December 13th-14th

Saying goodbye to our tour guide was hard. There were lots of hugs and tears. We knew Hanan was passing us off to good hands in Luxor so we slept easy with that fact. We slept on the SLEEPER TRAIN that is!

I should mention that the last time I bundled travel with sleep was the crossing of the English Channel. That was not a successful travel/sleep combo. The overnight train from Cairo to Luxor however was lovely.

Before I describe our trip just a few pro-tips. If you are booking the train use the link https://wataniasleepingtrains.com/Home. Also, use Chrome web browser. I struggled on and off for weeks using Safari and even Edge to fill out the website’s forms. It wasn’t until I tried using Chrome that I was able to finally fill out the forms and have it go through to payment. You can buy the tickets there but I wanted to be sure that our beds were secure so purchased them ahead of time.

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We loaded up on food and washed up in the basins in our rooms. The steward came by and folded down beds, set up ladders, and took our breakfast drink orders. The kids were still buzzing with excitement about this new form of travel. They had checked out all the amenities in their room. The girls figured out how to open the door we shared between our compartments. They chatted with me a little but really, they just wanted their own room. So we locked up both sides with the promise of them going to sleep right away. It took them a little while to settle down. The walls on the train are thin and I could hear them even as my eyelids closed. I’m pretty sure I was asleep before the rest of the family. I had my own room.

The sleeper train reminded me of Via Rail’s Canadian back home. The train cars might have been around the same age. The ViaRail cars are better maintained. There were a few broken nobs and missing switches in my room. I didn’t suffer.

The sleeper train does not resemble a high speed train by any means. Though as I write this I do recall the terror of waking up to the train roaring south towards Luxor at around 2:00 am. The shock and horror of the speed it had reached woke me from my slumber. It was moving at a breakneck pace I had not thought possible. I was confident that train was going to be the death of me. I said my prayers and eventually returned to sleep.

At 6:00 am I knocked on the steward’s cabin to get coffee and unfortunately woke him up. He was happy to make an early coffee for me, after I gave him a chance to get changed. As we rolled along I snapped pictures out the windows of the countryside. It is a lush green area since the tracks hug the shore of the Nile.

The train speed in the late morning was a fraction of the early morning pace. I confirmed with Heather in the morning that she had also felt the same speed induced terror. The steward brought our breakfasts (and my second coffee). The steward was popular with the kids. There was a language barrier but his energy, enthusiasm, and the delivered meals made him very popular.

Interesting fact about Lydia. She doesn’t always eat all the food we are given on trains, planes, or at hotels. She doesn’t waste it either! Instead she secretly packs the extras along. Then a few hours or sometimes days later she produces a bun or sandwich out of nowhere. This is especially alarming when she is cracking open a boiled egg that I forgot existed. Yes, she will have salt and pepper ready for seasoning it as well.

We weren’t worried when the train arrived late. Our steward, enthusiastic as ever, helped us get onto the platform and guided us to where Mohamed our tour guide for Luxor would greet us. Even without Hanan there we knew she had passed us on to good hands.