Getting Taken For a Ride: Cairo Style, Part 2

Going along with the theme of that particular day in Cairo, later that afternoon I went for another type of ride, or maybe two.

First: A taxi. A taxi ride through Cairo. Beyond the outskirts of the city and into the slums. Then through the slums, past rivers of trash piled on top of drinking water (truly, I watched a woman come out of her hovel, take a bucket and plunge it into the dirt gutter full of plastic trash, pull up a load of water and take it back into her house.) and out into a sort of countryside area where farmers in long shirt-like outfits with headscarves worked the fertile soil into oases of lush, green crops. When finally my taxi stopped, we had pulled into a compound of stables and arenas where beautiful, proud Arabian horses pranced happily. FB Stables in Amina.

And then I galloped on an Arabian horse across the Egyptian Desert. Around the Pyramids and back again, I imagined the open area as it was thousands of years ago when proud soldiers rode in chariots across the sands, brandishing spears. I wondered at the ever changing, yet unchanging nature of the place as the Sun set like a great orange ball of gassy flame in the Desert sky, nestled against a crumbling pyramid.

And all was well with the world.