I rode the camel. Of course I did. It’s one of those touristy things I just had to do. I was in Egypt, after all, visiting the pyramids at Giza and contemplating the Sphinx.

This once-in-a-lifetime trip to Egypt was fabulous, marvelous, wonderful. It was a Road Scholar program called “Up the Nile and Into History: Sailing Through the Stories of Egypt.” There were twelve of us on the tour, a manageable group and what’s more, we all got on famously.

Our guide, Ahmed, was personable and knowledgeable, with a sense of humor and lots of stories. He also had a face like that of the Pharoah Khafre, whose statue is displayed in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.

Khafre built the Great Pyramid in Giza. That’s where I rode the camel. The camel wore a saddle cloth with a number and the words Ali Bob Marley. I guessed this was the camel’s name, but I’m not sure. Now, I’m quite short and the camel was tall, even while kneeling. It took Ahmed plus the camel handler to get my foot in the stirrup, let alone get me into the saddle. And once I was up there I felt quite precarious, as I wasn’t seated quite right in the saddle.

I felt like I was going to fall off, especially when the camel got to its feet. The camel handler shifted me into the proper position and off we went. Two or three minutes of riding the camel was plenty for me. The camel knelt, I scrambled off, and Ali Bob Marley and I parted company.

Cairo is overwhelming, full of energy, chaos, all sorts of images. The city is home to about 22 million people and it sprawls on both sides of the Nile, a juxtaposition of ancient and contemporary. Traffic is crazy. Ahmed told me that local drivers view traffic lights and travel lanes as suggestions only. As we navigated the streets in our bus, we saw minivans used as public transit as well as three-wheeled conveyances known as tuk-tuks. And motorbikes, everywhere.

Then there’s the City of the Dead, a huge and ancient cemetery complex that in the 21st century is home to thousands of people. It’s jarring to realize that people are living in those abandoned tombs, some of them with satellite dishes on the roofs.

We visited the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum, which is vast. Ahmed told us the museum contains over 100,000 artifacts and that it would take a whole week to see everything. As it was, we hit the highlights, including the large gallery devoted to King Tutankhamun.

We left Cairo for Luxor, where the Queen of Egypt served as our hotel. It’s a dahabeya, a traditional flat-bottomed boat, which was towed by a tugboat, though one afternoon there was enough wind for us to sail. I spent plenty of time on deck, reading, making notes, but frequently just staring at the scenery on both sides of the Nile. As we passed villages, children gathered on the riverbank, waving and calling “Hello.”

The names of the temples unwind—Karnak, Luxor, Dendera, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae. And El Kab, the location of a cracking good mystery by my blogmate Janis Patterson. The Valley of the Kings, where tomb KV 62 once held the grave goods of Tutankhamun. I was surprised at the small size of the tomb.

Most awe-inspiring? So many wonderful sites, almost overwhelming. The Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, the Step Pyramid, the island temple at Philae. And definitely Abu Simbel.

Two enormous rock-cut temples carved out of a mountainside in the 13^th century BC, one temple for Rameses II and the second for his wife Nefertari. I am old enough to remember the heroic efforts to move the temple complex to higher ground so it wouldn’t be submerged by the rising waters of Lake Nasser when the Aswan High Dam was built and put into service. The temples were cut into over 1,000 pieces and transported to their new site, above the level of the lake. Being there and seeing the temples makes me realize what a remarkable feat this was.

I’m home now, recuperating from jet lag and getting back to my routine. And thinking about the stories I can tell, with ideas gleaned from my travels. After all, some of Ahmed’s stories about the adventures of a travel guide provided some interesting plots that need to be explored.

Travel is wonderful for a writer. Ideas abound. And one should always ride the camel.