Night train to Cairo

Night train to Cairo

A 15-hour train journey from Alexandria up to Luxor, although very tiring, didn’t put us off taking the sleeper back down the Nile valley at the capital. We had booked the all night- sleeper at 94LE. We would be able to sleep, have breakfast and wake up refreshed in Cairo ready to continue our tour of this interesting country.

And it worked out that way too – well almost. We boarded the train after being harangued by porters at Luxor Station. The platform was full of passengers – mostly Egyptians with a few tourists like ourselves. Back in the bad old days – the late 90s, the treat of terrorist attacks meant that the army or militia were on board, but tonight there were just ordinary looking railway officials.

Show to our berths by the helpful young man whose job it is to look after the passengers, we were pleasantly surprised how much room we had and how comfortable it looked. Initially though, the complexities of how each bunk bed folded down had us beat. Deah, the attendant, fluent in five languages as well as his own native Arabic, helped us down with the beds – actually, he bade us step outside while he expertly and quickly pulled each bed down from its vertical place above our heads.

The food tasted and looked a bit like the stuff you get on a plane, but it was reasonable and we enjoyed it. With full stomachs and visits the small but quite clean bathroom over, we settled down to sleep. The roll of the train disturbed us both and at one time we felt like we were at sea, but we soon settled in to it and slept until a soft bell woke us at 4.30am for tea or coffee.

Arriving at around six in the morning in Cairo, we did feel a little sleepy, which is hardly surprising after only about four hours sleep. At times like that, the last thing you want to have to cope with are the taxi drivers of Cairo. I had read about the ‘hotel scam’ in the good ‘Lonely Planet Guide’ just earlier. Even so, I wasn’t ready for it, not really, maybe because I didn’t expect it to happen to us. You read about these things in guide books, little imagining that you will be their next victim.

We were taken to a sort of building site instead of Sheraton Cairo, and were told this was it. Not dismayed, we leant into the driver and told him that if we weren’t taken to our hotel there would be no money. Like that:
“No hotel, no money!”

With check in at 3.0pm, we were mighty grateful when the receptionist upgraded us to deluxe for the same tariff. If we’d had to find a hotel after that trip, I think we would gladly have been taken anywhere; prebooking is advisable.
Robert L. Fielding