Death on the Nile: The Ghost Ships of Egypt

Ghost Ships at Luxor Temple

Preparing for my trip to Egypt, I read many blogs. One of the unique articles I read was “Egypt’s Modern Day Ruins: The Nile River Cruises of Yesteryear” from Roaming Around the World. It was fascinating to read about the fact that tourism has dropped so much in Egypt that out of over 350 Nile Cruise Ships that use to be working less than 15 are still in use. I marveled at the photos of the dilapidated Ghost Ships, decaying in the desert heat.

Rows of mothballed ships. Source

And I wondered how the author was able to just waltz aboard these ships to take photos of the interiors, or on top of the torn up decks.

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But when I was actually in Luxor, I figured out how they got this “inside look”. When we pulled up and saw the view of Luxor Temple, we strained to see past the rows of cruise ships in front of us. But as we got closer we could see their top decks were in rough shape. No chairs or umbrellas awaited guests. Pools were mostly drained. The faux green carpet ripped up.

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With space along the banks of the Nile at a premium, we had already become accustom in Aswan, Kom Ombo, and Edfu, of cruise ships tying up together in a row, and people walking through each Cruise ship’s lobby to eventually get to the bridge to the bank. But here in Luxor the banks along the Nile were filled with Ghost Ships. I counted over 7 ships in our row that we had to walk though to get to the shore. Most with no electricity for lighting or AC. White sheets haphazardly placed on furniture or pianos. The once glistening marble floors of the nicer ships now covered with a layer of dust and sand. Guardians of the mothballed ships could be seen and heard in the hallways, and the ones with some electricity you could hear the hum of an old TV.

It seemed otherworldly, or slightly apocalyptical and dystopian. To think of how many tourists once traveled Egypt was just mind boggling, we had already seen the sights with so few people, but the scars of the lack of tourism was hidden from us until now. Now all I could think of was the hundreds of people out of work. It put in perspective why the Corniche of Aswan and Luxor was hard to walk, as every foot a you’d have a dozen voices offering you horse rides/taxis/water/tours/boat rides/souvenirs. It was partly because there were no tourists, and partly because there were no other jobs.

And coming back to our cruise ship the last night was interesting. The electricity wasn’t working and it was pitch black and the silence was deafening. Sometimes the ships would drift apart slightly, so the entry/exit of the lobby doors didn’t align, so you had to slide up against the two outer parts of the ship before finding the next door. After arriving for dinner, one of our group members mentioned that a famous archeologist was just outside at Luxor Temple. I so desperately wanted to see him, but didn’t want to have to run through the darkend ghost ships again.

Photo by Elizabeth.

And its strange that you can see this from Google Earth. I recently was looking up maps to remember where I had been in Luxor, and you could see clear as day the hundreds of ghost ships along the nile. As you look from Luxor to Aswan, the banks are littered with the ghost ships. You can tell the active ones by the green decking WITH little dots for chairs and umbrellas.