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LUMLEY: I'm traveling along the world's longest river,
the Nile, 4,000 miles from sea to source.
It's the most remarkable journey I've ever made.
Look how wide it is. It's a huge river.
My adventure started two weeks ago in Egypt.
[ Camel bellows ]
Hello, darling. Hello, sweetheart.
[ Clicks tongue ]
I've followed in the footsteps of Agatha Christie...
We think that's the winner.
[ Cheers and applause ]
...marveled at the beauty of this mighty river...
It's pretty unspoiled, isn't it?
...and heard tales of spirits hiding in the depths.
[ Speaking Arabic ]
I'll come and sort that demon out for you.
[ Laughs ]
But I'm less than a quarter of the way through my journey.
[ Laughter ]
I still have four more countries to go...
...all in my quest to reach the source of the Nile.
-MAN: Here we are. -LUMLEY: Oh, my gosh!
Subtitling made possible by RLJ Entertainment
It's late afternoon.
I've just boarded the weekly ferry
that's taking me from Egypt into Sudan, across Lake Nasser.
When I was a child, we used to
travel across the world like this on ships all the time.
The army traveled by ship. We didn't fly in those days.
We used to lean on the rails like this
and just look and look at the waves
turning white like this.
The sea -- I can remember it being dark blue.
I remember my mother putting out her hand.
She had a sapphire engagement ring, and she said,
"The sea is the color of sapphires,"
and I then knew what the color of sapphires were.
Lake Nasser was created
when a huge dam was built across the River Nile at Aswan.
At just over 300 miles long,
it's the world's largest man-made lake.
It's colossal to think one river has made this.
My journey along the Nile began two weeks ago in Alexandria.
I've already traveled 700 miles to Aswan,
where I joined the ferry to take me across Lake Nasser.
Once in Sudan,
I'll be following the river to Khartoum,
Sudan's capital, where the Nile is joined by the Blue Nile.
Here I'll take a new direction,
following the river into the highlands of Ethiopia.
I'll then rejoin the Nile in war-torn southern Sudan,
continuing south through Uganda,
across Lake Victoria, and pushing on into Rwanda,
where my journey on the world's longest river
will come to an end.
It's going to take me 18 hours to get to the Sudanese border,
so plenty of time for dinner.
I see you in film before.
-Did you? -Yeah.
-Oh! -Was it when you were maybe --
Maybe on television or something like that?
-MAN: Television. -Maybe television.
Yeah. In James Bond.
-Egyptian? -James Bond. Bond.
-James Bond?! -Yeah.
-Yeah! -You.
"On Her Majesty's Secret Service."
-I remember it. -Yeah.
[ Both laugh ]
That's wonderful.
-MAN: Okay. -That's wonderful.
I'm a Bond girl.
Gosh.
I didn't think I'd be recognized as a Bond girl on a ferry.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Here belowdeck, in a sweltering 40-degree heat,
Sudanese workers are traveling home after working overseas
from as far away as China and Dubai.
I don't know how to say "not meat."
I've got some eggs.
Thank you. Shukran. Thank you so much.
You speak English?
-Yeah. -Oh, excellent.
My name is Magdi Osman.
Magdi. May I call you Magdi?
-Yes, please. -Wonderful.
-This is delicious food. -Yeah. It's nice.
This is local food.
We call it, in Arabic, ful.
The English name, the correct name is for it --
I don't want to say --
It's beans. Just beans. Let's say beans.
Yeah. And I feel good when I eat it.
I don't like meat too much. Yeah.
And you look, if I may say so, a very marvelous man.
-You look very healthy. -Thank you very much.
[ Laughs ]
This boat may not be state-of-the-art,
but it seems to have all the creature comforts...
That smells wonderful.
...that is, until it's time to get ready for bed.
It's not that one's squeamish, but there's something...
...sometimes a bit horrifying
about some of the sort of lavatory arrangements.
You can't sort of smell what it's like in here,
but it's -- it's not brilliant.
Actually, if I had my way,
I would be in here with gloves and scrubbing.
I'd give this a really good scrub.
