positivenegatives

I went here making a documentary about The Private Lives of the Pharaohs for Channel 4 in the UK. It is one of the most stunning places I have ever been to and I was actually paid to go into the pyramids.

( Just been lookin through some of my photos of this place, but this one from Google Earth will do.)

No words can really do it justice, one can’t get a sense of perpsective from photos either, you just have to go.

It involves loads of walking around as the sight is huge and stretches over km’s, If you get up close to the pyramids, you lose a sense of what they are as they are HUGE.

I was very fortunate to get up into some of the rooms above the galleries and crawled into the 3 relief chamber above the Kings Chamber where there is a cartouche indicating the pyramid ( may have )belonged to Khufu.
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/greatpyramid3.htm

It is an amazing site, but Giza town is rapidly encrouching on the site.

There is an old proverb which basically states Beware, Egypt should never build on the Western side of the Nile towards the Pyramids…

Go and visit. Take strong shoes as the ground is hot and rough, and you will walk all day, take water and toilet paper ( best of all dont want to use one at all…)

Its very hot in the summer and hot in the winter, get there early and getting into the Chambers is bearable, just.

Its a perfectly preserved World Heritage site

The city appears to have been founded by Phoenician colonists sometime around 1100 BC, although it didn’t achieve prominence until Carthage became a major power in the Mediterranean Sea in the 4th century BC. It nominally remained part of Carthage’s dominions until the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC, and then became part of the Roman Republic, although from about 200 BC onward it was for all intents and purposes an independent city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptis_Magna

3rd and 4th nights here in the Moremi National (game) Park with Phawawe Safaris www.phakawe.demon.co.uk and Afrika Calls www.afrikacalls.homestead.com

Private camp site, you have to be with local guides and there is a good reason.

Pitched our tents, the long drop (toilet) and made the fire. Watching the sun go down with a sun downer – Gin and Tonic of course, listening to the grumble and chuckle of hippos. guineafowl roosting and a chorus of mirriads of insects.

That night was a chorus of trumpetting elephant and roaring lion and a brief interruption by a startled hyena caught in the light from my torch through the mossi net in my tent.