For two hours ago we were lost in this desert , on our long tour back to the Nile Valley.
You just can't afford to get lost in this area, if you value your life that is...
The dark night came closer and closer, we had been driving kilometres by kilometres in an unknown direction - then suddenly even the trustworthy humming sound from the motor got an edge of question mark in its tone. We turned before the point of no return, and in the end found where we had turned wrong. Ahmed was relaxed all the time but he had not said a word for the last hour before he said "got it". We were back on the road on a roadless road. A grain of sand in an immense desert.
Got the impression I was talking about something boundless? Fact is that we so far only have been talking "peanuts".
It was after Ahmed had said "got it" and darkness had established its presence that I said "can you stop - have to make a phone"
After nature was pleased and the eyes got used to the dark, I looked up and around. There, hovering above and around us in all directions was the greatest monument of Egypt.
Once before I had witnessed an amazing night while sailing alone 70 degrees north in the open Atlantic. Fifty meters from where I sailed in my small Troms færing (a smaller Viking cousin sail boat), a huge whale was passing while the north light drove slalom among the stars above. Not a night one forgets. Other starry nights could be added. This was nothing like it.
Until then stars had been like holes in a two dimensional sky always making me wonder on what was there behind them. This time there was nothing behind them; how could there be? This night, in a silent four wheel car, desert all around and mile upon mile to nearest human settlement. The sky was not a covering around our globe any more.
Never have I felt so small, never did I feel so part of something so great. The stars from the closest one to those light-years after light-years away - and then all those in-between. This was not only a three dimensional reality - it was all-dimensional as I never imagined anything could be. The stars are yellow? Hey, they were alive in any colour. This reality was not only opening endless dimensions on all sides and above. Even under my feet - below the sand I was standing on, this reality made its presence. Endlessly under me. We were standing there in an endless sandy sea covering a part of the star we were standing on, part of the monument we were standing in.
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