Actually, it's all right.
Once you've just got over it, you know, just --
Quite a lot of life is like that.
Just get over it and just do it.
There we are. Lovely.
Ugh!
No. Fine.
Salaam.
It's so hot downstairs that I want to sleep on deck.
Unfortunately, so does everybody else.
Thank you so much.
Shukran. Thank you.
But with over 500 passengers,
it looks like I should have bagged a place earlier.
Maybe this is a little nice corner by these bottles.
MAN: This place is the best spot.
-You're sleeping here, yeah? -Yeah. Is that a good place?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. -That's wonderful. Thank you.
I've seen a couple of little friendly cockroaches,
but I think they'll be fine 'cause,
you know, what's a cockroach between friends?
It feels rather odd lying down with everybody else standing up,
but there we are.
This is me. And it's so warm.
I wouldn't need anything over me.
This is comfortable.
The word "comfortable"
didn't sort of spring immediately to the lips,
but I thought I'd just say it.
I am comfortable.
And the great thing is, is that I can hear...
...the throb of the ship's engine.
And I know that just there is the Nile swishing past.
As dawn breaks, we're just three hours away from Sudan.
But before we get there,
Egypt has one last treat for us,
as its most spectacular ancient monument comes into sight.
The Great Temple at Abu Simbel.
Abu Simbel is over 3,000 years old.
Its centerpiece, carved from solid rock,
is four colossal seated statues
of one of Egypt's greatest rulers,
Pharaoh Ramesses II.
I've seen Abu Simbel before.
Phenomenal.
In the 1960s, this immense temple was nearly lost forever
when this whole area was flooded to make Lake Nasser.
But, thankfully,
over 50 countries came to the rescue.
At huge cost, it was cut into over a thousand pieces...
...and then rebuilt
200 feet above its original position.
A miracle of engineering...
...preserving Abu Simbel forever.
Finally we arrive at our destination --
the small port of Wadi Halfa.
It's difficult to believe
that this tiny strip of concrete
is the gateway to Sudan,
a country the size of Western Europe.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
It's quite frantically hot on this quayside.
[ Horn honks ]
I've just seen our kit.
It's beginning to go 'round there.
So perhaps they're gonna make a sort of pile of it over there.
When we think of Sudan,
we usually think of a country torn apart by civil war.
Though the tribes of Darfur in the west of the country
are still fighting, the north is relatively peaceful...
[ Whistling ]
...which means business as usual for most.
We've just got to clear all this through customs...
MAN: Okay.
LUMLEY: ...which is just about to happen.
And then we can get properly...
...into the deserts of Sudan.
Gone are the luxuries of Egypt --
hotels, hot running water, and comfortable beds.
For the next four days,
we shall be camping under the stars,
so we have to carry everything with us.
It must be one of the most remote places on earth.
It's very exciting.
Leaving Wadi Halfa and the ferry behind us,
we head 125 miles south to Wawa,
where we're hoping to meet
one of the Nile's most feared creatures.
We're making our way down to the river to look for crocodiles.
And the Arabic word for crocodile is temsah.
So we're hoping to see a huge temsah, yes?
-[ Chuckles ] -[ Laughs ]
Muhammad laughing knowingly.
But they do grow to the most immense size.
I think I'm right in saying also
that the Nile crocodile is the most aggressive
of all the big, big crocodiles.
[ Speaking Arabic ]
For many of us, the closest we've come to a crocodile
is on the silver screen.
Aaah!
Tarzan movies.
The very stuff of Hollywood adventure.
What I didn't know was that, to save Jane,
Tarzan was wrestling the Nile crocodile,
the most dangerous freshwater predator in the world.
It can grow to three times the length of a man
and weigh as much as a small car.
This is a bit mad dogs and Englishmen,
but the truth is this is the best time to see crocodiles
because this is the time they come out to bask --
when the sun is at its hottest --
so we have to be here.
I mean, it is -- fry egg, hot plate.
The river's lovely and cool. It just begs for you to jump in.
But crocodiles -- I think not.
[ Speaking Arabic ]
Local crocodile hunter Abdu Muhammad
is helping me find this great reptile.
