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but, for the first time, that wasn't at the front of my mind. There were only two hundred
kilometres left between me and the port of Rashid, where I would finally meet the sea. I
didn't care about blisters or chafing any more; I was about to enter the delta.
The Nile Delta is the epitome of man's mastery over nature. Once a vast swamp, it is
now one of the most productive and fertile agricultural regions in the world. As I soon dis-
covered, it is also one of the most densely populated.
North of Cairo, the delta truly begins, the Nile parting into two great channels, each
bound for the sea. I had chosen to walk the western channel, meeting Rashid - or as it
is more famously known, Rosetta - two hundred kilometres further on, simply because
it was longer, and because I wanted to end my journey beside the city of Alexandria, in
honour of Alexander the Great, who had spent so many years pondering the secrets of the
river. For six days, I tramped through increasing humidity, following the main roads which
weave between the two channels. Here, the highways thronged with traffic, the pavements
still thick with the carcasses of abandoned animals. Street dogs, the ones that weren't rot-
ting on the pavements, barked viciously as I passed, and, on more than one occasion I was
chased by a swarm of angry bees, bent on expelling this foreign intruder from their neigh-
bourhood. My minders trailed me constantly, in a variety of police cars, motorbikes, and
tuk-tuks - but, oblivious to them at last, I fixed my thoughts on the sea and continued to
walk. All I could think about was the end.
It was 30 August when I finally arrived, dishevelled but elated, at the port of Rashid.
Like so many Egyptian towns I'd passed through, Rashid was a hive of narrow medieval
lanes and tall mud-brick houses. It was here that the secret to deciphering Egyptian hiero-
glyphs was first uncovered, because Rashid was once home to the celebrated Rosetta
Stone. I stopped for tea at the fortress in which it had once been housed. It hadn't been here
for two hundred years though - instead residing in the British Museum ever since it was
'discovered' by a French soldier in 1799, much to the chagrin of the Egyptian authorities -
but, for now, I was glad to be here, only a short skip from the end. Men in turbans gazed at
me as I relaxed, and I greeted every single one with the most enthusiastic
Salaam
I could
muster. When I was restored and took off again, children ran after me as they played. Fish-
ermen, mending their nets in rusty doorways, looked at me curiously. Taxis vied for the
roads with donkeys and carts, and market vendors cried out with offers of melons and mo-
bile phones. Like everywhere else in Africa, this was a place where the old world met the
new.
I clung to the river, now wider than since the delta began, and filled with fishing boats
and nets. Above, there circled my very first seagull. Out on the river, the water was choppy
and waves, stirred by the wind, crashed against the rocks below the promenade. Lost in a
daydream, I thought back to the start of the expedition. Two hundred and seventy-one days
ago, I'd stood with Boston above the tiny trickle in the middle of the Nyungwe Forest. It
