of the boat, a Vietnamese traveler who will become my hitchhiking partner in Sudan.

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