The hostel where I stayed is very helpful. They will arrange all sorts of things for the people who stay there. I had spent a couple months in India, doing it myself. It had grown a bit exhausting. While I could very well have put things together for myself in Egypt, it was nice to have this staff there to put things together for me. I fully realized that they would also be making money on the deals, possibly even a lot of money. But I just wanted to not have to worry about that stuff for a few days at least. So when they said they could arrange a driver and car for me to go see the pyramids and a couple of other spots, I thought it would be easy and nice. For the fairly princely sum (as far as I was concerned) of 180 Egyptian pounds (about 30 dollars), I would be conveyed to Giza and then the other spots and I wouldn't have to navigate the public transport system of Cairo. All right.
I got up and my driver was waiting for me in the lobby. We went down to his car and he was very solicitous. He told me he was going to take me to the pyramids, but first he would take me to a papyrus museum and shop. Hmmm... Well, I wanted to get something like that, since it is one of the things Egypt is famous for, the first paper. So I accepted that little addition to the itinerary with a fair degree of equanimity, but I was suddenly on my guard. Maybe this wasn't going to be such an easy day after all.
Then he told me he would take me to a place where I could get on a camel. The pyramids site was very large and I wouldn't be able to get around easily without taking a camel or a horse. In my mind, I was of a completely different mind, but I didn't say anything. I didn't really want to ride a camel, but...
We got to the papyrus shop and I endured a lecture on how papyrus is made. It was all right, but rather propagandistic. Then I was allowed to wander around the shop. I was happy to purchase something. I liked the scroll with the Egyptian calendar on it, a ring with the hieroglyphic alphabet on it and a space for writing my name in hieroglyphics. That came to about 25 dollars. The guy kept pressing another scroll on me as well. It was priced at 400 pounds. But I really didn't want to buy it. If I buy something, I have to carry it. But it's small, and light. They just don't get it. It's not their baggage they are trying to fill up. Eventually, without virtually no effort on my part, he put the price down to 90 pounds, about 15 dollars. I was happy enough with that, but it just shows what an easy mark I am.
With everybody happy, I headed out of the shop and we went to the camel place. This is where I was given the big squeeze and heavy pressure to purchase a ride package. I really didn't want to. I really wanted to just walk around the site. But they kept at it and kept at it, and wore me down. I really should have just said no, got up and out, and asked which way it was to the pyramids. But I didn't. I let them get to a price that I could live with, even though I didn't want to, and I bought the ride. They also laughed at me when I said that horses don't like me. They said they had very nice horses. Again, they didn't have my experience with horses and other animals. But I got my camel. Off we went with the “real Bedouin guide” in jeans and sweatshirt (real Bedouin, my ass). And before we had even really begun the ride, he started hassling me about a nice tip later. Having just agreed to a camel ride I didn't want at a rather high price that I shouldn't have paid, I was not in the mood to discuss a tip for him before we had even gotten a glimpse of the pyramids. When I pointed this out to him, he jumped off the camel, foisted me onto another guide from the same place, and disappeared. I had the feeling this was not going to be a very nice time.
The new guy, who was leading the camel on foot (after I had told the guys in the office that if the camel was going to be led on foot by a guide, I ought be able to get around on foot easily enough by myself, only to be told that the guide would be riding as well), barely said anything, and I don't think he knew any English at all. I was getting more and more depressed, because I knew where this was headed. I was about to be confronted by an amazing sight, something I have thought of for decades, and it was going to be in a situation about which I was so upset that I would be unable to appreciate the sight for what it should have been.
And that is exactly what happened. My first views of the area were of hills and sand.
Then we came around a bend in the fencing and I had my first views of the pyramids from close up.
We reached a spot where I was able to take an iconic photo of the pyramids. The weather was perfect. There was no smog to speak of. It was pretty much ideal for taking photos of the pyramids. I should have been excited. I should have been amazed. Instead, I was annoyed. And the only thing that kept running through my mind was about what I was doing on the camel. I didn't want to be on the camel. And yet, there I was, on a camel. I should have been enjoying the pyramids and this amazing sight. But I was on a camel and didn't want to be on the camel.
