We’ve been doing our Eat Pray Love Bali tour for almost 3 years now, and over time, we’ve changed it up a bit, based on feedback and our own experiences. Here’s what we’re doing on our September (and probably future) tours!

Our Welcome Dinner in “Italy” has moved to Ubud! Though we had some incredible experiences and wonderful meals at the Amanusa’s Italian Restaurant, Bali traffic can be truly unbelievable.  We’ve moved the welcome dinner to the more accessible  Terazo Restaurant in Ubud, where we’re working with the executive chef to prepare a custom meal with Italian wines – of course, on the Eat Pray Love Bali tour we will end with Tirami su for dessert, unless your taste runs more to local sorbets. Passion fruit, anyone?

Next, we’re trying something new with our hotel.  Honestly, we really looked hard at the Ubud Inn, where book author Elizabeth Gilbert stayed when she was writing about Bali.  Despite stunning grounds, we were just underwhelmed with the rooms, and didn’t love the location.  It’s in very busy Monkey Forest Road, set too close to the street.  We wanted something more tranquil, even in the heart of Ubud’s bustle.  The Pertiwi Resort & Spa seemed like a great spot for our Eat Pray Love Bali tour, and it’s located a little further along Monkey Forest Road,.  However, we may also return on future trips to our beloved Alila Hotel – the staff and the food and the environment are really incomparable!

Another big shift is in the temples we’ve chosen.  We teach our guests how to pray like the Balinese, and show them what to wear and how to wear it so that we can enter the inner sanctuary of each temple, and be blessed by the local Pedanda, or priest (who is sometimes a woman, which I just love!) On every other Eat Pray Love Bali tour, we’ve gone to Besakih Temple — called the Mother Temple, it’s nestled at the base of Mount Agung, about a 3 hour ride from Ubud. So this trip, we decided instead to visit our very favorite temple, Tirta Empul. It’s a delightful day trip (about a 2-hour drive) to the pool where all the sacred waters in Bali are gathered for the local temples.

Tirta Empul is an incredible experience, and we are often the only non-Balinese woshippers!   We’ve even witnessed a Balinese exorcism here. We can go into the streams and be cleansed during our Eat Pray Love Bali tour, under each of the 13 rushing fountains – an amazing experience of bliss.

Of course, we’ve still got the visit to Ketut Liyer, to Wayan the healer, to a pizza restaurant that will make you think you’re eating your Margarita ‘za in Napoli, yoga and meditation to make you feel like you’re in India (for an hour at least!) and even spa treatments at the very spot where the film crew for Eat Pray Love got all their massages.  It will be another incredible tour – I hope you can join us!

7) Traveling to a place with a different culture can make you really appreciate your own.  When we go to places like Bali or South Africa, we can see the rest of the world, the one where there isn’t a Target in every suburb – where there isn’t even a suburb.  Being outside of our usual community, and outside of America, can make us really appreciate what we’ve got.


6) Traveling outside your comfort zone expands your boundaries and your horizons. While this is related to the reason above, it differs in that stretching yourself can make you grow, and there’s no better way to do that than a spiritual tour visiting a country where English is not the first language (or perhaps even spoken — though it is the “Lingua Franca” of modern day.  Or where perhaps the toilet facilities aren’t what you’re used to, nor is the food, nor the sounds of the forest – and you find it pushing all your buttons.  Sure it’s uncomfortable at first, but eventually, you will find that you are a better person for it – more tolerant, perhaps, or at least have some really interesting stories.

5) Spiritual travel can help you get over the hump. Transitions – we’ve all got them.  You’ve left that job and now you’re considering a career change.  Or you’ve left that old relationship behind.  This is a chance to bridge that gap and give yourself permission to dream for a moment, create your future, and step into the abyss to see where you land. “Leap, and the net will appear” is one of my favorite expressions.


4) A spiritual tour group can help you meet new friends, bond with like-minded people, and see a richer itinerary than one you might seek out on your own. In other words, you can have a deeper experience than on just any old vacation.


