We started early, heading first to Saqqara – the quiet ancestor of all pyramids. There’s something fitting about beginning the day here, at the Step Pyramid, before meeting the giants at Giza. Saqqara feels older, more contemplative, like Egypt clearing its throat before delivering its greatest hits.

As we travelled in the bus, Adel, our Egyptologist, gathered us close and spoke from the heart. He told us that every tour group he works with becomes part of his life story, because he always seems to be guiding people during big milestones of his own. “I never forget the group I am with when something important happens,” he said. He’s getting married for the second time, in two days, risking his heart all over again and we have been nothing but encouraging.

The drive to Saqqara

We passed through El Haraneya, a street lined with what can only be described as Egyptian wedding palaces. Each venue was enormous, glittering, and so extravagantly decorated that my Western brain wasn’t sure where to land between awe and amusement. Think chandeliers, columns, faux castles – maximalist romance at full volume.

Between the wedding venues were international schools, some with enormous gates and bright murals. This stretch of road felt like a story in itself: celebrations, families, education, future dreams… an unexpectedly intimate glimpse of everyday life in the shadow of the ancient world.

It was a beautiful way to start the day – a reminder that Egypt isn’t just temples and tombs, but people, hopes, and moments unfolding right alongside history.

Saqqara

At Saqqara, we had the rare chance to actually go inside the Step Pyramid – the world’s first large-scale stone monument and the blueprint for everything that came after. It was built for King Djoser in the 27th century BC and designed by his brilliant architect, Imhotep, the world’s first recorded engineer, doctor, and all-round ancient overachiever.

Inside, the passages feel like stepping into a geometric throat – long, sloping corridors ribbed with carved stone. The restored burial chamber, created under Amenhotep III in the 18th Dynasty, adds another fascinating layer to the structure’s long, evolving life. It’s strange and wonderful to stand inside something that has existed for 4,600 years and still has the confidence to call itself “the first.”

Akhnaton Carpet School

After Saqqara, we stopped at the Akhnaton Carpet School, where we watched women and young boys working at their looms with astonishing precision. Their hands move so quickly it’s hard to tell where the pattern ends and muscle memory begins.

We watched a machine unwind silk directly from a cocoon, pulling a single glistening thread that somehow becomes a carpet strong enough to last generations.

The showroom was full of carpets so intricate they almost hummed – I fell in love with the colours and geometric patterns. I didn’t buy one… but I did follow them on Instagram, which is basically the first step in the long, slow dance of “maybe one day.”

Pyramids of Giza (again!)

Then it was back to the pyramids, but this time with our whole group – and somehow that made them feel new all over again. There was something lovely about watching our new friends see the Giza Plateau for the first time: the gasps, the excitement, the posing, the laughter, the kiss-the-Sphinx photos, and the universal human instinct to attempt at least one mildly questionable camel ride.

Speaking of camels – while Michelle was posing for photos, I was kissed on the head by a camel, who clearly felt left out of the attention economy.

Josh, ever the adventurer, even went inside the smallest pyramid – Menkaure – a feat of courage, stamina, and questionable oxygen supply (he said it smelled like farts!). He also power-walked all the way up to the “Forever Is Now” art installation to see a piece called The Shen – a contemporary take on the ancient protective loop symbol. His enthusiasm for art knows no temperature, distance, or hydration limits.

Josh and I also base-walked the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the three. The limestone blocks are so massive, you wonder how human hands ever stacked them into the sky. And they’ve stood for 4,500 years, watching every empire rise and fall.

It takes about five minutes per side if you don’t stop for photos. We, of course, stopped constantly. So… maybe twelve.

Adel’s Pyramid Theory (And Yes… It Includes Electricity)

Adel shared one of his favourite theories – not the fringe “ancient alien” nonsense, but a thoughtful Egyptologist’s perspective on how we interpret the pyramids. He said that if we reduce them to “just tombs,” we unintentionally make the civilization seem smaller than it was. A simple tomb doesn’t explain the engineering, organisation, mathematics, astronomy, and sheer national willpower that went into these structures.

His preferred interpretation is multi-layered, and yes, it includes the slightly fringe but very fun idea that the pyramids may have functioned as giant energy generators.

Here’s the list as Adel frames it:

– Tombs – yes, but that’s only one aspect.

– Solar power symbols – Energy generators in the symbolic sense: their shape capturing the sun’s rays, channeling divine power downward.

– Cosmic power stations – designed to connect the king with the sun god Ra and the stars.

– Civilisation engines – projects that unified and energised the entire kingdom, harnessing religious, social and political energy to unify millions of people toward one purpose.

– And the speculative one: Some believe the pyramids could have acted as electrical generators, using water, limestone, and granite to conduct and store energy. Adel isn’t saying this is proven – just that he finds the idea intriguing and “not impossible for a civilisation that understood the natural world far more deeply than we do.”

Whether literal electricity or metaphorical power, the point is the same: the pyramids radiated energy-spiritual, social, political, cosmic.

Standing beneath their hulking geometry, watching our friends take their “I was here” photos as the desert wind whipped our hair sideways, I could feel exactly what Adel meant. These monuments weren’t meant to be small. They weren’t meant to be ordinary. They were engines of identity, memory, and awe. And they still are.

And that’s a wrap (as Kathy said)

Because the King of Morocco was arriving at our hotel, our bus was brought to an absolute standstill. Motorcades, security, traffic frozen in every direction — Cairo doing drama the way Cairo does best. So instead of a gentle, “proper” farewell at the hotel, we were abruptly dropped off to walk the rest of the way, bags in hand, heat rising, horns blaring.

Which meant our goodbye to Adel happened… on the street.

Quick, chaotic, unceremonious.

Not at all the reflective, heartfelt ending I’d pictured. But honestly?

Probably a blessing. If we’d had even thirty more seconds, I would have dissolved into embarrassing tears, clutching him like he was the last papyrus scroll on earth.

Instead, it was a rushed hug, a hurried “Shoukran,” and that was that – swallowed up by Cairo traffic.

An imperfect goodbye for a perfect guide.

Endings on the Eternal River

Our Uniworld tour has reached its end. Everyone has disappeared to their rooms. Some leave tonight and some tomorrow. Some to other adventures and destinations and others head home.

And us? We’re not done just yet.

We’re heading into the desert for two nights in Fayoum – a gentle exhale after the intensity, beauty, and emotion of the Nile. A small pause before the long haul home. A chance to let everything settle.

We spent the afternoon by the pool with Michelle, Enrico, and Kathy- chatting, snacking, laughing, and letting the sun do that late-afternoon shimmer on the water. For five people who had never met in real life before this trip, we somehow folded into each other’s company with ease. I’m so thankful I said yes to Michelle’s idea of a “House of the Sun / following-in-Camilla’s-footsteps cruise.” What a blessing it’s been, and I’ve appreciated the thoughtful ways she made this experience special for Kathy and me.

Today felt like closing a loop that began when I was a kid, looking at encyclopedia pages and imagining desert horizons. I was inside the imagination I used to have!