Egypt Tourists Face INSANE Harassment at the Pyramids (True Story!)

Visiting the pyramids of Giza in Egypt is a complete travel nightmare. Not just for the reasons you would assume when you visit an A-list tourist attraction, like crowds and lines, but because of all the fake touts trying to trick and harass tourists the whole way through.

A tout is a fake guide that tries to scam and trick tourists.

Sometimes they’re just trying to get them to buy an overpriced trinket, and other, more insidious times, to get them alone so they can mug them or just pressure them to give up their cash.

Insane harassment at the Great Pyramids of Giza

We THOUGHT we had taken the proper precautions against this when we visited the Pyramids of Giza. I had read all the travel blogs talking about it beforehand and we knew to hire a private guide to take us around.

If you have a guide with you, the touts are supposed to know not to bother you. Unfortunately, our guide was useless in this respect.

He was a nice guy but I don’t think he really liked being a tour guide so he would have us run on ahead while he parked the car or would offer to stay with the bags and let us go do our own thing.

This is understandable, he probably visited the Pyramids every day and was tired of it, but this made us look like 3 dumb, guide-less (and female, double whammy) tourists up to the mercy of the touts.

The pyramids complex is HUGE – you need a car or another mode of transportation to get from pyramid A to the Sphinx once you’re inside, which is part of the problem.

Another issue is poor security. In contrast to other “wonders of the world” attractions I’ve been to, like Machu Picchu, the Pyramids complex pretty much lets anyone in.

There are thousands of guys yelling at tourists, selling trinkets or photos, and pretty much no security besides at the base of the actual pyramids. The complex is just too big to police the whole thing.

Also, Egyptians tend to respect the hustle.

Authorities turn a blind eye to touts taking tourists on camel rides, and then shaking them down for cash once they got them 10 ft up on a camel (there’s a saying in Egypt – “It’s one price to get ON the camel and another to get OFF”) is just kinda baked into the culture.

The fake pyramids employee

The little boy mob had taken up a good deal of the dwindling time we had left at the complex before it closed for the day. We were a little bit frazzled, trying to see everything there was to be seen before we had to leave.

While we were sitting on rocks trying to take a good shot in front of the Sphinx without 1,000 other tourists in the way some guy kept coming up and bothering us.

First, he was throwing compliments our way. “Beautiful”, and “Shakira” (the default catcall in Egypt), and we were ignoring him, thinking he was just some creep (which he was).

Then our guide, who had finally come back from parking the car, shouted down to us we only had 15 minutes left before the complex closed.

He said we would have just enough time to visit the last stop, the elevated platform overlooking the Great Sphinx if we made a run for it. The guide wasn’t going to run with us. So we left our bags with our guide, which was slowing us down, and made a dash for it.

Sprinting towards what looked like the entrance and wound up being a dead-end the creepy guy sprinted AFTER us and told us he could show us the correct entrance. I said “La, Shukran” (no thank you in Arabic) as a reflex and then he flashed his badge and said he worked for the pyramids complex and was just trying to be nice.

Should I have taken a closer look at the badge? Yes. But we had 10 minutes left at a bucket-list destination I didn’t know if I will ever make it back to and we were rushing around, so we trusted him at face value and let him lead the way.

The “pyramids employee” immediately started acting sketchy once we turned the corner to the correct entrance. He said “it’s closed now, but I can still get you in” – it wasn’t closed.

People were streaming out of the little gated entrance because it was about to close, but we made it with no problem while the guy with a badge made a big show of “talking to the guard on our behalf.”

The viewpoint over the Sphinx isn’t all that great. We were over it in about 5 minutes, just trying to see everything before we go. Unfortunately, the only way out of the viewpoint was the same as the way in, and the fake pyramids employee was waiting for us at the exit.

The grabby little boys

We had to drive from the entry to the complex where we went inside the pyramids to where the Great Sphinx was.

Once we arrived it was already 3 PM and the complex was closing at 4 PM (It’s open till 5 PM in the summer but we visited in October) so our guide dropped us off and went to go park the car. This left us on our own, and free to run into problems.

I set up my tripod so we could all take a photo together in front of the Great Sphinx with a timer, and in the 30 seconds that took we were already descended upon by a pack of adolescent boys.

In some parts of Asia and Africa, it’s common for people to ask to take a photo with foreigners, which throws a lot of western tourists off, but it’s not considered weird.

I have taken SO many photos with people while travelling, especially in Egypt.

One time a mom had me take a photo with each of her kids and it was actually really cute. However, I have heard stories about female travellers taking photos with men or boys and they’re not always respectful.

Sometimes they’ll show the photo of you together to people and say that you slept with them, other times they’ll use the photo as an excuse to get grabby.

So when the pack of little boys showed up asking for photos, I respectfully declined and went back to fiddling with my camera.