When I heard that there would be 23 of us riding in the same balloon basket for a sunrise shoot on the west bank of Luxor, I hesitated. That’s a lot of folks and I knew everyone would want to be on the edge for photos but I was assured that the basket would be large so I woke up pre-dawn on my Nile cruise boat, took a bus to another dock where a small open boat ferried us across the river to another bus, which took us past the Colossi of Memnon to our launch site just over the ridge from the Valley of the Kings.

The basket was just large enough. We were shoulder to shoulder but it worked. The only worry came when changing lenses as you pretty much had to do that over the side but I returned to the earth with all the lenses and caps that I had left with.

And the views erased any doubt over whether I should have gone. The pre-dawn lift-off, sunrise over the nile, the other 20 or so balloons in the air, temples and village life. Possibly my most productive hour of the trip.