The Great Pyramids of Giza

Everyone dissuaded me from visiting Egypt in April. It will be too hot, they said. However, I knew that visiting Egypt during the winter (peak season) would be a bad idea. Major tourist spots such as the Pyramids and the ancient temples would be jam-packed with tourists during November-December, and so I preferred to go off-season and risk the weather.

Do I regret it? Not one bit. The weather in Cairo and Giza was absolutely delightful – a balmy 20 degrees during the day. There was some rain even on the day we landed. But overall, the weather was delightful, and we really enjoyed our time among the Pyramids in Giza.

The main advantage is how quiet things are in the low season. There are still people visiting but only a fraction of the normal numbers. This makes it easier to visit at a relaxed pace and to enjoy our time there.

One downside is obviously the weather, with higher temperatures and, potentially, rain and sandstorms. Luckily though, throughout our trip, the weather was perfectly fine (and even when it was not, it wasn’t bad enough to ruin any of our sight-seeing experiences).

Pyramids in Egypt

The pyramids of Egypt are recognized worldwide as the symbol of Egypt and its ancient civilization. When one says the word pyramids, one thinks of the three massive pyramids of Giza with the Sphinx. The most famous pyramid, the Great Pyramid of Giza, is the last remaining of the original Seven Wonders of the World.

However, the truth is that there are hundreds of pyramids all over Egypt. Apart from the ones at Giza, there is the famous Saqqara pyramid, which is probably the oldest pyramid in Egypt. There is also the bent pyramid at Dashur, which is a really unusual looking pyramid.

We didn’t realize this while trip planning though, and so we ended up seeing only the pyramids of Giza, and that’s what I am going to talk about in the rest of this post. Take a cup of coffee and relax, this is going to be a long one.

Pyramids in Giza

We saw these pyramids from a long distance away while on the bus from Cairo to Giza.

We had a room booked at Le Meridien Pyramids. The main draw of this hotel is that it is situated bang opposite the Pyramids and offers wonderful views and photo ops. So of course we had to stay here. The rates are not cheap but they are not as expensive as the Le Meridien chain in India. I found the rooms comfortable, and the food good. The food in fact was so cheap that we even opted to eat a lunch and dinner at the hotel instead of looking for a cheaper option outside (something I normally never do). In general, the food in Egypt is very cheap compared to the prices we pay for similar food in India.

The first evening of our stay we booked the Light and Sound show at the Giza pyramid complex. We were pretty lucky with the weather. It poured heavily all evening, and we just hung around wondering if the show was going to be cancelled. Thankfully, just in time the skies cleared and we got to enjoy the light and sound show.

A word about the light and sound show. I didn’t really care for it too much. Maybe it was the waiting for the rain to clear up, and then having to sit on wet seats, I was a bit distracted and uncomfortable. Also the whole show seemed very dated and old. After I came back, I was talking about it to my mother, and she said it sounds like the same show she saw sometime in the 1960s 😀 . Even the narrator was the same (Omar Sharif if you want to know).

Still, visiting the Pyramids is a once in a lifetime experience, so I don’t regret this precisely. However if you are on a budget, this is one thing you might want to cut off your itinerary.

The next day

The weather the next day was glorious. It was breezy and cool. With tourism taking a big hit in Egypt, the pyramids looked a bit empty. Our guide told us that in peak times, there would be long queues for the tickets and for the entry into the Pyramids. But we we were able to just waltz in and out of the Pyramids without any queuing at all. Sad for Egypt, good for us.

A visit to the Giza pyramids usually starts at the gate close to the Great Pyramid where the main ticket office is located. It’s important to decide here if you want to go inside the pyramids because you’ll need an extra ticket, or two if you decide to go inside a second one. Only two pyramids are open at a given time, the Great Pyramid plus another one on a rotation basis. We took a ticket to enter inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Tickets to go inside the pyramids are sold at the northern, Mena House ticket booth. I am not sure if you can book these in advance but tickets to go inside the Great Pyramid are limited to 150 in the morning and, following a lunchtime closure, 150 in the afternoon. So, it pays to be early at the ticket counter.

As soon as we got the tickets (cost: 300 Egyptian pounds to enter the Great Pyramid), we walked over to the entrance of the Great Pyramid and went inside. It’s a short walk, but quite steep, and the passages are narrow and short. So, you end up stooping quite a bit as you climb into the Pyramid. I don’t have any inside photos of the Pyramid as photography is banned inside. However, there’s pretty much nothing inside besides the burial chambers, which are now empty. There are no hieroglyphics, nothing. At the end of it, you are in a hot, stuffy room with an empty burial place. The best part about it is the experience of entering a pyramid that’s a few thousand years old, and that is priceless!

We continued our visit by heading up to the hill where we were able to get the best view of the pyramids and do a quick camel ride through the desert. That was quite the experience! Now, seriously, even if you don’t fancy riding a camel, the view from there is totally worth it.

The camel rides were really good fun. We went at a fast clip up and down the dunes until we reached the vista point, where we took a bunch of really corny photos.

There are a bunch of other more photos, but I am not going to occupy this space with more. I”ll probably put some up on my Instagram, so if you follow me there, you can see all the best travel pics I have shared.

Back down, we visited the two remaining pyramids, Khafre and Menkaure. I really loved the pyramid of Khafre, it’s almost as big as the Great Pyramid, and it still retains a casing of limestone at the top that really shone in the sunlight. In the olden days, all the Pyramids were covered completely with limestone. Can you imagine how beautiful they would have looked?

The Sphinx

We then went to get a close-up of the Sphinx. Note that although the Sphinx looks close in the photos, it is actually quite far from the Pyramids. It’s a good long walk. If you are lazy like us, you can take a bus to get there (our tourist bus was allowed inside the Pyramid complex).

The Sphinx looks just as enigmatic as its photos. The Sphinx has a human head and a lion body and acts as the watchdog for the Pyramids. According to the tour guide, the Sphinx was carved out of a single large leftover block after the Pyramids were constructed. There are many stories behind its broken nose. The story I got from the tour guide was that it was broken by a muslim fanatic sometime in the 15th century or so.

This above spot is where you can take iconic photos of you kissing the Sphinx. This place is a slight ascent just to the left of the Sphinx. You can’t miss it, just because there are so many people taking kissing pictures. However we were a tad embarrassed to take those and hence just took basic posing pics with the Sphinx.

Here’s another one of Snubnose I clicked.

The Giza pyramid complex is also home to other minor and relatively less important pyramids and tombs . In total, there are about 7 pyramids in this complex. Apart from the pyramids, there is also a Boat museum (you should buy the tickets for this one separately at the entrance).

We didn’t spend further time there however. After seeing the Sphinx, we left the complex to get ourselves some lunch and do some further sight-seeing in Cairo (Egyptian museum, Khan el Khalili market).

We were able to do a good amount of sightseeing in the Pyramids in a relatively short time (only 3 hours or so). This was because of the lack of crowds there. Overall, I’d recommend visiting Egypt in the off season. The weather in Cairo was lovely. It was hot down south in Aswan and Luxor but not unmanageably hot.

I’m sorry for this longish post. I’ve tried to cover everything about the Pyramids in detail so that if you are planning a trip, you can get enough information without having to do a massive google search through multiple websites like I had to do.

If you have any questions on our trip or itinerary, leave a message in the comments or email me, I”ll get back with details.

More posts on Egypt coming up. There is a lot I want to say, but I”ll try to balance long posts with shorter ones to give a bit of a break.