3) Spiritual travel gives you room to remember who you are. Sure, you’re a parent, a colleague, a gardener, a hobbyist.  But you’re also a dreamer, a thinker, an artist.  Get back to the truth of you by taking some time away from your daily life – part vacation/part retreat.


2) It gives you a chance to look at the 60,000 foot view of your life. Sure life’s going along okay.  But remember when you didn’t just have plans, but dreams? A Spiritual tour can help you focus on those dreams again, remember them, and take time to put them into plans of action that you can take home with you.


1) It helps you heal. We’ve seen this one over and over again.  My favorite story is the widow who called us after she got home and said she would now celebrate her husband’s life, and no longer mourn his passing.  What a shift! This is the kind of thing that makes me grateful for my work every time!


We hope you’ll join us on one of our upcoming spiritual tours to Bali, India, Egypt, Cuba, South Africa, or Italy (coming in Summer 2012!)  We look forward to seeing you!

NO DISCUSSION ABOUT returning from a lengthy time abroad is complete without talk of reverse culture shock. And, from my experience, this discussion inevitably turns to perspective. Specifically, that many people don’t seem to have any. Perhaps this isn’t a fair statement, but returning home after long-term travel in the developing world often leaves me in a fastidious state of mind.

There is something to be said about travel also crystallizing your perceptions, honing suspiciously naïve sentiments into firm sets of belief. Even within the context of culture shock, it can help keep life in perspective. And if you concentrate enough, it can help mold you into the person you strive to be.

Read the rest of the article here: How Travel Helps to Keep Life in Perspective

The above article is about how being dropped into the deep end of the pool gave that writer perspective.  From my perspective, there’s nothing better than spiritual travel to give you a greater understanding of your own life.  It can really make a difference.

There are two kinds of perspective switches when you experience spiritual travel, especially when you take a spiritual tour:

1) The 60,000 foot view kicks in

2) Your view once you return home can be radically altered.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail…

What is the 60,000 foot view?

When we’re home working, cleaning, taking care of our families, even writing, we’re focused on the task at hand.  Usually, we’re putting one foot in front of another and we’re not paying much attention to our lives.  When you get away – really get away, like to Bali, Cuba, China, Bhutan by experiencing spiritual travel… you are focused not just on seeing new things, but if you make it a spiritual tour, it’s an opportunity to look at your life not as the ant, but as the human looking down at all the little ants, saying, “Wow, they’re sure busy.” Sometimes it takes a mid-life crisis (“OMG, what the hell am I DOING with my life?”) or a strong pull to make a huge shift overnight (“Hey, this wasn’t supposed to be the game plan!”). These moments of panic go hand-in-hand with not setting goals, forgetting your dreams, etc.  If you can avoid getting to this moment of panic, and experience a spiritual tour or spiritual travel sooner, you can gain perspective which may be less profound, but will ease you to the next level as opposed to drop-kicking you.  The freedom this type of trip affords you, the chance to breathe, can make all the difference in your world when you return.

What about when I go home?

Many of our guests have what we call “re-entry shock.” Going to a country where the culture is different seems simple, but step anywhere outside of Europe (even there sometimes); you will find that once you go home again it’s all different, even more so when returning from a spiritual tour or coming back from spiritual travel.  Maybe too big, too loud, too consumer-oriented suddenly.  After my first trip to Egypt 12 years ago, I couldn’t stand radio advertising.  It was like my nerves were mysteriously sensitized to it.  However it affects you, be gentle with yourself.  Journal, talk with other people who were on the spiritual tour with you, be kind to yourself and give yourself extra sleep and downtime.  It will usually right itself in a few days or weeks, but the residual you are left with is wonderful: a better perspective on our place in the world, and our understanding of ourselves as one country, not THE country.

Happy trails and have fun!

Forgiving Ararat is, without a doubt, the most original book I have ever read. First-time novelist Gita Nazareth (surely not her real name?) has created a story world which seems to live at the intersection of the film What Dreams May Come, the Bible, and a John Grisham novel, with all the best aspects and deeper meanings of each.