I ended up deciding to go with it, and when the time came that the circuit was finished, I would just release the camel and “guide” and go about on my own to try and salvage something of the experience.
After leaving the viewpoint, we headed down for a closer look at the large pyramids. And my “guide” was still not saying anything. We passed by the smallest of the big three, without even slowing. We stopped by the middle one and waited as another guide came up. He asked me how it was, and I told him it was awful, that I was just annoyed and not enjoying myself. He asked me why, and I told him I didn't want to be riding a camel, I wanted to be walking around, but that I was riding a camel and had a “guide” who wasn't saying anything. He called his office and had another guide come out.
I spent a few minutes by the middle pyramid. The new guide came out, and he was much more talkative. He spoke English, for one thing. And he told me about the pyramids. The big three were built by three successive rulers. Cheops was the first, built by Khufu. (Cheops is what comes out in English for Khufu. But I don't really know why. Khufu seems easy enough for we Englishees to say.) His son, Khafre, built the middle and somewhat shorter pyramid. And Khufu's grandson, Menkaure, built the smallest one. There are three smaller pyramids by the small big pyramid and three more beside the biggest one. The Sphinx is associated with the middle pyramid. These smaller pyramids housed the bodies of the three lesser wives of Khufu and Menkaure. Khafre didn't have any lesser wives, so he didn't have any extra small pyramids built. But he did build the Sphinx. This was all interesting, and I started feeling a little bit better about the visit, and that I could get something from the camel ride experience. I was still going to be dismissing him before leaving the park and going about on my own, but maybe I could get to where I would feel better about the stupidity of not saying no to the camel ride.
My new guide, who was acting like an actual guide, took some goofy photos of me, and I did get a photo of me next to the pyramids.
Then he took me behind barb-wire fences. Oohhh. I was going somewhere I shouldn't be going. But there were loads of footprints showing that this happened all the time. We went in and looked at some tombs below the actual pyramids. They were for workers who built and designed the pyramids. Some were for the children of the kings. And it was truly a somewhat protected spot, although I have a hunch that it mostly for show, and to get another opportunity to get money out of the tourists. The caretaker of the area was hovering about, and my guide (and it was such a forgettable experience, I haven't a clue anymore what my guide's name was) told me that I should give him something for letting me in the area. At the new rise of my annoyance, he quickly backed away from the topic. I still gave the watchman a five pound note, and added it into my stupidity tax for the day. I really should have known I wasn't going to go in there without shelling out more money. I suppose it was really to give the twits who shelled out for an expensive camel ride something to believe that they were on a special tour that they couldn't get if they just went in on foot. I was really getting disillusioned with this system they had at the pyramids. It is obviously a sanctioned way to go about it all. No official stopped the process, or even tried. They simply held their hands out. But I got my look, and I took some rather lame photos.
And then it was on to the Sphinx. This was the last claimed spot on my tour on the camel. And again, I should have been awed. Instead, I sat and used my time to collect my thoughts and try to convince myself that I could still get something out of this experience. And more than ever I was determined that I was leaving the camel and going wandering about on my own.
I took so long in the Sphinx area that my guide wasn't there when I came out. He had taken a horse to ride around it to see what had become of me and rode up shortly after I emerged. Apparently people are not really allowed to deviate from the program. I told him I would be going around on my own. He didn't seem really pleased about that, but there are some things that are up to the person paying the money and he didn't have much he could say about it. He called my driver to let him know. I told him the approximate time I thought I would come out, and then we parted company.
And I started having a much better time. I got up close to all the pyramids. On the camel, I wasn't even taken to the biggest of the pyramids. Unforgivable. I didn't get the opportunity to turn down the opportunity to go inside the pyramids. Not part of the ticket deal they could negotiate with the park in order to fleece the unsuspecting tourists, I guess. And I got to hear how much it really should have cost to take a camel ride around the park. Lots, lots less that I paid. I paid about 50 dollars. I was getting offers of very nearly the same route as what I had done. And they were for 50 pounds, or less than ten dollars. That just annoyed me more.
