A Sahara Camel Caravan Retraces Paths of Gold

GIZA, Egypt â€”  It takes adventurers of a peculiar sort to consider traveling by camel in the Sahara, and we were six nomads who did.

We thought not of the barrenness of the desert, but of caravans of another time--transporting gold and slaves, of shimmering mirages and roaming tribes. We wanted to travel where Tutmose II, his wife, Hatshepsut, and Old Testament Bedouins Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had gone long before the Turks, Persians, Greeks and Romans came to plunder.

We stored our gear in tasseled saddlebags when we assembled at Giza, behind Mykerinus (Menkaure), the smallest of the three Great Pyramids. From slender minarets, muezzins had finished calling faithful Muslims to early morning prayers. The sun was a white disk on a red horizon turning one side of each of the three Pyramids to dusty pink.

Early Morning Gauze

In the distance mosque domes, modern hotels and old houses floated in the early morning gauze of Cairo’s perpetual haze.

Our caravan was made up of 10 Arabian camels, four Bedouins and we six members of the National Institute for Exploration.

Haj Kamel Abdu Pasha had been hired to guide us into the desert. He wore a faded blue galabia (long robe) and white turban with the fringe hanging rakishly over one ear. “You will be safe with me,� he said. “My father and all my grandfathers were Bedouins. Call me ‘Haj.’ It is a title for making pilgrimages to Mecca, Medina and Jebel-er-Rahn.�

He spoke to the camels with “z� sounds. Zizz meant “get down� and zist meant “get up,� reinforced by a stick laid not too roughly on the animal’s neck. From this rotund, effervescent Bedouin descendant, I hoped to learn about the vanishing nomadic culture.

When all gear was secured we mounted our complaining camels, then we obeyed Haj’s instructions to “lean back!� to help the animals in heaving from a kneeling position to hind legs, followed by a lurch up onto all four legs.

With that accomplished, the camels were tethered together in a line and we turned away from the city and the Pyramids and headed south into the open desert. The weather was a cold 45 degrees, with a strong wind out of the west.

We soon adjusted to the easy pace and happily exclaimed, “Is this the way to go!� Led by Haj walking beside Daisy, the lead camel, we rocked in the saddle as an effusive feeling brought to mind stories of Ali Baba and Lawrence of Arabia.

In the rear, high upon loads of camp equipment and camel fodder, three wizened Bedouins rode effortlessly as if sitting on rocking chairs. When the first mile had passed under Daisy’s cloven hoofs, Haj mounted and we paced faster, as we tried to synchronize our seat to a heavy-gaited pace that a companion labeled, “chucka-chucka-bang-bang.�

In the sequence of movements, our upper spines performed figure eights trying to catch up with lower vertebrae.

No Riding Comfort

We knew before starting out that the journey would not be easy. We knew that there is more to riding a Camelus dromedarius than meets the seat of the pants, for they are primarily beasts of burden capable of carrying a 400-pound load for long distances. The genus is high-ribbed, vaulted with one hump, and definitely not designed for riding comfort.

For all of that, and regardless of the bad reputation that misrepresents all camels, I was prepared to become fond of Gimena, my white she-camel with long eyelashes, if she proved to be patient with my ignorance of how things are managed in her part of the world.

Gimena means “beautiful� in Arabic, and while not quite literally so--she had scabrous knees and square green teeth--she had a haughty, detached demeanor.

While still not far from the Pyramids--the last extant great wonders of the ancient world--we passed 20th Century litter. Plastic wrappings blown by the wind rolled by, non-biodegradable tumbleweed. We looked beyond the discarded shoes and rusting cans to the horizon.

Straight ahead the Sahara wrapped in undulations around Egypt. On our right a line of low white-striated limestone hills intruded on the slightly wrinkled fawn-colored carpet of sand stretching west. To the east, the entire world seemed to be half hazy sky and half flat desert.

I noticed that Gimena broke her gait frequently because she needed to adjust her stride to keep up with Daisy. I found comfort riding side saddle about the time that black clouds appeared and the wind raised a mild sandstorm. Haj assured us that his prayer to Allah for good weather would be answered.

As if fulfilling a prophecy, the wind quieted, the sun reappeared, and we felt an aura of mystique surrounding our solitary presence on this desert that is larger than the United States, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond.

Burrowed Holes

At rare intervals we came upon holes burrowed by small elusive animals and solitary clumps of desert grass and stunted thorn bush the same sienna color of the sand.

At 10 o’clock Haj halted the caravan to brew delicious tea over four burning sticks. The camel drivers smoked tobacco in a water pipe and Haj, in perpetual good spirits, sang and danced, using his camel stick as a foil.

Although three hours had lapsed, the Pyramids still loomed behind us, making the nine miles we had traveled seem not very far compared to the 65 total miles to our destination, the oasis at Faiyum. Back in the saddle after tea, we felt tranquil and at ease on the desert.

From the lead, Haj called, “How is your sit? Everything is fine with you?� We assured him everything was indeed, “wonderful� except that high-power lines, carrying energy from Aswan Dam, stretched across our route, reminding us that however much we wanted to experience a sense of the Ptolemic dynastic past, we were very much a part of the electronic present.

When we protested about the wires, asking, “Haj, can we get away from them?� he replied, “Inshallah� (if Allah wills it). We did, of course, in time.

