Almost the entire trip back to Safaga was undertaken in the dark. The police forced the bus to take the longer so called ‘village route’ back to the desert road. This meant negotiating speed bumps every 5 km or so as we passed village after village located along one of the irrigation canals from the Nile. Clearly nightlife thrives in Egypt with colourful fruit stalls located at every intersection and Tuk-Tuks that we had not see since Mumbai plying their trade.
We had travelled roughly to the point where we should have joined the desert road when the convoy of coaches came to a halt. We were told that this is where the police escort needed to change but it turned out to be a bit more than that. The new escorts were unhappy about our returning to Safaga via the desert route and demanded we take a much longer route through inhabited areas. The experienced driver in the lead coach objected to this, jumped back in his bus and sped off down the road with the rest of the convoy in pursuit. The police, sirens blaring overtook and stopped the convoy and a full-scale row that looked like escalating into a ‘punch up’ took place. I still don’t know what happened but in the end the lead driver led the convoy away without any escort and we negotiated the desert alone. A pretty hairy trip in the dark but all was well and we were back at the ship more or less on time after nearly 13 hours and none the worse for wear.
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