But after the disappointing beginning and the lack of what I had seen up to that point, I was finally seeing some of what I had come to see. And I hoped that at some point, I would come to appreciate the majesty of these amazing structures.
After wandering around among the pyramids for a while, I went up to the panorama viewing area. This was not quite a nice a view of the pyramids as earlier on the camel, but it was quite decent anyway. While I was admiring the view, a man approached me. He had tried to talk to me when I got to the viewing area, but I just ignored him as being another one of those touts trying to get me to take a camel ride. But when he approached me, I had to deal with him more directly. I was going to just brush him right, but he started with how dejected I looked. He seemed to understand, so I just started talking to him. He completely understood my view of things. He told me how he and others who worked the panorama area hated those guys down at the gates and outside the gates because they gave the area a very bad reputation. He wished they could see how detrimental they were, particularly in this time of trouble for tourism in Egypt. Then he made me an offer. I could go on a trip with him from Giza to another set of pyramids about a two hour ride away to the south. We could go there, take some photos, and maybe see the next famous pyramid down the line, called Saqqara. And it would cost 250 pounds, less than I had paid for my ride that day.
It was quite a bit of money, over 40 dollars more. In some ways I thought it might just throwing good money after bad. But I liked Omar. He had the ring of sincerity to him, although I also know that can be faked as well. And I really wanted to redeem my pyramid experience. I didn't want them to stay in the realm of disappointment along with the Taj Mahal, which still held a level of bitter disappointment a month later. So I decided to give it a go. I had nothing to lose, as far as my experience of the pyramids went, and only some more money to lose on it. I agreed. I would meet Omar the next morning and he would give it a whirl to change my experience.
Feeling quite a bit better about the whole thing, I headed down to meet my driver. When I met him, and he asked me (and the camel ride office guy as well) how it had been, I told him I hadn't had a good time. They were very upset about that. I told them I hadn't wanted to ride a camel, but felt pressured to do so. I told them I hadn't enjoyed it very much. I told them about the much smaller offers I had had once leaving my camel behind. I didn't ask for any money back, although they kept at me, wondering what I wanted to make it better. I told them it couldn't be made better. My experience of the pyramids had been tainted because of all of it and money back wouldn't change that. And I wasn't asking for any money back. But eventually, the camel guy went and got money, from my driver, which simply went to prove what Omar had told me. The driver who brought someone to these camel guys got a huge commission. Omar said it was 70 percent. They gave me 100 pounds back. I took it. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. But it didn't make anything better. I really wonder if they will ever understand that. Because after they gave me the money back, they really, really wanted to hear that it was all okay. I just left it alone because I knew they just wouldn't get that the pressure and allowing myself to fall into that trap had tainted the whole day for me, and no amount of money was going to fix it.
It was now quite late in the day and there was not going to be time to visit the other places on the itinerary. My driver did take me to the next site, so I could take a photo from outside of it, Saqqara. But it was far away, and I couldn't see much of it. It didn't matter much in any case because I was no longer in much of a mood for seeing any pyramid and being impressed.
Then it was back to the hostel, where I was once again asked how it had gone. And again I was honest. This time though, despite having arranged the driver for me, and therefore bearing some responsibility for the fiasco, or at least for maybe feeling some of the responsibility, Mohammed foisted it all on me. They arrange for the guys to take people, but it's up to the visitor (ie. me) to put my foot down and not be taken advantage of. Hmmm... Well, if you hired good people to drive people around, and then made clear to them that there is some behaviour that would be considered unacceptable (like taking visitors to places where they would buy things and bring good commissions to the driver), and warning the tourist about such things, there would be less problem. Yes, I was the one who said yes. Yes, I should certainly have put my foot down and said no. I bear full responsibility for having done what I did. I think, though, that Mohammed made a rather negative impression on me for having that response to my concerns. I won't necessarily recommend the place to people. Or I would actively promote others to not do what they organize. And I did.
When I went to my room, my roommate wanted to know how it went. I told her she ought to visit the pyramids on her own, and it would be much cheaper and probably easier and with less hassle. Had Mohammed been more subdued and sorry, I might have tried to convince her to take them up on a driver. But it will in the end be his loss. Too bad Mohammed.
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