The story begins as the heroine, Brek Cuttler, arrives at a train station called Shemaya just after her death. Perhaps the only previously used image in this novel is the station metaphor, but in the skillful, lyrical hands of Nazareth it becomes much more than a wayplace for the dead. A lawyer in life, Cuttler has been chosen to represent the souls of these dead as they pass their Final Judgment, but first she must learn to accept that she has died and why, as well as learning how to be a presenter of souls in this shimmering, shifting purgatory.

Both a spiritual novel and a rivetingly juicy tale, I found reading Forgiving Ararat almost a religious experience. Nazareth’s prose bathes the reader over and over in the light of justice, love and hope, tempering the sinister stories of man’s inhumanity with the truth of their reasons for making these dark choices. She turns murderers and rapists, lawyers and newscasters alike, delving back across centuries and even millennia, into dimensional human beings and argues successfully that the pursuit of justice may itself be irrational and unjust, but it is how we order our lives, and forgiveness, if not love, can still conquer all.

Underlying an epic stocked three deep with characters of every ilk, whose stories are interwoven like a colorful hand-knit afghan (even the book’s publisher gets a fictional nod as the press of one of the novel’s doomed souls) is Nazareth’s startling prose: “… the morning sun strikes the bright yellow fall leaves of a maple tree, making the tree appear as though it has burst into flame. A small sparrow lands on a branch, risking immolation.” Every sentence bursts with a transcendent pride of place, as if each word is happily embracing the next, and even the least significant description is worth rereading to see what new light Nazareth has shone upon usually mundane text.

Though Nazareth’s story of good, evil and the search for justice in what at times can seem like a very unjust world, is spiritual, it also deals with the religions of man: of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as the fanaticism of Nazis, the Aryan Nation, and Holocaust deniers. It is here that Nazareth excels the most, expertly navigating these dangerous waters and bringing the understanding of truth and the desire for reason and justice all the way to Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, even to Jesus and Yahweh Himself (or Themselves, depending on how you look at it). It is as if she is asking us to look at each religion, at each viewpoint, as Cuttler is asked to look at each soul, impartially and without judgment, and we are richer for it by the end of the tale. Forgiving Ararat is not to be missed, and Nazareth’s novel, I hope, will be the first of many.

Enjoying Spirituality Everywhere

So this weekend I thought I would look for the spiritual aspects of the experience. Randy and Lisa are also the most consummate consumers we know, and often our weekend consists of shopping for food, cooking, drinking and eating, with an occasional break to shop for the next meal or items on sale somewhere. Of course, I don’t just mean eating. I mean serious chowing down. Randy’s idea of a mixed grill for four consists of a rack of ribs, a couple of hand-spitted rotisserie chickens, some steaks he couldn’t pass up, and a smoked sausage. And the man can cook! The sausage is, after all, only there to show off his smoker, which is about the size of most people’s refrigerators.

Driving down to San Diego, Greg and I stop on the way (as usual) in San Juan Capistrano.  Home to swallows and an historical mission, for us it is the place where we can get an awesome fish burrito to share, then jump back on the highway. Further down the 5, just after it curves around to hug the ocean, we pull off at Vista Point.

Seagulls enjoying Vista Point

Up on the flat top of a hill, jutting out towards the ocean, Vista Point is one of my favorite spots. Seagulls flock onto the outcropping of rock, which slopes gently to the ocean, sea grasses and rocks dotting the way down. I have passed this way many times at important crossroads in my life and have made decisions standing looking out over the ocean. Visiting here gives me perspective on these choices, the memory of my passages, my milestones.

Once we arrive, they want us to try a new sushi restaurant, Jump Tokyo, where the sushi chef’s warmth is palpable, ratcheted up a notch by the free oysters on the half shell topped with ikura. The artistic quality of the food enhances our experience further, and I realize an important truth: done right, there is a spirituality in food – art, worship, even love.

