Bad Ambassadors

Deserted

"[W]e went back to Cairo just 5 of us. Two went off to Luxor and Aswan." [...] "The next day we went to Giza and rode camels 21 km to the pyramids at Saqquara [sic]. We asked to ride the desert way but first had to pass through a dusty village. It was incredible. We were happily trotting along, me [sic], Ben, Andrew (who we flew out with) and our guide, and as we turned round a corner, we passed between two walls with this metal piping spanning between the walls. Ben was quite a way ahead and conveniently on a horse with the guide, whereas [Andrew and I] were on a camel each. Andrew's was tied to the back of mine, so I was controlling both of them. Ben passed under the pipe with ease just as the guide cracked his whip, and the camels broke into a trot, and there was this [pole] horizontally level with the top of the camel. I had about 10 secs to think, and so in an Indiana Jones style, I unmounted and slid over so hanging to one side of the camel. I was bricking it because I thought the saddle would slide off with me as the camel was roaring along. Thank God, though, that I made it. I turned in time to see Andrew (who for the record is 6 ft 5 ins and not quite as nimble as [me]) saying that he couldn't make it, so he tried to slow his camel down, and he grabbed the pole, but the camel dragged him under, so he had to lean right back to avoid the pole – limbo style. He barely made it!!! We couldn't believe that the guide had brought us this way as the camels only just got under. It took us 3 ½ hours to get there, after which we were too tired to be bothered with the pyramids, so we went home."

5th letter home to Mum

View of the three pyramids at Giza

Ben and Andrew

It didn't quite end like that. Before we'd left Giza, the guide had asked for "backsheesh" (tips) on top of his fees, assuming that we were "wealthy tourists". We'd explained that we lived in Egypt and didn't earn much, and he seemed to get the picture, so we thought that had been the end of it. However, he asked us again for backsheesh once he'd dropped us off. After we'd explained our circumstances all over again, he got the hump (sorry!), and began to ride off. It was sand dunes in all directions, so we hollered at him that we needed to know the direction back to the city, and he pointed at a dune. Given that we had very little water, the three of us scrambled up the sandy rise only to see another dune to climb down into and out of. When we got over the next dune and found yet another one to climb over with no sign yet of civilisation, we began to argue. I thought we should keep going in the same direction. Andrew wanted to retrace our steps back to the pyramids at Saqqara. Ben suggested going in a different direction altogether. My bottle had about two sips of water left, and the sun was beating down on us. It was almost at the point where each of us were going to go off in three different directions when a man riding a donkey came over the brow of the dune.

"Coca Cola for sale," he called out. "Nice and cold."

For a split second, I wondered whether it was a mirage, but as he neared us, we saw that, sure enough, he had bottles of Coke in satchels of ice. The three of us erupted into laughter and, naturally, we bought a bottle each. Then we asked him which direction we needed to go in to get back to the city. He pointed back in the direction of the pyramids at Saqqara.

"What's in this direction?" I asked pointing the way we'd been going.

"You die this way!"

We were in hysterics again, and cursed the camel guide under our breaths afterwards.

Pyramids at Saqqara