Pissing on the Pyramids

  If you venture deep inside the pyramids (as I did the day after the fun at the zoo) you find that the inner chamber smells very strongly of piss. It’s a predictable act of desecration, I guess. But it does tend to encourage a speedy visitor turn-around.

In general, though, the pyramids sprang lots of surprises. And they offered the possibility of pleasures (or transgressions) that would be decidedly off limits back home.

Let me say to begin with, unlike so many “Wonders of the World,” they do not disappoint.  They are absolutely vast and, at least if you view them one direction, they give every impression of being isolated in the trackless desert.

Visitors are not encouraged to look the other way, where the huge silhouettes appear not against the background of the camel-dotted sands, but against the suburbs of Cairo – and, in particular, against the distinctive colours of the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (Pyramids branch). It doubles with Pizza Hut if you go upstairs.

But, smell apart, the best bit was climbing inside, right into the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid. This is what British Health and Safety regulations would long ago have put a stop to. The climb is steep, with just a handrail and ridged wooden planking to help you. It’s fantastically hot, even in December. And for a good stretch of the way you have to crouch down and almost crawl along a low passage to reach the heart of the monument.

Heaven knows what would happen if you didn’t make it. There wasn’t a defebrilator, alarm, or any other of the paraphernalia of the nanny state in sight. It makes it all seem faintly ridiculous that some governmental Risk Assessment doesn’t allow the average visitor even to touch the stones of Stonehenge (might they fall down?), but insist that we gawp from a safe but boring distance.

Not that the Egyptian Antiquities Service makes a visit to the pyramids any easier than one to Stonehenge. You have to buy a ticket to get into the main area, pass through the metal detector and by the tourist police with their guns (Egypt gives a very plausible impression of being a relatively cheery police state, “for your protection, Sir” as they say). It’s only when you’ve climbed up to the entrance way on the pyramid itself that they tell you that you have to buy another ticket, from somewhere completely different, if you want to go inside. And it’s only when you have got back one more time, that they tell you that you can’t take your camera inside. It would clearly be asking for it to leave your precious digital on the little shelf suggested (when we went, it was the resting place for just one “throw-away” camera); so you have to climb down again to leave it in the car – or, as we did, disguise it in a make-up bag.

And all this has to be done, while avoiding the pushiest touts (plus camels) anywhere in the world. Exactly what scams they were trying to pull off wasn’t clear; but scams they certainly were. Our driver insisted, like an anxious parent of thoughtless adolescents, that we spoke to no-one, that we didn’t wander round the back of the monument (where presumably even worse scammers lay in wait) and that we didn’t hire the first camel from the first Bedouin we saw.

Still it was probably the most memorable sight I’ve ever seen. And December was the perfect time to visit. Apart from a handful of intrepid Europeans, most of the visitors were local school parties. The little girls sweated through the passages in their veils and headscarves. But (much to the annoyance of their teachers) found us rather more exotic and photogenic a sight than the antiquities.