At breakfast I had only one bowl of lentil soup as I wasn’t quite sure what caused my tummy upset yesterday and even than I was taking a risk but just couldn’t resist it. The police didn’t make too much fuss seeing us leaving for Luxor and before we left I stopped by the co-op shop to get us a duvet which we had seen last night costing us all of 139EPnds. I wondered if it would help keep us warm in the tent.

I got briefly disorientated and wasn’t quite sure of my direction on the way out of town, but then again who wouldn’t in Egypt! Once the exit which goes over the canal was found we were on our way to Luxor. The road was much more user friendly and there were not excessive speed humps although there were still many. The check points were less frequent than from Cairo to El Minia.

We picked up our first escort about 50kms out of El Minia and we were not given a choice if we wanted one. The escort trucks were varied in the number of men on board from 2 to 5 men all armed and their state varied too from nearly broken down trucks without break lights and hanging mudguards to fairly used ones. The fourth escort truck on seeing that there was no one to take over from us radioed someone and told us to go. Off we went at great speed only to see a policeman frantically running to his truck a couple of kms down the road. We didn’t stop but at the speed I was driving I think I lost him.

At the next check point we were told to wait and a couple of seconds later a police truck drove up and motioned for us to follow him. I thought to myself that this was not going to work as they were making slow progress. But fortunately they must have thought the same thing as that was the last truck that accompanied us and after 20 kms or so told us to go ahead.

We carried on and at every check point the same repeated questions being asked and repeatedly gave the same answers that we were heading for Luxor and there were three Malaysians in Tuah.

We arrived in Luxor and found Reizeky Camping by pure accident as we entered the city and some kids claimed to have showed us the way and wanted buckshee to which I didn’t give a polite response. We were in the camp checked in and having our dinner by 2130hrs. The lentil soup was great but the rest of the dinner was a little dry and rather tasteless and although there was plenty of it I couldn’t even mange to finish half.

The room was rather basic and at 160LE I was rather disappointed but Alison was adamant that there were no cheaper places available as this was “Luxor”. There was not even heating in the room and I thought that if I wanted to freeze I could freeze in the tent instead of coughing up good money. The only good thing that came out of staying at Reizeky Camping was that the manager, Tony, knew the operator of the ferry from Aswan to Sudan and immediately called him and confirmed that we needn’t go down to Aswan on Monday and only needed to be there on Saturday 10^th January.