THE EXTRA NILE
The world’s most storied river is in many ways unchanged from the days when Cleopatra sailed down it on her barge.
In Agatha Christie’s famous murder mystery, Death on the Nile, the assorted characters first gathered at the Old Cataract Hotel at Aswan, Egypt, before boarding their steam ship for the fateful cruise.
Fast forward 80 years and I’m standing on my terrace in the same location, now the Sofitel Legend Old Cataract Aswan, a grand colonial-era building that overlooks the shallow and rocky first cataract of the Nile, where it flows through the Nubian Desert and loops around Elephantine island, named for its lumpy shape.
The river is truly lovely at this pretty juncture, with small ferries, speedboats and , or wooden sailing boats, darting