[ Whispering ] I've just been staring
at the same bit of sand now for a long time.
We're crossing over the river now
because Abdu thinks he might have seen one.
I've got to say, I'm straining my eyes.
Everything I see looks as though it might be a crocodile.
I'm sure I can see crocodile footsteps.
Abdu, do -- Does Abdu want me to go with him?
MAN: Abdu, you want her to go --
Do you want me to come with you?
-ABDU: Yes. -Yes?
MAN: Yeah, he's happy. He's happy to go with you.
Why was I longing for him to say no?
[ Sighs ] Okay.
I'll leave my sandals on
so the crocodiles have got something to eat.
Whoops.
Unfortunately, we've been outsmarted.
The crocodiles have gone.
But we've only missed them by minutes.
-ABDU: Yes. About here... -Yeah.
-And here. -And there.
About there to there, there to there.
-Four kilometers. -Four...?
-Four, uh -- -Meters.
-Four meters. -Four meters.
-[ Sighs ] That's huge. -Yes.
LUMLEY: Can you tell by the foot marks,
man or woman crocodile?
Male or female?
-Krkk! -Yes.
[ Both laugh ]
Not us, Abdu, not us.
I wish we could see one.
Ah.
Sadly, crocodiles are big business in Africa.
Every year, sales of their valuable skins
fetch over £150 million.
Though the crocodile provides a living for some,
it's feared by most -- and not without reason,
as they kill as many as 500 people every year.
And these two holes here are the ones which these --
Those are baby teeth, but at the bottom,
these immense front incisors fit into the slots up there.
So you have this interlocking,
which means that if it's grabbed something,
it's absolutely welded on.
Well, croc, you met your end.
It was a monster like this that nearly ended the life
of local fisherman Hamed Abd El-Rasoul.
Hamed, come and show me.
Oi!
And it -- chnk!
He...
Yeah.
Oh, he's got you like that.
And then moving -- He's going along?
Look, he climbs over onto the top...
...like this.
Phew.
Yeah.
Gee!
Oh, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Ow, ow.
Sit down.
Hamed took 10 hours to crawl the 5 miles home in agony.
Oh, exhausted. Have to rest again.
Probably losing quite a lot of blood too.
And then wake up, and still there's an awful bleeding leg.
For 10 hours. And how long in hospital?
Okay for walking?
Thank you, Hamed. Shukran.
Despite these tales of horror,
I still want to see a crocodile.
We've been told they're back,
so we head to the river for one last look.
[ Whispering ] Something in the middle of the river.
Look, look, look. That huge, huge thing.
Looks like a log, but it's a crocodile.
It's difficult to tell over the water how huge it is, but, um...
I guess if it looks that big,
and it's in the middle of the river,
it must be at least 18 or 20 feet long.
This animal is extraordinary.
It evolved 200 million years ago,
and it even outlived the dinosaurs.
Pretty impressive.
The truth is we're not gonna see them out of the water today.
It's too cool.
It's only about 130. Far too cool for a crocodile.
Jolly cool for me, actually. [ Exhales sharply ]
Okay, let's go and get some blankets.
[ Hands rubbing ]
In a couple of hours it'll be dark,
so we're heading off into the Nubian Desert
to find somewhere to put up our tents.
The thing is, we're going into the desert
because there are mosquitoes on the banks of the Nile.
So it'll be lovely.
Very exciting to camp *** in the desert.
This is really beautiful.
[ Chuckling ] Because we really are in the middle of nowhere.
You've heard of the back of beyond.
This is beyond the back of beyond.
It's just nowhere. It's fantastically exciting.
This is the best campsite on earth for tonight.
And the lads are starting already.
I think I'll walk a little bit slowly
so I just won't be there quite at the beginning.
[ Speaking Arabic ]
Good. Great.
I couldn't be happier.
We have four drivers, two cooks,
one policeman, and Musab Abidi, our guide and translator.
[ Speaking Arabic ]
Well, nothing left for me to do.
My case is called, rather ambitiously, Marco Polo.
