We biked through small country
villages the past two days. There were plenty of kids waving 'hi' and a
few throwing stones at you, hitting you with sugar cane, pinching you, grabbing
your bike, etc. For the most part, it was unnerving but ok... as long as
the numbers of kids remained low. As the number of kids and the age of
the kids increased (teenaged boys), so did the threat.
All of the villages looked ancient.
The scenery reminded me of movies of biblical times - date trees, dry
brown sandy landscape with very little vegetation, low standing small square
stone block buildings, donkeys, carts and people in robes and head scarves.
Early on I rode in black tights over
my biking shorts because it was cold. One day it was getting much warmer
during the day and I wanted to remove my tights and asked someone in the group
if they thought it would be ok for me to ride in only bike shorts and I was
told, 'white people riding bikes in Egypt is a spectacle; a woman riding a
bicycle in Egypt is a huge spectacle... wear whatever you want, you are already
a huge spectacle.'
On our bikes we are an attraction,
if you stop people gravitate towards you and crowd you. Below is a
picture taken from our lunch stop at the edge of a canal. Men lined the
road above us and squatted to watch us like animals in a zoo and children lined
the opposite bank of the canal to do the same. It feels very odd and
invasive, you get no privacy and I hear it will get worse. I now
sympathize with a celebrity trying to go have a pee.
go Karen! Hate the idea of being watched all the time, glad you're now out in the desert a bit more. xxx
ReplyDeleteHi Janice, Peeing along the way is an issue, as you would know. One day since I had 2 flats I ended up dead last (that was my excuse for that day), so I was being followed by our escort - the ambulance and the sweep further behind. Every half hour or so he would sound his siren and scare me half to death but as we got closer to camp I seriously needed to pee and we were in the desert. I was searching desparately for a bush, a rock, a sand dune, a goat ...anything more than knee high. Finally, I saw a pile of sand, pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and dropped my bike. The ambulance crew (three men) jumped out of the ambulance (to assist me) and I made dog signals for them to stay and that I was going over there. They were insisting that they put me and my bike in the ambulance, when a second ambulance pulls up with 3 more guys all out on the road..with the 6 of them watching me as I trot off accross the sand and behind the small mound. When I returned to the side of the road ( avoiding eye contact), the sweep caught up and was sure there was an accident with 3 ambulances and six medics all standing around my bike. I jumped on my bike and rode away as quidcly as possible. I have no pride left...things are only getting worse in this department but we are all in the same boat.
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