It is falling into place. We just wired money to Eric, who is the proprietor of Backpacker Concierge. His company is arranging for our 2 day 1 night trip to the Bahariya Oasis in the White desert and the 3 day felucca cruise on the Nile. I found his company by chance while trawling Thorntree for travel information and cheap cruises on the Nile.

Any trip to Egypt is incomplete without sailing down the Nile over 2 to 3 days. There were two options in front of me when deciding on the Nile Cruise -the 5 Start luxury cruise or the more authentic but less luxurious felucca cruise. The cheapest 5 Start luxury cruise was turning out to be 500$ and considering that one of the primary concerns of a backpacking trip is money, I definitely veered towards the felucca ride.

However the one big stumbling block towards a felucca ride was that almost all entries on thorntree advised that you should be careful while choosing your felucca. You should talk to the felucca captain, find out about who are the other passengers on the felucca and check out the felucca before booking it. The point is to ascertain how hygienic the environment is and to ensure that you do not get conned. You book your felucca trip once you reach Aswan in Egypt. All this made me a little apprehensive about the entire felucca experience, when I stumbled across Backpacker.

This concierge service is said to be the beginning of honest tourism in Egypt aimed at a shoestring budget. They arrange felucca trips down the Nile and other excursions. I quickly posted on Thorntree inquiring about them and in 2 days time got first hand glowing reviews of the company.

Getting in touch with them was easy and Eric has been quick to reply to my queries and things have been going smoothly. Final review on Backpacker of course after my trip!

If you are planning on going to Egypt and have a little more money to spare, then you can look at the Sun Boat IV 5 Start luxury cruise. It has good recommendations from both Lonely Planet and National Geographic.

I am hoping to finish this trip in 50,000 rupees inclusive of everything. Let’s see how successful I am.

Note to self: Watch Lawrence of Arabia.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.