Aswan Bazaar

Written 26 Jan. We are in Nubia now, so the people are tall, with darker skin and curly black hair.

In the afternoon, Jane, Rosemary and I set off to the bazaar. A man caught up with us. "Hello, I'm from your boat. I'm the dessert cook. I made your dessert last night." We have struck this kind of friendliness before, so Jane asks, "What did you cook?" He reels off exactly what we ate at our buffet. Jane and I are satisfied, but Rosemary is not. She asks him what he put in the baclava. The ingredients he names are not what we ate. (But she doesn't tell us until later).

He says he will take us to the market - he is going to buy spices for the boat. We arrive at a small spice shop and are offered a drink of peppermint tea (to be paid for of course). We don't buy, and head into the bazaar. Scarves and pashminas (large wrap around stoles in old fashioned-speak) are on the list for the other two and I'm interested in just seeing what there is. It's very much a local market as well as a tourist one. You can get Nubian necklaces, shopping bags, shoes, teatowels, clothing, stoneware, patchwork.

It was a most entertaining outing. When we asked for something they didn't have, they dashed off up the street to try and find it for us on some other stall.

I left the others when we got back to the Corniche - the wide street along the river. I took photos of the feluccas, for it was the first time we had seen them sailing. The masts are very tall - high above the five storeys of our boat. They look so beautiful.

When I got back I sat on the deck writing my diary and watching the sun set over the hills on the west side of the Nile. It was replaced by first an orange glow silhouetting the hills, then it turned dark red. Wrote until I couldn't see the page.