According to the book of the dead and in a similar vein to many other religions, when someone passes on, Anubis the Jackal weighs their heart to decide if they go to the promised land or to hell. We too appear to be approaching our Judgement Day. In our case, the Jackal is called Mr Saleh and he works for the Nile Navigation Company in Aswan.

I've opened a book on the bus. There are 4 options of what happens and where we go from here. Whenever I speak to anyone with any sort of expected knowledge of border crossings, I get new, often conflicting information and hence the odds change on which is the most likely option. The options are: 1. Take the ferry from Aswan. It's time consuming and expensive, but the only definately open option.

2. Cross the land border at Abu Simbel. Should be free, its our nearest and most direct option, but if we believe most people in the Aswan (people who probably make a good living from the ferry), it's closed.

3. Cross the land border at Halieb, by the Red Sea. Unknown road conditions down to Port Sudan and varying reports of openness.

4. Sell the bus in Egypt, because we can't get it out for a sensible price. It would almost certainly mean the end of the trip, but could actually net us (well,the charities) a fair amount if valuations are anything to go by. I need to look in to the logistics of this though.

Our judgement day appears to be tomorrow at 10am. We will possibly have access to a 24 metre long barge. The cost is almost 2000 English pounds. We can sublet a lot of the barge though, thus making it more viable. Tomorrow we will find out if there are sufficient fellow road travellers to do this. If not, we need to make our way to Abu Simbel and attempt to make our way across to Wadi Halfa somehow. There is a road (well, a track), but the chances are that we will be turned back by the authorities at the border. If that occurs, we are left with Halieb and option 4.

We had a whistle stop tour of Luxor yesterday, taking in Valley of the Kings, Luxor Temple and a felucca trip on the Nile at Sunset. Can't say I was particularly impressed with Valley of the Kings. Many of the chambers were closed and the ones we did see were ornate but not jaw dropping. I'm led to believe that most of the good stuff that they took out is now in the British Museum.

We took Kev out to an 'English' bar in Luxor as it was his last night with us. It allegedly sold English Guinness as well as English bitter. In the end, both were off, leaving Egyptian lager. A bit disappointing, but we had a pleasant evening anyway. So, we are now down to 6.

We joined the convoy at 7am down to Aswan, lined up with a lot of brand new coaches. Our poor old girl struggled to keep up and we were chivvied along by the police truck at the back, to such an extent that Rick took us through a checkpoint at high speed, catching one of the barriers. Alas more damage to the front near side.

Aswan is a hugely frustrating place to find out anything. I asked 6 different people to direct me to Abercrombie and Kent travel agents. 6 different answers had me wandering in circles, getting hot and bothered.. The camp site we were looking for, Adams, we also found was 35km out of town.

One of the interesting things about a trip like this is that you keep on bumping in to the same people. There is a Dutch couple we saw in Cairo who turned up at the Nile Navigation Company and 3 Germans from Reizeky Camping in Luxor just drove past. They'll be on the ferry on Monday, but if we are lucky, we'll sublet them some barge space and take them to Sudan with us. Might be useful to have a couple of decent 4x4's to tow us out of the sand.