Floating In Space

Fishermen on Lake Qarun in Fayoum seem to be suspended between the water and the sky.

The Twisted Tree

The lake at Dahshur is one of my favourite places to photograph all year round. Now, as summer approaches, the lake is drying up to a few ponds and the animals are grazing on the grass that grows from the moisture still present in the lakebed. We rode across the lakebed on horseback listening to the songs of larks, bulbul and the European rollers who were scooping through the air above us.

Time Out Of Time

I'm not a great celebrator of New Year's Eve....too many years spent working them as a college student with a night job in hotels and restaurants, I suspect. But New Year's Day I took a visitor to the lake in Dahshur on horseback to experience the villages and desert. On a day when time is on our minds, sometimes the very old things are a good reminder.

Pure Magic

During pharoanic times there were a series of sacred lakes that could be found at the foot of the Sphinx in Giza, between the pyramids of Abu Sir and Sakkara and just south of the pyramids at Dahshur. Today only the lake at Dahshur remains and it exists because every fall the canal to the Nile is opened to bring water in to fill the depression for the migratory water birds. From the south end of this small lake you look north across the shining water and lush green plants to the sands of the desert and the Bent Pyramid, the Red Pyramid and the Black Pyramid of Dahshur. The views are so spectacular and unique that it is a favourite riding trip for clients of mine who travel on horseback down the line of pyramids from Abu Sir to Dahshur through the desert and then return, after a lunch in the palm groves, through the villages that hide among the date palms.

The Black Pyramid is only accessible by four wheel drive, foot or horseback and is unique in that it was constructed of millions of handmade mud bricks and then encased in limestone. The limestone casing has long since been scavenged but the sheer number of the bricks has ensured the survival of the pyramid.