I was wandering in Egpyt alone, until I met and liked a group of 3 travellers in a local Cafe in Cairo.
They were a polish girl, her mom, and their Egyptian friend. I decided to join them for a trip after chatting and laughing for about 15 minutes. We made a plan to meet in Luxor in 4 days.

I then met another British girl in a hostel who travels the world carrying her Ukulele, and then another Chinese girl living in Russia while diving in Hurghada. I invited them into the trip, together with an Indian friend, "I" became "We".

We met up in Luxor as planned, visited many temples together, dodged(and failed to dodge) some scams, experienced moments like waiting for checkpoint army to take shift so that we could try to pass the checkpoint by bribing them because technically foreigners were not allowed to use mini-bus as transportation. Finally we arrived at a pretty dusty hostel in Aswan, and that's where we met her.

It was an early morning after a whole night of bus ride on bumpy and dark highway road right next to endless desert when we met her. This energetic and gracious old lady, who is, based on my observation, at least in her 70s. She was always smiling and listening, no matter what random topics we brought up, we always found her input into the conversation rather enlightening but not didactic at all.
She had been travelling by herself for years since her retirement from the British Council in Hong Kong, I can't even list out the cool things that she had done. In short, she's living her life well. However she was still very interested in and curious about everything despite her experience.

I loved talking to her, so I always slowed down my pace to walk with her. I remember on a starry night on our way back to our hostel she said to me: "I am in no rush to see everything, I have all the time compared to you young people. When I was trekking in Nepal, young people always passed by me encouraging me, but I just told them, I am just taking my time to get there, it's fine even if it takes me 2 months, because I've got the time and will be there eventually".

All these words are still a shock to me coming from an old lady, sometimes I still don't understand why it seems like we only have "enough time" when we technically have less time.

Months after our encounter in Egypt, I checked in with her when I was living a normal, peaceful and maybe a bit boring life in Munich on a new internship. She was on a bus ride crossing the border of Turkey when she replied.

I took some words from her and saved them in my notes. I feel they are worth sharing here as a reminder to whoever needs to hear them as well.

Enjoy.