A Photographer Abroad: The Great Pyramids

When I travel, I tend to avoid group tours. Not because I think they’re cheesy or a waste of time—on the contrary, they can be an excellent way to see the sights—but the outings usually take place in the middle of the day, when the sun is high and the light is colorless, making locations less than ideal for outdoor photography.

Case in point: I was in Cairo and wanted to visit the famous pyramids. After a little investigating, I learned it was damn near impossible to do without a tour group. I was determined to shoot the pyramids at sunset and began asking around for the best way to do it. I asked restaurant workers, hotel clerks, and taxi drivers. They all agreed that outside of an organized tour, there were three decent options to get me there: horses, camels, and donkeys. Obviously, horses had the most sex appeal (think Arabian Nights), camels had the best bragging rights (that photo will sit on your mantle for years!) and donkeys … well, they had no appeal at all, but they were the cheapest to rent.

I took a taxi about twenty minutes outside of town to a small shanty village. Camels sat in the streets with their legs tucked underneath them and men in long, flowing galabeyas walked around leading horses in every direction. My taxi driver assured me that “heees frrrend” would take me to the pyramids for “the sunset” and I would get my picture. And he would wait there to take me back to my hotel afterwards.

After a quick introduction to Abdel Ghany Soliman Ghonem and his donkeys (one for him and one for me), I waved to my taxi driver and we were off. Abdel’s English was broken, but he had enough to carry on a decent, albeit quirky, conversation. He said we’d ride for about an hour into the Sahara Desert to a spot with an excellent view of all three pyramids (Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus). And then he told me he had two wives, three children, and fifteen girlfriends. “Oh really?” I said as I looked sideways at him, his paunch jiggling with every stride the donkey took. “Yeys,” he said as he scratched the stubble on his chin and looked at me with bedroom eyes. Oh boy, this was going to be an interesting ride.

Thankfully, he was more interested in how much my Ralph Lauren bed sheets cost in America than in getting tangled underneath them with me. And I was happy to fill his head with true tales of capitalism and what it’s like to shop in New York City.

The ride was surprisingly pleasant; the donkey’s saddle was not nearly as uncomfortable as I’d anticipated, and an hour went by faster than I thought it would. Soon I could see the Pyramids off in the distance, like a living postcard. The sun was very low on the horizon. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “This is so cool! I am so cool!” quickly followed by, “I can’t believe I’m sharing this experience with Abdel, the gigolo.”

But as cool as it was, what little light left in the sky was fading fast.