This is my bed.
It's lovely.
It's pretty odd to be writing a journal
and put at the top of it "Nubian Desert."
I never thought I'd write that in my life.
Ahh.
The sun's beginning to go.
Everywhere I am in the world, if I can,
I try to watch the sun going down.
Where we live in Scotland,
we watch the sun going down every night.
We can't bear to miss the sun going.
Dear diary,
give everything away
and camp.
[ Laughing ] I didn't write that 'cause it's not true.
[ Laughs ]
[ Fire crackling ]
On the menu tonight is Nile tilapia.
But as I'm vegetarian,
they've kindly prepared me some beans and chips.
[ Conversations in Arabic ]
Hmm.
Isn't this lovely? Look.
This is the flashy-flashy torch which does all that,
which is exciting.
So when you're lighting your candles or your cigarette,
this just goes on and on.
And then, when it's stopped,
you shine the other end, and you think it's a torch,
but actually there's this beautiful little picture
of a beautiful girl.
Look at that. Found it in the market today.
She's got a lovely bracelet and a sweet little face.
And it's obviously a men's item,
but isn't that charming and modest?
Not like one of those Biros,
you twitch it up the other way and all her clothes come off.
This is just a charming, darling girl.
Quite lovely. She's my new friend.
My tent friend.
You see what living in the desert can do to your brain.
Good night.
[ Laughter ]
We're heading south
to the ancient and sacred town of Karima,
once the heart of the great kingdom called Nubia.
Today Karima is a market town,
a staging post for those traveling
across the desert to Khartoum.
[ Laughs ]
[ Horn honks ]
I found out that most people here
think of themselves as Nubian,
identifying with a culture
which stretches back over 5,000 years.
We know little of this great civilization.
But just outside the town,
there's evidence of a chapter of history
that is largely untold.
The story of the black pharaohs.
For me, one of the most extraordinary things
I've discovered on this trip
is that the great pharaohs of Egypt
didn't all come from Egypt.
In fact, the last burst
of fabulous Egyptology that we know --
the ancient Egyptians -- were, in fact, Nubians.
It's unbelievable.
There are more than twice as many pyramids
here in the Sudan as there are in Egypt.
But it was here. This was the seat of power.
The black pharaohs of Nubia
took control of a huge empire called the kingdom of Kush
that stretched south from here
and all the way north, through ancient Egypt,
to the Mediterranean.
They moved their capital here,
where the Temple of Amun lies in the shadow
of the sacred mountain Jebel Barkal,
also known as the Pure Mountain.
They believe this mountain
was the home of the greatest of all gods --
Amun, the god of kingship.
Whoops.
Sandy, sandy.
Every Friday, the Muslim holy day,
people flock to climb its perilous slopes
to watch the sunset over the Nile.
Abdul Magid Omar has been climbing the Jebel
ever since he could walk.
If anyone knows the best way up, he does.
Shukran.
Thank you.
Ohh.
Look at this.
Look at this. It's the River Nile.
[ Gasps ]
-It's fantastic. -OMAR: Very, very good.
-LUMLEY: It's so beautiful. -Very good.
Very good, yes. This is the top of the hill.
-Yes. -Yes.
Ah.
Jebel al-Barkal -- holy mountain.
Holy mountain.
Wow.
Wowee, Abdul. Look at this.
Isn't it fantastic?
Am I right in thinking that when the Nile is full,
it comes right up to the edge of this green?
Yes, 1988, the Nile flood
till just the feet of Jebel Barkal.
LUMLEY: Right up to here?
OMAR: Yes, this water.
LUMLEY: So this is all the old temple.
-Oh, how wonderful. -Yes.
LUMLEY: Don't go too close. I get terrible vertigo.
How old will you be?
When you can hardly get up, will you still come up there?
[ Speaking Arabic ]
He'll never stop.
Never stop. Very good.
OMAR: The sun -- The sun is --
LUMLEY: It's just beautiful.
-It's very good now. -Shams.
Yeah, Shams.
LUMLEY: The sun is called Shams.
