Tracks native-style to Cairo

Former Marlborough Express Kaikoura journalist Trevor Ayson takes the overnight train from Aswan to Cairo in Egypt.

Before going to Egypt, I had never travelled on an overnight train, but I thought it had to be better than travelling in a typically cramped bus.

My wife, Marie, and I, along with the rest of our tour party, took the overnight train from Aswan to Cairo, a trip of about 12 hours.

We were taken to the railway station by bus in the late afternoon and got our first glimpse of Aswan railway station, an imposing structure.

But when I got to the platform and saw the train, my heart sank. The exterior was dirty with bits of rust showing here and there, and the windows weren't clean.

However, things looked up when we boarded. We had an air-conditioned compartment to ourselves with a wash basin, coat hangers, and a place to stash our luggage. The seats could be converted into two fold-down bunks. There were also two wooden slabs which slid into grooves for use as dining tables, since the train had no dining car. It was a pity, I thought, as I had hoped I would need to dress up for dinner, like on the Orient Express. No such luck.

"Not exactly first class," I muttered to Marie, who replied that the cabin would be second class in her homeland, the Czech Republic.

But it was clean, although the door to the washbasin kept coming open, which was annoying, and the airconditioning and lights didn't work for half an hour after our departure from Aswan.

The train is run by a private company, Abela Egypt, which has several trains running daily between Cairo and Alexandria. A double ticket for tourists is very cheap at just 120 Egyptian (NZ$28), or 80 for a single ticket. Foreign tourists are allowed to use only the first-class section.

Egyptians must pay between 160 and 200, which is expensive considering that the average monthly salary is only 500.

The journey began and Marie and I relaxed in our seats while we watched the countryside go by. I switched on the in-cabin music system, which played catchy Egyptian pop music.

We stopped at different stations along the way and at one stop an old Egyptian man standing on the platform stared into our neighbours' and our window, an experience which Marie found a little unnerving.

Dinner without drinks, which is included in the ticket price, was served at about 6.30pm, and was dished up airline style, in a small microwave dish covered with tinfoil. Feeling peckish, I eagerly ripped off the tinfoil to find some chicken and rice. Oh no, not rice again, I thought. After more than a week of eating rice, I was starting to go off it and made a point of avoiding it for the rest of the holiday.

The meal also included a bun, yoghurt and a piece of cake, along with a refresher towel.

We had the option of ordering drinks, with fruit juice or mineral water costing 5, or a large can of beer 30. In the end, we asked for water. By this time darkness had fallen.

After dinner, we asked for our beds to be folded down. Our cabin attendant, who spoke good English, was friendly and very helpful. He told us he would wake us before the train arrived at Cairo's Giza station so we would have time to have breakfast.

Marie wanted the bottom bunk so I took the top one. I found it was slightly too short for my 1.86-metre frame and my feet stuck over one of the support struts, but the mattress was not too hard.

However, a more pressing problem was the airconditioning wasn't working properly.

We asked the cabin attendant to solve the problem and weren't prepared to pay his 5 tip unless something was done about it.

After trying to adjust the system, he finally got someone to come and look at it, but they couldn't do anything about it either. We also mentioned that there was a nasty smell, like sulphur.

That was because we were passing a factory, our patient cabin attendant replied.

Our cabin was the only one with the airconditioning problem, because in the corridor, it was quite chilly by comparison.

I wanted to have a look at the bar, so we walked through several cabins to get to it, but it was filled with cigarette smoke, so we only took a photo and went back to our compartment.

As we were being woken early the next morning we decided to hit the sack. I left the lights on a low level in case we both needed to go to the toilet, which was in the corridor.

Rocked gently by the movement of the train, I drifted off to sleep. Next thing I realised it was about 5am and the attendant was knocking on our door with something to eat.

Breakfast consisted of coffee, a bun, cream cheese, a piece of cake and a croissant. We kept the buns and cheese for a snack later. The cabin attendant gave me some copies of the drinks menu for a souvenir, and we gave him a tip, despite the airconditioning not being fixed, because he had otherwise given us great service.

Our train arrived at Giza station bang on 6am, and on the whole, it was a reasonably comfortable trip.

- The Marlborough Express