Travel: A hiking tour of Egyptian sites

Most time-strapped visitors take a bus to the pyramids, but we were on a walking tour. Our group of 14, along with our guide, Egyptologist Inas Hassan, set out from the hotel, continuing uphill past the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Khafre to a panoramic viewpoint. A long downhill stroll past the Pyramid of Menkaure brought us face-to-face with the inscrutable Sphinx. My lifelong dream of seeing the pyramids was fulfilled in a morning's walk.

We walked an easy two or three miles that day and averaged five to six a day. Because of the flat terrain along the Nile, the walks were not strenuous, and any reasonably fit person should be able to do them.

That afternoon, we took a motor coach to the site of the Giza Pyramids' precursor, the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, completed in the 27th century BC. In the distance, we saw the Bent Pyramid, so called because the angle of slope changes halfway up, and the Red Pyramid. Amazingly, discoveries are still being made. In November, it was announced that a 4,300-year-old pyramid base had been unearthed at Saqqara, bringing to 118 the number of Egypt's pyramids.

The rest of our walks in Cairo were urban hikes. We trekked through the Citadel of Saladin and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali; through the Egyptian Museum and the bustling alleyways of the Khan el Khalili bazaar, where a bomb exploded in February, killing a French tourist.

We saw security police throughout the city and, like other groups, we were accompanied by a guard wherever we walked. The unsmiling guards dressed in suits and made little effort to conceal the automatic weapons under their jackets.