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A Sentimental Journey Across Egypt, Libya, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Italy XII
Day Twelve
(continued from ish 223, day twelve, as well, in a sort of reflective sort of way that almost transcends time and space.)
So there we were, in front of a few statues that just appeared by the side of an otherwise ordinary road leading into some mountains, except for the fact that we were in Egypt, and for the fact of these two statues that stood to the side of the road in an area not unlike a very sandy rest stop without any facilities that you'd find alongside any major motorway or highway in other countries. And there were around fourteen or so of us on donkeys. Which you don't often find in other countries at rest stops.
I'd named mine something that I can't remember... I think it may have been Billy. At any rate, the name seemed to have done it well, as it took to the lead and didn't want to relinquish it for anything. It wasn't quite so much donkey racing as it was donkey jiggling, though why they were so intent on jiggling excitedly towards the mountain range in front of us I'll never know.
This was again one of those early mornings you tended to have in Egypt when you wanted to go see anything, there was a missing person from our contingent because he'd gone off to view the sunrise at, well, unsurprisingly, dawn, from a hot air balloon.
And we were bouncing along on beasts that indie filmmakers are bound to exploit for the next round of shakey-footaged offerings after a breakfast of hardboiled eggs and pita bread. And tea.
Let me just digress for a second and pass one last comment on the nature of the breakfasts in Egypt in the cities and in the desert.
Hardboiled eggs, sandy pita bread, and tea is it. If you're looking for and/or used to a proper Irish or English breakfast with the non-egg-shaped eggs and toast and bacon and sausages and brown and white bread or are used to the good old hearty American breakfast of pancakes with enough syrup to generate electric sparks, you're going to be hard pressed to count this meal as breakfast. At least for the first few days or so, especially when you've still yet to count sand as one of your major food groups. However, once you've gotten used to it, probably made easier due to the obscenity of the hour and your righteous indignation misdirected on to that subject for a time instead of the food, it's honestly probably better than having to suffer continental breakfasts the whole trip, in which you get a piece of bread and another, differently shaped, piece of bread.
So the curious movement of donkeys continued as we traveled up and into the mountains they'd been so eager to jiggle us into. That jiggling now slowed, as if we'd all been thrust, by those self-same indie film directors, into slow motion as the rather loose soil sloped steadily upwards.
At a certain point, to emphasise our non-cruelty to animals (largely for the film version of this travelogue, being undertaken as we speak by an indie filmmaker), we had to clamber off the donkeys, to walk them up a particularly steep part of the slope leading up and around the Valley of the Kings the back entrance. Normally, and I have no way to authenticate this, you travel by bus into the Valley of the Kings by a rather unremarkable highway, like you'd see anywhere else in the world, except for the masses of dirt and four thousand year old statues and tourists on donkeys by the side of the road, resting before they make their way around the back of the mountains into the heart of which you're driving into at that very moment. This is what I presume happens, as we saw a considerable amount of buses and nice enough pavement (if you're into that sort of thing) leading out of the valley in a different direction than the one we'd come in on.
On our less-trodden path (at least less-trodden by buses and cars), we had sheer drops, donkeys, and, dare I say it, the non-Egyptian sailor girl.
It being early morning, with little breakfast nourishment past the egg and bread trick, a suitable case of vertigo due to the jostling of all my major and not so major internal organs thanks to the mode of transport, my heart sang, which is a bad thing, because I'm not a terribly good singer, nor is my heart, to be honest. Nor is it a good thing when you have a very long and precarious drop to your immediate right.
It's a very difficult thing to do to attempt to be dashing, debonair, whatever you please, while you're bouncing along on a donkey and have to be rescued from falling off both the donkey and a cliff by another guy on a donkey (himself in an eminently better position than yourself, it has to be said).
Thankfully, the lot of us made it to the Valley of the Kings, first sited by the hordes of people hawking bits of stone from the tomb of one of the kings, stone cats, pieces of paper, and other things that passed for trinkets in this kings' (and queens') cemetery.
disclaimer:
Due to a few technical issues we're a bit late this week, thanks for popping by, regardless, and apologies for the technical issues (problems, not actual articles).
And next week, we creep sneakily into another day in the saga of the travelogue...
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