And something which is rather lovely is that my son --
my own son, as opposed to this sun --
when we were trekking in Hunza,
they couldn't say "James," so they called him "Shams."
So my son is called "Shams,"
and the sun here is called "Shams."
And today is my son's birthday,
so the whole thing is completely perfect.
What a day to be on the holy mountain.
The next morning we're up early as our translator --
our dragoman, Musab --
has told me of an extraordinary and rarely seen burial site
five miles from town.
I think a tourist to Sudan could be forgiven
for missing out on the next great treat.
It's like Sudan's hidden secrets.
It's this extraordinarily important
couple of tombs that still remain.
All the rest have disappeared.
They used to be under pyramids. Now they're just tombs.
But they've got fabulous things inside, I think.
I can't wait to see them.
This is a little local graveyard.
This is how people are buried today.
Not like the pharaohs.
Just a small stone at your head and foot.
Mosque in the background.
It's rather simple and lovely.
This is the cemetery of El Kurru.
Here the black pharaohs were buried over 2,500 years ago.
However, many graves have since been ransacked by tomb raiders.
How did they dig into the pyramids?
They start -- the people looking for the treasures --
on the top of the pyramids.
LUMLEY: Yes.
And then they dig all the pyramids,
and they found the top of the tomb.
Like -- Like this here, if you can see.
-Yes. -They open it from the top.
LUMLEY: They found they were in the burial chamber.
Yes. They discovered that there is a door bringing to outside.
So then they started to --
Then they start to dig in the correct way.
Despite the vandalism,
the most impressive tomb is that of Queen Qalhata,
mother of the last Nubian pharaoh.
-Oh, there's a staircase. -Be careful.
And a great big step.
So this ceiling is very beautiful and blue.
And here, Musab --
Is there where the body would have been put down, on here?
Yes. Here's -- Be on this point, exactly.
Can we go onto it? Can we step on it now?
MUSAB: Yes.
And this is the picture of her body,
lying as it would be,
wrapped in her funeral clothes.
You see here, the bed, the shape of the lion...
LUMLEY: Yes.
...and all the tools of the war under
because our queens, they were warrior queen.
Right. So these are weapons.
-MUSAB: Yeah. Yes. -Daggers, spears, arrows.
The Nubians were good with arrows, weren't they?
They were great archers, I think.
-Famous of this. -Yes. How fantastic.
Look at that bow.
That's wonderful.
But here on this side... [ Gasps ]
Now, this is wonderful.
I'm going to get down and look at this
because she's turned around.
She seems to have come back to life.
MUSAB: Yes, after smelling the ankh.
After smelling the ankh.
So that's the key of life there,
with the crisscross and that loop there.
He's giving it to her to smell.
Here's the god.
And here she's woken and turned around,
and she's lying up on her stomach, feeling better already.
Only 1,000 people a year come here.
That's not very many, is it? I hope it stays like this.
I'd hate it to get any grander.
I'd hate it that we couldn't film
or stand up close to the walls.
I'd hate it that we didn't have Ali with his key to unlock it.
I'd hate it that the steps would get worn down.
But I wouldn't hate it to be a little bit cooler.
[ Camel bellows ]
Karima, a town full of echoes of the ancient past --
from its holy mountain
right down to the banks of the Nile.
These old boats are a stark reminder of a more recent age
when the river was used to transport goods, animals,
and people along its banks.
Now it seems the river looks empty,
unused, almost forgotten.
But for the locals,
the Nile hasn't lost its spiritual power.
-[ Singing in Arabic ] -[ Rhythmic drumbeats ]
Nowhere is this more apparent than at a Nubian wedding.
I think we're heading down to the river, the River Nile.
I think some sort of ceremony goes on there.
And I said to them mabrouk, which means "congratulations."
[ Woman vocalizing ]
Muslim men are allowed four wives,
but Huwaidah is Muhammad's one and only bride.
[ Singing in Arabic ]
And this isn't an arranged marriage.
They chose each other.
To bring the couple a long and happy marriage,
the guests make an offering of dates and wheat
to the River Nile.
The marriage is blessed with water from the Nile.
