Thursday, October 30, 2008

Egpyt 5.7 -The Convoy-

LuXor to Aswan about 300km, it took us 3hours. I was hoping nothing "spectacular" happen. Will there be bandits or terrorist blocking the road or will they use bazooka to blow us up?
There were beautiful sceneries along the journey to Aswan but I could sense that everyone was super worried about the convoy, will that convoy affect our holiday mood? Someone did mention “Do we really need to go? This morning I just read about the kidnapping of tourists by Sudanese bandits". Tourists must travel in police escorted convoy when going by roads in south Egypt.
After 15minutes, there were another road block, not sure what happen but some vehicles were stopped from going further but ours continue the journey. Maybe there were some american inside that vehicles, from various website infor, usually americans were given "extra protection" and sometimes stopped from travelling further?

The road was along Nile River, the longest river in the world. I wondered if we had cruised Nile River, would our journey be any more interesting than what we was having at that moment. I didn’t think so because; it will just be another travel if we boarded a cruise ship.
There were few more roadblocks along the journey but it was just slowed down kinda roadblock, no need to stop.
We stopped at a coffee shop for a break, the convoy then bunches together again and the police make a note of the vehicles. They didn’t look professional to me but at least we still got people checking stuff. After 30mins, the convoy started to move again but stopped after the barricade?

There were traders in this stopover but he was of better attitude than those in Cairo. I almost intended to buy this cloth from him, only 10LE but I was worried that my luggages might overflow. Anyway all my concerntration was towards our safety.

There were argument between two policemen and drivers (including man-tai), I guess they were arguing not to cancel the convoy or something like that. Dunno why? One van with kwai lol inside even turned back? I was thinking if there were dangers upfront and this convoy has to be cancelled. Heart rate started to go up-up-up… then a policemen started to see every van passengers through the side windows, seems like he was looking for something.

I was sitting in front, next to man-tai, came a guy who could talk in English. He said to me “I am a tour guide, do you mind giving the policeman a place in your van? I asked my groups and everyone was okay with it, safer wah with a policeman inside. Not bad, not bad got private security.


I move to the back seat and the policeman came over to my seat, he said “thank you”. He was holding a bag with his left hand and an AK47 with his right. he did very well concealing the AK47 from our sights but I still manage to see it when He put it on the foot rest areas. Actually the police jeep punctured and there was no one to guide us along the way lorrr… not as dangerous as I had imagined.

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