Over the past few years our travels have taken us to places that leave marks on the heart. Places once dreamt of or studied in books taken out of libraries that were the only access to the “outside world”. Those were pre-internet days – three channels on TV days – wired house phone days. They weren’t better days, but they weren’t worse either. I would like to say that I spent these days being more present in my life, but I must admit that I spent a lot of time up in trees imagining that I was an explorer, a ninja or heroic soldier seeking my adventure in a far-off land.
When we boarded our Nile boat for the adventure down country and I walked up to the top deck to see what was out there, that imaginative child came back like a rush, but this time I wasn’t imagining anything, I was a man in a far-off land going on an adventure with someone I love.
Every day on board we woke up like we were going on the best school field trip ever. The first morning we pulled back the shades to see a whole flight of hot-air balloons rising above the Valley of the Kings. The only noise was the distant hiss of the gas burners giving lift to the balloons in the morning breezes. The Nile doesn’t make a sound as it passes by on it’s way to the Mediterranean. I’ve stood on many shores over the years and never got the feeling that a body of water was going to take me back in time, or, better yet, down in time like the Nile did. I could feel why it was a cradle of civilization.
There is no way for me to truly convey the way the trip made us feel during our five days on the Nile so I am just going to share with you some of the beauty we sailed past on our way to Aswan and Lake Nassar…
If you made it this far into the post, you are my kind of person and I would like to shake your hand and maybe take you out and buy you a beer.
What I have shown you thus far is only 1.36% of the total photos I took on our trip to Egypt. We even took another week on the beach at Sharm El-Sheikh, but those photos are for another time, another place.
It is hard to conclude or wrap up a trip like this – I feel like we are still on an extension of it where we get to be those same adventurous people walking into the grocery store or the office with a renewed interest in everything. That’s always a good sign – coming back as a changed person, wary of the “normal life”. Normal life is lame because life is too damned short to be normal.
The spring and summer are already booked full of trips so check back in a few weeks for more travel photos. Also, I have been wicked busy painting and shooting film so there will be more of that sort of content soon. Until then, strive on untiringly…
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