Egypt: Day 6 - St. Kat to Cairo to Luxor

4.30 am. Brrrr. I drag Satya out of bed. This business of getting up at unearthly hours is getting to be a bad habit. We pack up all our gear and prepare for the cold outside - T-shirt, jeans, a jacket, a towel around my face and a cap. Satya says that all that's missing in the picture is an AK-47. We step out of the cabin. Not much difference in the temperature. It's black as ink out there, but the sky is cloudless and absolutely divine. I see more stars today than I've ever seen in my life, and that's no exaggeration. For the first time, I see the Milky Way stretch across the skies. Now I fully appreciate what we miss here in Singapore.

We walk down to the highway and are there at 5.15. The bus is supposed to come along that road sometime between 5.30 and 6.15 am. We generally hang around, walk about, stamp our feet. It must be at most 5 deg C here now. Slowly the skies lighten. The hills and peaks that surround us turn slowly from black to brown, red to orange. Finally their tips catch a bit of the 6 am sun, and turn orange-yellow. A wonderful sight. Equally wonderful, and more welcome is the sight of the Cairo bus. We jump up and down and wave our arms like madmen. In hindsight, I'm surprised the driver stopped, considering the way I looked. Still, the bus pulls over and we clamber in, grateful to get out of the cold. Long way to Cairo.

We alternate between watching a sleazy Arabic movie on TV, watching the scenery and reading or doing the crossword. The scenery is easily the most riveting - with the Gulf of Suez on the left and hilly land everywhere else. What a royal contrast - blue and golden brown. The landscape is mostly brown and hilly but for a few dusty bushes and some transmission towers and the black asphalt on the road. Roiling hot air rises from the streets ahead of us, and I manage to solve 19 Across, 23 Across and 2 Down. Time flies. As always, Satya is asleep, and I miss a tremendous photo opportunity of him with his mouth hanging open. Our passports and tickets are checked 4 - 5 times; "Indi! Gooooodd!".

12.30 pm - Midan Ramses, Cairo. We alight and walk over to the train station to buy our tickets to Luxor. To our dismay, we discover that the 10 pm train is sold out and the only tickets available at on the 2 pm train. This changes our plans just a little bit, so we buy the [very classy looking] tickets for the 2 pm train and walk over to platform 8. I buy a couple of cheese-sandwiches for sustenance. The train comes in a while. The seats allocated to us in Second Class are surprisingly plush and spacious. They even recline! Expected time of arrival in Luxor is 11 pm. I start reading "Ghost Story" and Satya starts writing. Over the next 9 hours, I finish 200 pages, we eat the sandwiches, numerous cups of tea and a couple of ta'amiyas. I even manage to catch a short nap. The countryside rushing by outside the window shows, meanwhile, shows exactly why Egypt is called the "Gift of the Nile". Earlier today, we saw stretches of desert and hills as far as they eye could see. This landscape, with green fields of paddy, vegetables and sugarcane is quite a contrast.

At 11.10 pm, we hit Luxor. Rather, Luxor hits us. As we walk out of the station, a million touts assail us. With our backpacks and tired faces, we are exactly what they are looking for. The touts surround us and flash small cards with hotel names scribbled on them. Fortunately, we remember a couple of good hotels from the LP, and we start walking towards one of them [they're all in the vicinity]. One of the touts, a young chap called Mohammad, perseveres and convinces us to stay in the Sherif Hotel. Decent place with hot showers and clean sheets. At LE 10 a night each, inclusive of breakfast, it's a steal! We check in a proceed to enjoy a complimentary "coffee turkiy" and a long chat with the owner. We decide to take a tour arranged by the hotel the next morning and pay the cash. Places to be covered are the West Bank.

Then, pleading tiredness, we climb up to our third floor room and after a long hot shower and an even more pleasurable shave, we hit the sheets. It's almost 2 am by now. And we are now exactly halfway through our trip.