Plate of Love

Back at the house, Randy fires up the grill, makes margaritas. Lisa and I catch up while Greg brings our bags in and checks his e-mail. Lisa usually acts as Randy’s second-in-command, but deferring to my love of cooking, kindly steps aside all weekend to allow free rein to the “Cooking Cousins” (as Greg nicknamed us years ago). For Lisa, this means a weekend of cleaning up, which to me is an incredible kindness. Yet after dinner, as I watch her scrubbing the countertops until they gleam and making sure every last dish is washed, I suddenly see the purity of her choices, the meditativeness of her efforts, the selflessness of this act. If God’s a Catholic, Lisa’s going to heaven.

The next afternoon, as Randy and I race back and forth between grill and stove, kitchen and outdoor barbecue oasis, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of love… for my family, for these little tasks that give me so much pleasure. Spirit says “just be.” Life is the journey. This weekend, which means nothing in the way of accomplishment or advancement, has given me the priceless opportunity to be, and to enjoy it. I think we’ll come again next month.

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The result of people not eating all day is that, for the most part, everything is closed during daylight hours. With few exceptions in the tourist areas, where the poor waiters and chefs are serving food they cannot eat all day, the stores and restaurants shut down and open all night instead.  At sundown, however, the whole city of Cairo goes crazy.   One night at sundown, we visited the Al-Hussein mosque, which is perhaps the most important mosque outside of Mecca, to experience the real Ramadan.

The mosque is in the heart of the Khan El Khalili market, but this evening, we couldn’t get closer than a half-mile.  It was like a rock concert, with cars everywhere, parked all higgledy-piggledy.  To get a spot, a kid about eighteen hopped up onto our hood and directed us as we drove down a bizarre narrow alley with cars parked so close we had to hold our breath just to pass.  Walking back out of the alley after cramming ourselves into a tiny space, we saw two more “parking attendents’ and the owner of a yellow car rocking the cars in front and in back of him.  Shifting the cars a few inches at a time, the yellow car finally was able to maneuver out of the spot, whereupon it was replaced by another car.

On the street, it was equally chaotic.  At Ramadan, the rich are supposed to feed the poor, and everywhere we looked, shop owners had set up impromptu cafes in the street, which were full of people breaking their fast by gorging on the free food.  Close to the mosque, we passed a covered hall where huge pots and pans were set out on the ground, and people sat around guarding the meal until it was time to eat.

The Al-Hussein mosque was like a fairground, so full of people you could barely move, part church, part circus.  Every vendor stood by a tiny stand hawking religious artifacts, beads, or spangled LED tops that could fly high into the night sky with a simple flick of the wrist.  Leaving our shoes among the hundreds of pairs at the entrance, my girlfriend and I wormed our way through the crush to the woman’s side of the mosque.  We could barely breathe as the undulating mass of women pushed us forward into the doors of the mosque.  But inside, we fared no better, as we literally couldn’t go another step.  Women sat cross-legged everywhere on the floor, knee to knee, chanting and praying and touching the marble wall which contained important relics.  Disappointed and nearly squished, we turned and wriggled our way back out.

The men had a much more enjoyable time.  Obviously a much larger space, the entrance to the men’s side was empty, so my husband and two other travelers left their shoes with us as they strode into the mosque.  Once inside, they were immediately taken under the wing of several Egyptians who, seeing them, announced, “Sit! Pray with us!” This is typical of the Egyptians, who we have found over the years to be welcoming and inclusive in their worship. While we waited for them to come back out, I looked around the main square of the Khan.  Always bustling, tonight it seemed to almost burst at the seams with the friendly, raucous, joyous celebration of the end of the day’s fast.  It may change everything in Cairo, but I was glad to be there on during Ramadan.

Visit Spirit Quest Tours to learn about our next spiritual tour to Egypt!

“Saba al ful!” (This is the second most common, and the most typical response. “Ful” is the way the scent of morning jasmine fills your nostrils, so roughly translated, this means “Morning the Nose Hit.”
The third way to say Good Morning is “Saba al nur,” which is “Morning the Light.” Arabic, in my humble opinion, is definitely a Romance language.)

“Quais?” The next step is to ask how you are – “Good?” is the slang for that.

