Hearts racing, we bounced and jumbled our way up the hill and there they were.

Judging by the few ant-speck humans around the base (we were at the back end: no tourist hordes in sight), you really get a sense of just how massive these things are and how there’s nothing you could do in your lifetime to ever, ever muster up enough goodwill (or indentured labour) to construct something similar in your name.

We were busy being humbled when suddenly a tourist-police officer on a camel comes up, shouting in Arabic, arms akimbo. His automatic rifle caught the sun with no need for translation. Very slowly, almost calmly, S&M started leading us away from him, inexplicably screaming back at him hotly. He followed us for a ways, but then seemed to tire of the chase and wandered off, but not before yelling something that sounded like “No ticket!”. S&M affably put it off to something about “knowing someone who came the other day but they don’t like him”: general nonsense. Whatever: we were here to see the Pyramids, and S&M was getting paid to deal with such problems. We snapped off a few photos and moved on.

At this point, S&M was slowly chipping away at his credibility by regaling us with tales of how the dastardly Napoleon stole the nose of the Sphinx. We were led around the Queen’s Pyramids behind the smallest of the Big 3. As we got closer, I promptly fell off my horse. My foot even got caught in the stirrup—the nightmare coming to life—but Michael Jackson, bless his heart, obligingly came to a halt while I sorted out my difficulties. Turns out my saddle was loose: after a brief inspection, S&M gave me his own, unnamed but properly dressed horse.

We knew something was up when we crested another hill, coming up onto the Sphinx and attendant droves, but only from a distance. I think Nazma caught on first, demanding to go up close. S&M—ebullient, accommodating, and remarkably sweat-free until now—began to look nervous.

“Ok, Madame: no problem,” as we darted along the wall of the Sphinx enclosure (but not in it) and up the road towards the Pyramid of Khufu. There’s an alley between a row of funerary ruins and another set of Queen’s Pyramids, where no tourist ever bothers to venture. This is where we slipped in, making our way towards Khufu.

It was pretty apparent by now that S&M was trying to avoid the cops, which could only mean that the stables never bought our tickets to Giza. We were in the compound illegally, and my hairless Asian physique would be, I’m sure, valuable currency in an Egyptian prison.

Sure enough, sneaking along the passage we heard a shout and looked back to find another camel-riding, shiny-weaponed cop heading towards us. S&M pulled us into a side-enclosure, got us off our horses, shooed us towards Khufu saying “five minutes”, and turned back to meet the cop. Presumably with a wad of bribe money. Hurray for baksheesh.

At this point, we didn’t care. We knew we’d been scammed, but we were determined to get our money’s worth anyway. If we’d been stupid enough to sneak in on our own, fine—Midnight Express time—but with S&M around we had a handy scapegoat and a dumb-tourist card to play.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu is wonderful – amazing in its construction, longevity, and just sheer bulk. I won’t even bother describing it. 20 minutes later, we returned to a pant-peeing S&M who crammed us back onto our horses and took off as fast as he could.

Riding back down, past the Sphinx, Nazma still wanted to go inside the Sphinx enclosure. S&M tried to convince us there was nothing to see (hello? Sphinx?). Knowing this was a lost cause, we managed to snap off some pics from outside.

Returning to the stables, we complained to the owners that we knew we’d been scammed. We explained to our original guide but it was pretty plain she was in on the whole thing. A few rapidly tossed words in Arabic (”the jig is up”?) and the incoherent owners ponied up two entrance tickets—absurdly out of date judging by the displayed prices.

Our only objective at this stage in perpetuating the scrum was to convey that we were onto them and that we’d tell everyone we met. Apparently we weren’t getting through because S&M chose this otherwise awkward moment to tell me “if you want to baksheesh the guide (i.e. him), that’s no problem”. The only grammatically correct sentence he’d managed all day. We celebrated his gumption and newfound English skills with a car-door in the face as we got in our charter and sped back towards Cairo.

Giza: the only remaining wonder of the world; append the list now with the modern wonder that we didn’t get scammed more than we did. In the end, though, don’t think for a minute that we weren’t suitably awestruck and humbled. Nothing like 6 million tonnes of limestone geometric perfection devoted to someone else to put you in your place. Now if someone would only put the scammers in theirs.