Traveling in Comfort

In both trips, arrangements were made by their tour guide Zotti to provide a high standard of Western comfort.  Emily describes a multi-course French dinner the first night of the Morocco trip: “This is hardly one’s idea of ‘roughing it’ in Camp, is it? And most astonishing thing of all, it was cooked over a charcoal fire in a hole dug in the ground.”  Traveling on the Nile by dahabeeyah instead of a Cooks steamer was also an enhanced degree of luxury, although by all accounts the steamers were quite comfortable, with many services provided.  Nonetheless, Emily felt “a deep sympathy for anyone who steams up the river and back in three weeks on one of the noisy Cook steamers and has his excursions and life all marked out for him. It is so delicious just to float along and feel there is no hurry about anything.” When stuck for over two weeks on a sandbank on the Nile, Emily says that “Zotti, as you can imagine, has been in despair at our misadventures but last night was very jubilant as the boat had really moved at last.”

There is an implied community of fellow  travelers:  Emily takes note of the progress of other dahabeeyahs , particularly those flying the American flag.  The Sesostris party visits a dahabeeyah on which the artist James Carroll Beckwith is travelling, and both Emily Sibley Watson and Beckwith record the visit.  Later, Rochesterian Joseph Ely, who is exploring the Nile via steamer, visits the Sesostris and “was much interested in the dahabeeyah and our life on it.”