“Hamdulullah. (One always responds with “Thanks be to God.” Technically this is really probably Hamdul Allah, but it all gets run together.)
“Inta quais?” (This means, “You good?” Colloquially, “How about you?”)

“Hamdu’lah.” (The even more foreshortened version.)

“Meya-meya.” (This means literally, “a hundred/a hundred”, or more accurately, “A hundred percent!” Basically, “Great!”)

“Meya-meya.” (Which you should repeat back to the person who just said it to you. Congratulations, you can now speak Arabic better than many tourists.)

This is all well and good when you are a tourist who has learned a little Arabic. In fact, the above phonetic conversation will serve you well in almost any situation. When an Egpytian greets another Egyptian, the polite opening conversation takes on an elevated status. It’s like a Chip & Dale marathon where each person tries to outdo each other in a waterfall of polite speech. It’s almost like a race to see who can get the most nice words out fast enough, a contest of kindness. Every conversation, whether in person or on the phone, includes this elaborate dance, with each person saying something like the following to each other, both at the exact same time:

Person 1: Hello, how are you?                Person 2: Hello, how are you? I am well!
I am well! Thanks be to God! I               Are you alright? Thanks be to God! I
hope that everything is wonderful         hope that everything is wonderful
in your life and is as amazing as it       in your life and is as amazing as it
is in my life! I am so glad to hear          is in my life! I am so glad to hear
you are well! A hundred/a hundred!     you are well! A hundred/a hundred!

If the people are standing together at the time, they usually are shaking hands the whole while, nodding politely and smiling at each other. I was once walking with my friend Mohamed the block between his home and his office when a man jumped out of his car at the intersection and ran over to shake Momo’s hand. Even with his car stopped in the middle of the traffic, the exchange sounded the same as if they had met in his office. On the phone it is just a matter of both talking into their respective receivers simultaneously. In comparison, it makes the typical English greeting seem just a shadow of acceptability. However, every Egyptian has done this same dance about a hundred million times by now, to literally every person they have ever met. So there is a perfunctory quality about it that cannot fail to occur after so many years, like when an American says, “Hello, how are you?” to someone passing on the street and then keeps walking because they didn’t really mean to inquire after that stranger’s health, it’s just how they say hello. But magnified, because the speech must be made, in full, to nearly everyone. Even inside of a family unit, or a business where people talk with each other many times a day, the greeting is only somewhat less formal.

Learn just these few words of Arabic and not only will you have a better trip to Egypt, you will be able to understand many of the conversations around you!

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For about a dollar a person, the waiter will bring you a huge, standing water pipe, with the flavored tobacco of your choice on the top of the stand, and a hot charcoal disk on top of that. Most restaurant shishas have at least two pipes, long snaked hoses that end in cigarette filter mouthpieces.  To share with others in the States, you get a plastic tip that you can take off and put on as the pipe is passed to you, but in Egypt they simply cover the mouthpiece with a bit of foil.  This means you are fairly protected from the last group of people who smoked this pipe before you, but you’d better be comfortable with the hygiene of the ones you are smoking with now.

 The important thing to remember is that, while you can inhale the smoke, cooled by the water that is the whole point of this method, an unaccustomed smoker (a shisha ingénue) can still get what those in the know refer to as a “harsh toke.” There is nothing more hilarious than seeing your mother trying to French inhale, when she hasn’t smoked in about 40 years, causing her to  hork up a lung instead.  I, on the other hand, occasionally imbibe a ciggy butt when the mood hits, so I am capable of holding my own on the shisha front.  This mightily impressed Mohamed and Emil, who, in addition to the enjoyment of blowing smoke rings on a shisha, also shared a pack-a-day habit.

Eventually, this caught up with Emil, who had a heart attack and nearly died.  Both he and Momo quit smoking, but only Emil, touched by death and knowing he narrowly avoided the rigor mortis dance, stayed the course.  They both lost weight because of this brush with the Great Beyond, though, which of course only added to their pull with the ladies.

