the pyramids

oh the pyramids! yes they are as amazing as everyone says they are - and much much more! after spending most of yesterday walking through the unmarked streets of cairo, visiting the citadel and then the egyptian museum in the afternoon (both a bit disappointing), i was feeling a bit over the city as a whole, and planning my escape. it even crossed my mind that i could leave the pyramids until a later time here in egypt. thank goodness not! visiting the pyramids was just the inspirational pick-me-up that i needed :)

i met an english guy called dan in the morning on the metro on my way to giza, and we ended up spending the day together (in fact he's at the computer next to me as i type this entry). we turned up to the area in a crazy minibus, and after turning a corner the pyramids were just there staring back at us. it was simply breathtaking. these pyramids are enormous, and whilst that seems rather obvious, standing right next to one is humbling - dan and i looked at each other with mouths agape and both had goosebumps. we wandering around the site for a while, and then decided to head into the largest pyramid itself. there is a tunnel into the centre of the pyramid that is about human size, and then about 50 metres of crawling up a 45 degree angled tunnel that is only 1 metre wide and 1 metre tall. it leads into a sloping chamber whose stones are fitted together so perfectly that the mind boggles. atop this there is another small tunnel into the burial chamber. deep in the middle of the tunnel my head started to spin and i couldn't breathe. there were people everywhere and we were all squashed together and no-one could move either up or down, stuck in the tunnel with no air. i started feeling myself panicking - the first twinges of claustrophobia taking hold - and i realised that if something happened there was simply no way out. i kept having ridiculous thoughts like 'someone's going to catch fire and i'm not going to be able to run away - i'm going to catch fire too!'. there were parts where there was barely any lighting and we were just stuck in a tunnel a hundred metres from a small exit and couldn't see or move. a very intense experience. afterwards i rented a man on a camel to take me around for a bit, which was great except for the fact that my balls got pounded every time the beast took a step, and the guide couldn't stop talking about people fucking behind the mountain and downloading internet porn.

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afterwards dan and i went to a cafe and played backgammon and smoked sheesha for ages. this time it was strawberry flavoured and a real pleasure. everywhere you go here, there are coffee houses filled with men smoking sheesha and playing backgammon and watching tv. it's strange to see, and it only hit me today that the two things that define mainstream western culture - getting pissed and picking up chicks - are both unavailable here, so guys just hang around together doing nothing. maybe it fuels the fanatical undercurrent that i feel, as there's no way to blow off steam.

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because we were both tightarses, we reserved a table on a roof-top cafe across the road from the pyramids so that we would be able to see the sound and light show for free whilst enjoying a good meal, but when the time came we felt that it was all a bit too much money for a meal in egypt at our cafe of choice, and ran away to watch the show from across the road. for james bond fans, apparently the sound and light show appears in 'the spy who loved me', and hasn't changed much in the last 30 years.

for those of you who are interested, here is a picture of those roman coins in mentioned in my last entry.

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in health news, my shoulder still aches, but much less so, and i have started using it to do most things again. i have developed wretched blisters on my heels, but i took my orthotics out and the pressures changed so i was able to walk again - so hopefully some callouses will form and i'll have my orthotics back in in no time.

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my sleep-wake cycle is still all fucked up, so i've been getting up at 4 am, but it's ok because around 5 there's the morning call to prayer which is a magical music that rises up out of the pre-dawn streets of cairo caresses your ear. beautiful.

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loving my trip so far. not sure what my next stop will be. definitely going to leave cairo over the next few days though - too much more to egypt.