This is the final ceremony of their marriage celebrations
that have lasted seven days.
[ Singing in Arabic ]
And I think this --
snapping your fingers and sort of doing that --
is a kind of blessing 'cause I did that to the bridegroom,
and he looked very pleased.
And all the women were urging me to clap.
They were going, "Come on, clap. Get in with it."
So a lot of that was going on.
Saying goodbye to Karima,
we're taking a shortcut across the Bayuda Desert.
Then we'll rejoin the river,
which will take us into the capital of Sudan --
Khartoum -- halfway point of my journey along the Nile.
I've always been fascinated by this tough race of people,
the pastoralists, who live a nomadic existence
in these harsh deserts.
Around 10% of Sudan's 40 million people
follow a way of life that hasn't changed for centuries.
The Hassaniya tribe moved here from Egypt 1,000 years ago.
-Salaam alaikum. -Salaam.
LUMLEY: Salaam.
Salaam.
Four generations of the Hassan family have come to say hello.
Thank you.
Shukran. Thank you. Salaam.
Salaam. How lovely.
This is a beautiful bowl of yogurt I've just been offered,
which is delicious.
So very delicious. It's lovely.
Hello. Salaam, little one.
Hello, baby. Hello. Salaam.
Hello, little one. Salaam. Salaam.
[ Conversing in Arabic ]
She's asking about your name.
-My name is Joanna. -[ Speaking Arabic ]
Joanna.
[ Laughter ]
[ Speaking Arabic ]
[ Goats bleating ]
This place is so remote that some of the older people
may not have seen an English person
since the British occupation of Sudan,
which ended 50 years ago.
This is wonderful in here.
This is so lovely. May I sit here? May I sit here?
When she was as young as this.
MAN: When they saw the English, they were...
[ Laughs ]
[ Laughs ]
And this is yogurt being made in a goatskin, like that.
I'm not sure if I'm meant to bump that stem.
[ Laughter ]
Pass the job over to me.
Eventually, great-grandmother Medina
became too old to travel,
so the family decided to settle here,
where they've been for 22 years.
However, as head of a family of 10,
Muhammad continues a seminomadic life,
breeding livestock and transporting salt by camel
nearly 200 miles across the desert to Khartoum.
Tell me why you prefer to live in the open spaces,
in the fresh air
rather than in a city with buildings and roads.
I love this way of life.
It's just fantastic.
And I understand I'm absolutely longing to be in the open air
and have eye-stretching views like this,
with the wind blowing through,
rather than in a hot town with fumes of petrol
and busy people all the time.
And it's a hard life.
It's a hard life, but you're free.
You're free.
Though this freedom comes at a price.
To get water,
Muhammad must travel 10 miles to the nearest well,
and most people in Sudan
have less than £1 a day to live on.
[ Goats bleating ]
I think you could live like this in a kind of romantic dream,
but I suppose in the end
you'd go back to your curtains closed
and your keys clinking and...
I'm not sure we've got it right, though, you know?
I mean, we might not want to live as simply as this, but...
...I'm not sure we've got it right in the Western world.
No, it's a twig for me -- twig house for me.
Right.
Twig house.
Let's try that in London, see if I moved on.
[ Goats bleating ]
We push on, towards the Nile and then Khartoum,
which lies a two-day drive ahead of us.
Unfortunately, the desert has other ideas.
[ Chuckling ] Oh, Muhammad.
We're stuck miles from anywhere.
But thankfully we're not alone.
Charming people just materialize out of nowhere.
It seems to be empty, and it's actually quite full of people.
Do you think we should bounce it?
Do you think if you bounce it,
does that sometimes help you get out of it?
Good.
Tamam. Shukran.
We're driving southeast.
Southeast across the desert to Khartoum.
We'll have to stop for the night before we get there
'cause it's a long drive.
It's rather exciting, isn't it?
Oh, look, the car's -- Well, bye.
So, on to Khartoum, where my journey takes a new direction.
There our great river is joined by the Blue Nile,
and I'll follow it into the highlands of Ethiopia.
Subtitling made possible by RLJ Entertainment