After lunch, we boarded the bus, with more music and dancing (and request for tips) accompanying our exit.  Suddenly, those who have had a glass of wine or beer with lunch are dancing with these locals, feeling less intimidated than the rest of us, or else more in tune with the music.  We all clap and take pictures and leave the restaurant very happy. And very full.  Another chance to improve relations with the Middle East, another successful afternoon!

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This is the next installment of my book, tentatively titled, “Travels through Egypt.” After visiting the Temple of Sakkhara, we always go to the same restaurant, one of everyone’s favorites on the trip…

In the afternoon, after Sakkhara, we stopped a desert oasis for lunch.  On our way down the steps to the open air restaurant, a tiny crew of musicians and dancers serenaded us with drums and homemade instruments.  On the left, in a covered area about 20 feet square, two women sat on their haunches, busy working fist-sized balls of dough into flat circles.  One by one, they slid the dough a mud brick oven, and pulled it out minutes later.  The layers of dough had parted, and a huge, pita-sized puff emerged.  They smiled and passed it over to those of us watching, and we greedily tore it to bits to share amongst ourselves.  The fresh, hot bread was immensely satisfying, and the women laughed, pleased with our expressions.  They shyly held their hands out for tips, which we gladly gave, then our guide Emil bustled us over to the main restaurant.

It was huge, and would have easily held a hundred or more people at the long tables.  A soda machine leaned against a tent pole at one end, a group of hookas clumped next to it.  The whole establishment was under a big group of tents, and in all the time I have been coming there, we’ve never seen the kitchen.  Our tables, as is often the case when we eat as a group, were already laid with an assortment of Egyptian mezzes, the appetizers so plentiful you could make a meal of them.  Little dishes held hummus (chick pea & tahini dip), baba ghanoush (a dip made of grilled eggplant), tabouli (little granules of cracked wheat with garlic, lemon, parsley and mint), assorted spiced olives, cubed boiled potatoes dressed in oil, a fava bean dip that seems especially popular with Egyptians, and my favorite, fresh white beans cooked al dente, drizzled with olive oil, and topped with chopped onion and parsley.

Everything in Egypt is fresh, and for the most part, macrobiotic.  Especially on the ships, you can see food being brought in that morning that was picked at most the day before, and will be on your table within hours.  The Egyptians eat at least two courses (for those who can afford it); a salad course consisting of these appetizers, and then a meat course, possibly followed by a fish course, with fresh fruit for dessert.  Pork is almost unheard of, and beef not particularly plentiful or popular, with chicken and lamb served everywhere.  After our appetizers were mopped up with plenty of the fresh bread puffs, plates of grilled chicken and lamb took their place, each with a side of local rice, threads of saffron streaking orange through the soft white granules.

The lamb is delicious and seemingly unspiced, the flavor delicate and rich at the same time.  The chicken is tender and perfectly grilled, full of flavor in my mouth.  A few years ago, the Egyptians were convinced to import chickens from Denmark, because they eat so many of them here.  The Danish chickens were larger and fatter, so it was thought they would quickly become more popular than the wiry little chickens so ubiquitous in Egpyt.  But they were practically flavorless, so they never caught on.  Emil talks about a European friend who brought his boy over to play with one of Emil’s sons.  Although the boy was only a year older than Emil’s kid, he was huge in comparison.  But Emil’s small, skinnny boy more than held his own with the big kid, outrunning and outplaying him until the older boy was exhausted.  ”The European boy,” Emil shrugged, “he is like Danish chicken!”  He laughed hard, slapping his knee.  Emil can be weird, but we love him.

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Following is an excerpt from my travel memoir, “Travels Through Egypt,” which I am currently working on.  Comments are welcome…

Our first day in Egypt, we all got on a bus and went to Lake Moeris, a sacred site to Rosicrucians.  The group, all Rosicrucians except for me and one other spouse, were having a ceremony there, which my husband Greg could participate in, but I could not. (Aside: I later became one on the trip, because of the trip and the things I experienced there, and it was my first spiritual home, for which I will be forever grateful).

