DAY 41 Fri 23 July

I woke up this morning and got Hassam to saddle Dooby for me so I could go for a ride in the desert with Pal, his wife, Laura and Sammy. It was a good, long ride, and the legs weren't as sore as I was expecting them to be – maybe the riding on Wednesday after climbing into the pyramids had stretched them out a little. We rode for miles, and through a couple of different quarries. At one stage I looked to the left, and I think I saw the area where the pottery shards are to be found. I could make out a darker area on the hill that I think was the site of the excavations. We didn't head that way however, so I couldn't investigate.
A couple of times during the ride, Laura took my camera and got some photos of me on Dooby which was nice. Because I haven't headed out with Maryanne much, I'm lacking in photos of me riding. As we neared Japanese Hill, we were overtaken by a guy who was riding one horse and leading three – I think they were from the polo club. Once on the other side of Japanese Hill, he proceeded to lunge them all together. Good horses and a good rider to be able to handle that many at once. Dooby was in his element today, walking out at the head of the group, keeping pace with Pal's stallion. In fact, often when Pal's horse was cantering along, Dooby would just be stretching out nicely at the trot (not exactly what I was after with my legs like they were, but it could have been much worse!) On the way back, as we neared the quarry, we encountered a few storks out in the middle of the desert, and Pal said that when they are migrating, they will often meet in this one spot, and he related a story of his horse walking right through the middle of them one day – they just stepped out of the way of his horse, but didn't fly off. That must have been amazing. There were just five or six around today though, and they would often go flying past us. One was sitting on a ledge of sand, silhouetted with the pyramids at Abu Sir in the background. As we headed up into the quarry, there was a small flock off to our left, so Laura and I headed that way. The storks let us get rather close before first one, and then the rest took off – and to think they shouldn't even be in Egypt. And then we had fun weaving through the tracks left by the trucks in the quarry – good for keeping the humans and horses focused on where they are going! I enjoyed what was likely to be my last ride with the group before I head back to New Zealand, good horses, good people and even some cloud cover to break up the desert heat!
I relaxed for a bit at the house before heading around to Morad's with my laptop, as Morad wanted to see some of my pictures (though with all the comings and goings of people at his place, he probably missed a good number of them). While I was there, Ramy also came round, and the three of us looked through the pictures. At one stage Morad had to disappear off somewhere, and so instead of the Egyptian pictures, I showed Ramy some of the photos from home. Before Morad came back, I had to head off to the farm, as I wanted to fit in another ride in the desert before heading back to NZ - the plan was to try and find the pottery shards place. I headed out in the desert with Mohamed. I was on Gameela and he was on Diva. I think Gameela was a bad choice. I figured that with my dodgy legs she would be a good horse to take out, as she isn't inclined to run. Unfortunately she also wasn't too inclined to walk either - lol - talk about stubborn and slow – I'm sure she is half mule! Even after swapping reins with Mohamed (he had longer reins that could be used like a whip), I still had trouble getting her moving. Her canter is really weird – it is like she puts more effort into going up than she does going forward, making it somewhat like a rocking horse canter. Feels really weird – there was certainly no gallop in her today either. Maryanne had organised it with Mohamed to take me to the pottery shard place, but we ended up at the bone yard. I'm kind of glad in a way – I don't think I could have handled riding Gameela all the way out there - it had been hard enough getting her to the bone yard - lol. To top things off, I ended up having left the memory card in my computer after trying to get some of the pictures over to Ramy's phone. So the only photos I could take were saved to the camera's memory, limiting the number of pictures I could take – talk about the day going from bad to worse! One positive aspect to the day however was the young bird I saw (I think it was a falcon) out at the bone yard – it was just a slightly darker shade than the sand, and it still had the fluffy look of a youngster – it didn't fly away very far or very fast, and looked rather awkward – quite possibly it was its first flight. I couldn't get close enough to get any photos, and it probably wouldn't have enjoyed being followed. I saw it twice, which was very special.
We weaved our way in and out of the mounds of rubble that have been dumped from the excavations at Saqqara. Amongst the mounds were human skulls and thigh bones, ancient mud brick, dog or jackal skulls, ancient linen, pottery shards, ancient baskets and the detritus of modern civilisation. It never ceases to amaze me how they can justify the dumping of so much history. I realise that after over a hundred years of excavation they have a lot of bones and artifacts from the ancient egyptians, but still those bones belonged to a person, even if they did live thousands of years ago - someone who went to a lot of effort to have their body preserved for eternity, and here the archaeologists are just dumping the remains in the desert. I think those remains deserve more than that ignominious end! Though at the same time I do enjoy heading out there and looking around at this area and seeing this history laid out before me – hmmm. Does that make me just as bad?
In the end, I was glad that ride was over - it required a little more effort than I was planning on for my current mental state. I was glad to collapse into bed and put today behind me!

Desert ride 11:
Distance - 17.9km
Time - 2:22:02
Average speed - 7.6kmph
Max speed - 37.0kmph


Desert ride 12:
Distance - 8.84km
Time - 1:31:25
Average speed - 5.8kmph
Max speed - 26.3kmph