Days 3 and 4

197 miles, countless police escorts and dozens of Falafal sandwiches later, we reached Abdyos. Day 3 proved a more relaxing affaire than the previous leg. Taking a detour to Hermopolous we took in rural Egypt, verdent thanks to the rich Nile soil and peppered with interesting looking folk, a man and his donkey here, a group of women harvesting there and almost all stopping to wave as we whizzed past, often accompanied by a shout of "welcome" or "hallo", "how are you?" or perhaps the most bizzare considering the fleeting nature of such an acquaintence, "what's your name?"
"Esmi Zak," "Esmi Luke," we shouted into the wind, but they never had time to pose another question since we'd already be almost out of sight. That day was definitely one of transition for me, with the intensity of the day before and 170miles already in my legs the pace was turgid at times. In one such monotonous stretch of road Luke started mumbling I hesitate to say tunefully to himself, perplexed on finding that he had not relented but in fact persisted, it dawned on me that he was in fact attempting a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. I chimed in to, and before long we were singing through a long list of songs we vaguely knew all to the utter bemusement of the locals we passed. We reached Asyut by 5 at which point, fatigued after 93 long miles I promptly took a well earned siesta.
Today was all change, we had wasted an hour trying to pump up my tyres which had got pretty soft. And eventually, after somehow managing to break an innertube and having to resort to my spare which Luke masterfully replaced, we were ready to go. We'd agreed to try and get in a fast first hour to try and make up some of the time, but the pace simply did not relent but instead got faster, picking up to an average of pushing on 17mph, and by the time we eventually stopped for lunch at 1 we'd managed 63 miles. After lunch the pace stayed high and remarkably I felt no signs of succumbing to heat or heavy legs. The problem however came on trying to find a place to stay. On entering Gerga, the place we had planned to stay for the night, we found the police, who we had agreed to let find us a place to stay, leading us out of the town. "La fundu here" (no hotel), hotel five kilometres in next town. Perplexed but still full of cycling we agreed to follow. Five kilometres later we found ourselves being taken up by a new escort who too led us out of town. Again I questioned, "la fundu here...five kilometres next town" deja vu. At this point we stopped a local man on a motorbike and asked him "fayn il fundu" to which he gave us directions. Thus in the next town we were perplexed to find the police again attempting to lead us out if town whom we ignored, instead attempting to find this other hotel. This grew into a protracted game of cat and mouse with the police, syrens blairing behind us, the officer in charge growing more and more incensed "la fundu here!" We attempted to ask locals who seemed to know of one such, even recognising the name, but one word in Arabic from the officer was enough for a baffling forgetfulness to come over them all. On persisting we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam, and all sorts of strangers taking an interest in the spectacle, a chubby kid of about 11 suddenly became fascinated in Luke's bike and on looking down I found a malnourished little girl playing with my front wheel, Arabic and car horns grew to fever pitch and after our "guide" another kid on a motorbike caving into pressure, led us straight to the police station we gave in and agreed to follow the officer the 6km or so stretch to Abudyos. As it is, what was supposed to be a shorter day, with all the mess of finding a hotel took the milage over 100, leaving under 100miles to go to Luxor, our first stop over!