Our guide Emil talked on the way about building cities in the desert, giving free homesteads to “youth” and tractors to clear the land, and long-term loans to build.  In ten years, he said, we will reclaim the desert, expanding it to create fertile land, and Egypt will once again feed Europe as they once fed Rome.  Well, it’s ten years later and I don’t think it’s happened yet, or even close, but it’s a nice ideal.

The second day, we visited Sakkara, home of the step pyramid of King Zoser.  Sakkara’s not my favorite site, although it has some interesting columns in one hall, and these days a lot of very friendly local dogs.  The problem for me is that the three Pyramids at Giza are clearly, vastly older, and yet the step pyramid is crumbling, whereas the three on the Giza plateau are obviously of a different caliber.  Though the Egyptians are proud of their homegrown pyramid, I can’t help feeling the inferiority of this burial tomb, which the Pyramids were never intended to be.  The orthodoxy would condemn me for these blasphemous natterings, but I cannot help the feeling I have when I look upon what I consider a relatively inferior site, as if a kid built a sandcastle pyramid and it somehow stuck around for a couple thousand years.

At Sakkara, Emil showed us some minor tombs, beautifully colored examples of men who were workers for the Pharoah — his scribes or his priests — and could afford to be buried in the way of the king, with the stories of their lives carved and painted on the walls.  We have never been inside the step pyramid, as it’s off-limits, but we often now perform ceremonies in what must once have been a large temple.  Now the walls have almost all fallen to rubble.  There is only the ghost of the building – a half wall to shield you from the unceasing desert wind (which always seems to whip me mercillessly here)  and some low stones that make up the rectangular perimeter.  On your way out, we take turns crouching down to peer into the eye holes of a stone box.  Inside, you see the statue of King Zoser (it’s his pyramid, remember?) staring back at you.  It’s kind of the first example of 3-D.

Afterwards, Greg, Lynn and I went wandering off on our own.  We did this so often on this trip we became known as the “bad kids” and later, our smaller trips were subtitled the “Bad Kids Tour” since we were usually off the beaten path.  An Egyptian man came up and offered us horses and camels to ride, and though I protested I couldn’t ride, hiked me up, threw my leg over a horse, and thwacked the horse’s side.  The horse took off, and after a moment I had to concede that as much as my fear would have kept me on the ground… this was the life!  Trotting through the desert sand, no one guiding or steering me, allowing the horse to go where it wanted without worrying about stops or other traffic – it was both exhilarating and freeing.  The horse would lean back, sort of tumbling down a hill of sand, and then lean forward, climbing up the next soft sandy ridge.  All I had to do was lean forward and back when the horse did, and I was an instant expert.  After about half an hour, we brought our horses back, spending a five bucks each for a ride I will always remember.

To get to Sakkhara, you ride into the desert, but the way to and from is surprisingly green and lush, full of farmland that literally hasn’t changed in a millennia. Forests of palm trees and native plants are visible through the large windows of the bus, and open farmland where we can see people picking or tending to crops.  Donkeys with their backs laden with hay wait quietly for more to be piled on, and once in a while, you see a man with no animals, out in his field, yoked to his own plow, dragging his livelihood behind him through row after row.  Not a life I would choose to live, but they seem, if not happy, at least accepting of this land, this fate.

There are no sidewalks, and people walking or riding donkeysline the roadways in the busier sections, the tiny towns and villages; you almost never see an Egyptian on a horse unless it’s a member of the military or they’re joyriding in the desert on the Giza Plateau.  The bus, a modern and comparatively huge vehicle, travels easily across the paved roads, bumpy with gravel and sand, but occasionally must stop for donkeys, cows, or people who traverse too close in its path.  Once the bus stopped at an intersection and could not continue.  After a while, our guide Emil, ever impatient, jumped off the bus to see what was causing the traffic holdup in front of us.  He came back shaking his head.  “Goats!” he grumbled.  And indeed, a herd of goats had gotten mixed up in the traffic and their herder was trying to round them up.  About fifteen minutes later, the goats presumably under control, the traffic resumed its regular pace and the bus was able to move forward.

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