An Idiot Abroad. Karl Pilkington

coming back tomorrow to get a tour with a guide.

      We went to see the Pyramids again today. I was meant to meet up with Dr Hawass, who is the main man who looks after the Pyramids site, but he cancelled last-minute, as he was ill, so I got a tour from a man called Aladin. He knows everything there is to know about the Pyramids. He loves them, which I find odd ’cos it’s not like he’s a project manager who comes every day and sees the development of them – they’ve looked like this for years and they’ll not change or be done up.

      Aladin began by raving about how the Pyramids were built. I don’t enjoy tours like this. They are more like a history lesson. Too many dates were being mentioned. I watched other people who were on tours and their faces also looked disappointed and uncertain – as if they weren’t sure what they were meant to do now they’d seen the Pyramids. It’s the same sort of feeling you get when you visit someone in hospital and you’ve had the smalltalk and given them their grapes and you want to leave, but feel like it’s too early to go. That’s how I felt.

      I was told by Krish that I’m going to meet a couple today who actually have a use for the Pyramids and that we’ll be going inside one finally. It’s probably the first time I’ve been excited since I’ve been in Egypt.

      I went to meet them at their apartment. They were called Andrew and Seija. They run something called Galactic Light and go into the Pyramids quite often, as they explained, ‘to connect with the powers of the Cosmos, the Unity or the Christ Grid around the planet, and Atlantis. As the great Pyramid is the focal point of the whole Grid system, it is connected to all sacred monuments around the Globe, as well as to the centre of our Galaxy and the centre of the planet Earth. It is an amazing, magnificent monument transcending space and time.’

      That lost me a bit. I just wanted to see what one looked like inside after being disappointed by its lack of kerb appeal.

      They had a nice apartment though, with a great view of the Pyramids from the toilet. They taught me how to relax and went through some mantras that we would be doing once we were inside the Pyramid.

      All was going quite well, and I was starting to feel quite calm, until the call to prayer began. There was a speaker right outside their living-room window that blasted out the prayer for a good 20 minutes. This really was the main thing that put me off living in Egypt. I asked Andrew if they were aware of the speakers when they bought the place. I bet the estate agent got them in and out way before any call to prayer took place. After I had learnt a few chants, we had burgers and chips and headed for the Pyramids. It was the end of the day, but we had permission to be there after all the other tourists had left. It was quite eerie. There were no coaches or camels or people selling tat, and it was dark.

      We entered the Pyramids and made our way up some steep steps that Andrew and Seija said were around 150 metres tall. We then had to squeeze through a small gap on our knees to get into a place called the King’s Chamber. I’m not that good with guessing sizes but I’d say you could get 50 people in there at a push.

      The walls were a pinkish granite that looked impressive, but the stone coffin at the end of the room looked a bit of a mess. The stone looked like it had been cut roughly. It was as if by this point in the construction (23 years in) everyone had had enough and rushed to complete it. It’s like when you have an extension done on your house and you end up with a snag list of jobs like cracked plaster or loose plug sockets that take longer to get done than the extension itself.

      The lid was missing from the stone coffin and so was the mummy.

      Andrew and Seija lit some candles, which wasn’t that clever, as it was roasting in there already, with no ventilation, and there were no fire escapes, but I didn’t say anything, as I didn’t want to ruin the mood. They started the mantra. Seija then led me towards the stone coffin and made me get in it. I didn’t know this was the plan, but as they led me, they chanted the mantra all the way so I couldn’t stop to ask what was happening. It was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. I lay there, as still as I could, in a 4,000-year-old coffin while two strangers chanted over me. I was in there for about five minutes in all, and then Seija and Andrew pulled me out so that Seija could have a go.

      Before we left, Seija asked if I felt any cosmic powers. I wanted to say yes, but I hadn’t, so I decided to be honest with her. She seemed disappointed by this news.

      As weird as it all was, it was an amazing final experience, and it did make my trip to Egypt and the Pyramids all worthwhile. How many people can say they’ve lain in a candle-lit coffin in the middle of the King’s Chamber in one of the Great Pyramids?

      It was also the only time I had been in Egypt when I couldn’t hear the call to prayer or beeping of car horns or even, as Ahmed would say, any sort of tintinnabulation.

      There are actually 118 pyramids in Egypt, not just the three everyone talks about.

      The ‘Great Pyramid’ is built from about 2.3 million stone blocks, weighing an average of 2.5 to 15 tonnes each. It’s estimated that the workers would have had to set a block every two and a half minutes.

      The Great Pyramids now stand a full three miles south of the spot where they were originally built owing to the amount that the Earth’s surface has shifted in the last 4,500 years.

      Even the builders had tombs. When an American woman was thrown from her horse in Giza, the stumbling block turned out to be the tip of an enormous builders’ necropolis, containing over 600 tombs.

      Contrary to popular belief, not a single mummy has been found inside the pyramids. Mummies have mostly been found in the Valley of the Kings.

      Debunking another popular myth, there are no hieroglyphics, or any form of writing, in the Great Pyramid.