Camels to Be Banished as Cure for Problems at Pyramids

GIZA, Egypt — They have been part of the landscape around the Pyramids of Giza for centuries and the preferred mode of transportation for viewing the ancient monuments since Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt. But now camels will be banned from the immediate vicinity of the 4,500-year-old burial site of the pharaohs.

The problem? Officially, it’s a question of “site pollution”--too many dromedary droppings that have to be cleaned up every morning at great expense.

Unofficially, it’s a question of obnoxiousness.

Following time-honored tradition, camel drivers hassle visitors for business. Now tourism officials are starting to acknowledge that aggressive pestering by camel drivers turns the obligatory Pyramids stop into a sour experience for many of the nearly 4 million tourists who come to Egypt each year.

So Egypt’s government is doing the unthinkable.

Camels, and horses as well, are to be kept a mile from the Pyramids.

Visitors can still be photographed atop a four-legged ship of the desert, but only at a discreet distance from the Pyramids. Those who want to visit the structures but avoid the camel drivers altogether will have that option too.

The plan is part of a larger strategy to impose order on the chaotic carnival of tourists, guides, hawkers, buses, camels, horses, carriages, police and picnickers at the Pyramids.

“Recently, things have become amiss on the Giza Plateau,” Zahi Hawass, director of the Pyramids, said in explaining his decision.

But the idea does not sit well with many locals terrified that the new arrangements will slash their income in hard economic times. “It could be a 70% drop in business,” said camel owner Nasser Hussein. “All these people have 12 or 13 kids. How are they going to live?”

Besides the horse and camel droppings, which cost tens of thousands of dollars a year to clean up, there is the problem of too many unlicensed people making a living off the Pyramids, Hawass said. When the new system is in place, he said, “the tourist police will know the name of every camel and the name of every camel driver.”

What Hawass proposes is that the 570 licensed camels and horses and 100 horse-drawn carriages be restricted to the western side of the Pyramids, at a former army camp.

Workers have started laying foundations for a stable, veterinary office and visitor center where tourist buses would drop off anyone who wishes to take a camel or horseback ride through the desert to a ridge that affords a sweeping, unobstructed view of the three massive Pyramids, the Sphinx and various minor Pyramids, with Giza and Cairo in the distance.

The animals would have to stay inside an enclosure three miles long and a quarter-mile wide, formed by an unobtrusive, low stone fence. Only licensed operators would be allowed in, theoretically eliminating the freelancers who are blamed for many of the abuses against tourists.

The engineer in charge of the construction, Abdul Hamid Kotb, said the work will be done by the end of March. He predicted that incomes for those with licenses will rise once illegal competitors are out of the picture.

But the camel drivers, in their long robes and colorful turbans, scoffed at the idea. They expect many tour operators to bypass the new camel and horse stands altogether, and they fear that tourists on tight schedules won’t bother with a half-hour ride through the desert as a separate activity.

“The horses and the camels are down there, and the Pyramids are up here,” said Mandour Tantour, a licensed operator who has been driving camels for 27 of his 42 years. “The tourist wants both at the same time!”

Attaya Tantour, a 36-year-old driver, said: “Even the image of this place is going to change. People know now that there is a Pyramid and there is a camel beside it. How are they going to feel?”

According to the drivers, their living is already precarious. It costs $90 a month to feed a camel, and the finicky $900 animal, imported from Sudan, usually must be replaced after one or two years when it gets fed up with the tourists and refuses to be docile.

Drivers are a clannish group, often inheriting the profession from their fathers and grandfathers, and live together in a village near the entrance to the Pyramids site.

The official price for camel rides, posted on a little-noted billboard, is 12 Egyptian pounds (about $3.50) an hour. But drivers smirked when asked if that is what they charge.

“Five bucks to get up on the camel . . . and another five to get down,” said one driver, smiling at an old joke within their fraternity.

“Pay whatever you like,” said another, a promise that throughout the Middle East means you will pay more than you expected. “It depends on the comfort of the tourist.”

Visitors to the area seemed disappointed when told of the plans to move the camels and horses.

“Weren’t the camels here originally?” asked Linda Stansfield of Mountain Lakes, N.J.

For many foreign tourists, a photo of themselves atop a camel next to the Pyramids has been a major aim of the journey. In fact, it has been so since the mid-19th century, when large numbers of European tourists first started exploring Egypt’s ancient sites.

English humorist Edward Lear wrote home back then about his experience: “Regarding the camel, you have only to set quietly still when it rises, and hold fast by the saddle--& you are lifted up on the long-necked monster--& away you go just as if on a rocking chair. . . .

“As for the camels themselves--I cannot say much for them: They are quite harmless and quiet, but seem the most odious beasts--except when they are moving.”