Camels and Henna

Taking a boat over to the big sand dune, we disembarked, hiked up the sandy
hill to the minor chaos of camels, camel drivers and tourists. I was
assigned Sienna, as a camel driver and my camel was Mickey Mouse. Once you
are seated on the camel, up close to the "saddle horn", you lean back and
the camel gets up in 2 phases. Then off we go, lumbering along up the hill.
Just like horses, lean back up and down the hill and you will do ok.
We visited San Simeon Monastery ruins. They are from 700 AD. The story of
their life and ruin involve "barbarians" and clash of religions in the area.
After, we continued onto a Nubian village to visit a local home. The camel
driver, walks beside the camel while you are riding. Sienna handed me the
rope rein and got the camel to giddyup into a cantor while he sauntered
along catching up a bit later. By this time, I was crossing my legs in
front, over the camel's neck, like an old camel hand. Sienna was pretty good
with my camera and took a couple of pictures. Again, I am at PC that won't
work for uploads, so you'll just have to imagine.
We were traversing the sand dunes and up over the rise there was a little
village appearing with many bright blue and dusky yellow houses. This,
Sienna said, is his village. He has lived here since a little boy, and the
relocation of Nubians due to the building of the dam. He is up every day to
take the camels to the boat landing by 7am, and home by 6pm. The traverse
from the monastery to the village was about 30 minutes. Once in the village
we come down an alleyway, where Sienna stopped to take a cold drink of water
out of a pottery water jug. Down the alley came a person that appeared to me
to be sight impaired, and Sienna yelled out to him a greeting. We ended up
in a courtyard, again with minor chaos as we all got off the camels - lean
back, camel lets his front legs down, lean forward and down go the back
legs. More later. my time is up!