This is an outside shot of the smaller of the three Pyramids, which belongs to Menkaure. Ceej took it at the base while waiting for us to come back from the inside.

In order to go down it we had to stoop way over and go down a 45-degree angle board with crossboards every few feet to keep you from falling on your ass. There were people going down and coming up at the same time, so we were constantly being jostled and poked, and bumping our heads on the shaft's ceiling every so often.

Once we got to the bottom, it was stuffy and hot and poorly-lit. That and the walls were white as bone and didn't seem to have much in the way of interesting features. We eeked along to an L chamber, in which a fat guy in a white galabaya stood, flashlight in hand.

"Royal chamber to your right, wife's chamber at the end, go down, come back, shake a leg" he announced with the disaffected repetition of an old-style, elevator operator calling out the contents of each floor. We went down and turned around and saw..., nothing. Just a security camera in one corner to make sure we didn't put our initials on the walls.

After that, the fat guy stood in the way of the exit and made a "gimmie money" gesture to each person for his time and effort. Under the circumstances, we couldn't really say no, so he got his baksheesh and we went back up.

Going back up was worse than going down. It got pitch black a few times and, worse, stopped altogether on occasion. You'd be there, hunched over with your nose an inch away from someone's butt and your head thumping on the ceiling for about 30 seconds, feeling like you were trapped in a coffin, and then the line would finally move a few inches just to stop again.

Getting back out felt wonderful, and I swore "Never again." The next day, when I woke up, my upper legs felt like someone had worked them over with a baseball bat, and I was walking around like an old man with chicken legs for days afterwards.

Never, never again. No.