Shortly thereafter, to avoid a military encampment we followed a paved highway where we created a spectacle. Truck drivers honked. Tourists stopped to snap our picture. With a rocket launcher fading in the distance, our caravan continued south away from signs of civilization until, at last, silence returned, except for the “pod, pod, pod� of the camels’ feet.

During lunch of goat cheese, fruit and boiled eggs, we discovered that only 20% of the desert is sand, with the remainder made up of gravel and rocks of alabaster, limestone, basalt and goethite. Small seashells deposited during the Mesozoic Era were much in evidence.

Covered With Forests

In a more recent geologic time, between 60,000 and 6,000 BC, the area was covered with forests that surged with life. As the forests died, the animals retreated and so did prehistoric man, who had roamed the region for many millennia.

Before the Christian era, Neolithic tribes, the early herdsmen and farmers, fought a losing battle against the desert. Then they, too, fled, to the north coast and to the banks of the Nile. All departed but the hardy Bedouins, who remained until the economics of the last few decades drove most of them into overpopulated cities.

Lulled by the rocking motion in the immense solitude, we thought about dynasties of high culture built by kings and priests on an economy based on serfdom and black fertile soil provided by the Nile’s annual flooding. We wondered if our caravan followed a route traveled by Amenhotep III and Nefertiti.

After riding seven hours, Haj called, “Are you tired? Want to stop? If we keep going it will be less to travel tomorrow.� We assured him that we wanted to keep going. The sun was warm, caressing us; the pace was easy. Drowsy and pleased to be having this experience, someone hummed the duet from Aida, “O terra addio,� sung by Radames and the Egyptian slave. It hung in the still air.

Shortly before dark Haj selected a campsite between two high protective dunes. When the sun went down the wind came up, requiring Egyptian and American muscle power to hold ropes and billowing canvas while pitching the tents. When the tents were secured, vivid camel-hair carpets were laid on the sand, onto which we tossed our gear and exhausted bodies.

A kerosene lantern warmed the tent and over a brazier Haj toasted white bread for tuna and cheese sandwiches, undoubtedly thinking this was typical American food and what we would like. Actually, unleavened bread, karkaday (flower beverage) and a goat roasting over a blazing fire was what we had in mind.

But no matter, we had dreamed those culinary dreams before our bodies learned the price to be paid for desert travel. We were too weary to chew. But nurtured by Haj’s good cheer and delicious tea, we soon revived to enjoy the black sky where a late November slice of moon competed for brilliance with Venus.

In the other tent a cassette played Arabic music as the men huddled around a small fire, talking and smoking. When we zipped up our sleeping bags, Haj declared that he would stay awake guarding us, not from asps or scorpions but, as he said, “Soldiers might have seen the light and come to rob you.�

40-Degree Weather

Wrapped in an old wool coat, throughout the night he snorted and harrumphed outside our tent in the blustery 40-degree weather. We slept well, with confidence in his imposing presence and the power of his camel stick.

At 5:30 a.m. the camels were fed, we had a breakfast of toast, tea and oranges, and the tents were struck. Three of us walked the first two miles to loosen our muscles before committing them to the saddle.

After morning tea we were back on the hump, which in an adult Arabian camel is said to store as much as 40 to 100 pounds of fat that supplies energy and water.

Haj rode backward in his saddle to talk nostalgically to us about his nomadic Bedouin forefathers.

“They were the most respected of all men . . . living in the desert with stars for a roof,� he said. “They were above Arabs. Above merchants or farmers tied to a piece of land.

“It’s sad. The Bedouin culture is almost finished. When we come out of the desert and move into a house, we keep a tent folded in a room. When a boy wants to marry my daughter he comes with his parents to visit. If they are from a good family (one that does not drink or play cards), I ask my daughter if she likes him enough to last forever. If she say yes, she like him, then they go out together.

“When a daughter is married, if it can be arranged the tent is put up for the wedding celebration.�

Asked what happens if the daughter gets pregnant before marriage, Haj drew a finger across his throat. “We shoot him. He disappears. Goodby.�

Asked about divorce, he replied, “We have no divorce. If he is a good husband and repairs the furniture, there’s no reason.�

“But what happens if they grow tired of each other?�

“Then she is returned to her father’s house with the furniture. Sometimes it’s not in good condition. No, we have no divorce.�

On the last day, by driving the camels at a lumbering canter, we reached the oasis where porters helped unload our gear at the Oberoi Auberge Fayoum Hotel. We said “Goodby, shoukran� (thank you) to Haj, a man who felt free to dance under the noonday sun when the mood was upon him. Then he, the other Bedouins and camels turned north for the long journey back to Cairo.

We bathed for the first time in three days and slept on wide beds in the palatial hotel on the shore of Lake Quaran, where wind from the surrounding desert whipped up whitecapped waves and swallows twittered in the palm trees.

Plans can be made for this or a shorter desert adventure from Giza to Sakkara, 20 miles. Adjoining Memphis, Sakkara is the necropolis, or burial ground, containing more than 14 pyramids and hundreds of tombs. Contact Misr Travel, 7 Talaat Harb St., Cairo, Egypt. The National Institute for Exploration, Box 3494 Round Barn Station, Champaign, Ill. 61821; (217) 352-3667) arranges travel projects to adventurous places.

The trip described in this article was 10 days for $2,000, including all hotels, meals and camel transport.