My Map Pins (19): The Pyramids at Saqqara and Abusir (Posted March 2021)

 So I read about this in 'The Rough Guide to Egypt' and really wanted to do it. You hire camels at Giza, and then you ride across the desert to the pyramids at Abusir, and onwards to the pyramid field at Saqqara. It is about fifteen kilometres to Abusir, and another three or four kilometres to Saqqara. So it is perfectly do-able. The trick, apparently, is to get a taxi to Giza quite early in the morning and ask around for anyone who rents out camels and a guide. And that turned out to be easy. But it is, nonetheless, a pretty tough ride. It takes around four or five hours, there is no shade at all, and it gets hot. Ridiculously hot. We had two guides, two camels, and a stallion. Sue preferred the stallion to the camels. I stuck to my camel. 

One of the best things is watching the great pyramids getting smaller and smaller on the distant horizon.  And then at last you get to Abusir and Saqqara and you have these extraordinary historical sites to yourself. All the crowds are at Giza. I don't think many people do this desert trip. At one point a police Landcruiser came racing towards us over the sand. They had never seen tourists this far out in the desert. Perhaps we were being abducted. 

 I would so recommend this adventure. In fact I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

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