Our cycle touring notes suggested that cycling down the Nile from Cairo to Luxor would be dangerous because of the heavy traffic. Our guide books insisted that independent travel was definitely not recommended south of Minya and that local police would probably escort any traveller out of the area.

We had noted that during Ramadan there had been some violence in the Nile Valley between the Copts and the Islamic fundamentalists. Nevertheless we decided to take our tandem and attempt to cycle up the Nile and then east into the Sinai Peninsula. We also planned to continue into Jordan and Israel. So we flew to Cairo at the end of January with our tandem.

In Cairo we visited the pyramids, spent a few fascinating hours in the Egyptian museum and then, one morning, presented ourselves at the Tourist Police to tell them what we planned to do. In the small cramped office of two police chiefs we wrote out our planned itinerary. Young secretaries came in to make photocopies and supplicants waited their turn at the door. It was a busy place and we had hardly presented the details when a smartly dressed group of people appeared. The chairs we had been occupying were needed and so we were dismissed with a wave. We could go.

Early the next morning we biked out of central Cairo in the direction of the pyramids and found it was not as awful as we had expected. Traffic was relatively light and the biggest hindrances on the roads were the crowds of uniformed youngsters on their way to school. Our plan was to cross the desert to the oasis of Al-Fayoum. This corner of the Great Western Desert was far from attractive, littered as it was by plastic trash of the 20th century. The oasis itself was more interesting as we could watch people working in the green fields, clearing irrigation ditches and herding small groups of cattle. Six youngsters on brightly decorated bikes joined us between two villages. This was the kind of cycle touring we enjoyed.

The next day, as we headed back toward the Nile, we were stopped at the first of many police check points. Language was a problem. All we could do was sit in a shady corner and drink the hot sweet tea we were offered while we waited, we hoped, for permission to proceed. Half an hour later a police pickup truck appeared with four soldiers armed with sub machine guns. We were waved on and they drove slowly behind us to Beni Suef. There on the outskirts of the town, two policemen on motor bikes took over and escorted us to our hotel, sirens blaring. This was our introduction to the Egyptian concern for the welfare of their tourists. We were accompanied by a policeman whenever we left the hotel.

The next day, as we set off, the truck with its armed personnel was waiting for us again. We wanted to cycle onto Minya. They were coming with us and told us the route we were to use. Our second day was no pleasant bike ride along the Nile between green fields and palm trees. We were led away from the Nile into the desert along a wide new road. Here huge trucks thundered past us as we labored up and down the long steep sand dune hills. Instead of our planned 100 km, we biked 143 km with our escort behind us all the way! We could apparently cycle up the Nile but the police would decide our route and go with us! This was not our kind of touring so the next day we got on a train and chugged our way to Luxor and the wondrous sites of that town.

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