Camels!

 Hey peeps!

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I went on a camel ride!  It was well good.  We went to see the sunset behind the pyramids whilst all sat on camels, which was both beautiful and ass-aching.

The camels are nowhere near as sophisticated as zebras.  They wobble about when standing and moving, and then try to eat the riders of the one in front.  Luckily, me and my Mummy (she has told me to call her “Mummy” now, not only in honour of Egypt but also because “Owner” sounds rather odd) were on the last camel.

We waddled our painfully-slow way through the back streets of Giza to get to the perimeter fence of the pyramids complex.  In some ways, they were much more interesting than the walk along the sands itself.  The streets were full of tiny little Egyptian horses, and children beating them with sticks.  Personally, I’m fond of my stocky build, but I can still appreciate the beauty of these horses.

They’re much smaller than the ones in England, and don’t have the big barrel bellies.  Their legs are little but still nice and slender.  And, considering the amount of whippings administered, they look surprisingly healthy.

The entire complex of back alleys is full of riding (or, in one case “raiding”) stables, which look like normal houses but for the fact that every window has a horse poking out of it.  We came out onto a scrub area, in which lots of the little devils were lined up with two children.  The biggest of these entertained himself by leaping onto a horse’s back and whipping it as it galloped, unsaddled, away and threw him off.  He then went on to the next animal in the line.  It reminded me a bit of an N64 game, with a never-ending supply of horses.

On top of the dunes, as the sun went down, the locals gathered amidst the horse carcasses slumped in the sand to listen to music, talk and drink something, with their horses roaming amiably about.  Oh, and there were pyramids and Mummy pulled all the usual poses.  There were also pyramids today, and a Sphinx, but that was nowhere near as interesting as the camel ride.

Tonight we are getting a sleeper train to Aswan, upstream, before we go sailing on a felluca (Egyptian boat) for a few days.  We’ll be sleeping and eating on it, under the stars, but notably not going to the toilet as there are none.  No Internet for a while probably, but I will try to upload photos for you!