When we originally booked to ride on a camel, there was quite a bit of excitement and interest about it. But now, Pat had changed her mind and the rest of us had gotten cold feet, and if we had been able to find someone to buy our places on the camel ride we would have sold them happily.

There were only three of us on that Wednesday morning at eight, being picked up at the hotel. Our guide was waiting and since the group was so small, we went in a taxi. We didn't know whether we should tip or not - the usual problem with us. Then we were put on a small boat to cross the river - but this needed more courage than we had counted on, because we had to walk across a plank to get into the boat - and the plank was very precariously balanced between the boat and the dock.

Zaib was really very frightened and would have liked to have backed out, there and then, but the guide held her hand and she did get on board. There were only the four of us on the boat, and we were driven by a boy of about eight - but he seemed to know what he was doing and we were quickly across the river and again having to negotiated another plank to get onto the shore.

There were three camels kneeling down and waiting for us on the bank. Zaib had asked if our guides would be grown men, and our tour guide assured her that they would be experienced and speak English. Well, Ena, who got on first, had a biggest camel - and the smallest guide - he was only six. We were told that his father had died and his mother was ill and he was the only wage-earner in the family. Whether it was true or not, we didn't know, but it was rather alarming to put one's safety in the hands of someone quite so young.

Then I got on my camel, which was the smallest - and my guide who was 16 and called Farouk came up and told me my camel was called Cassanova. There was a saddle with a horn on the front where I hung my handbag and the plastic bag I had brought with me for my camera, and then I clung on to that little 6" piece of horn for dear life. When the camel stood up, I lurched forward and then back.

The guides secured our feet in rope loops and there was a rope leading the camel - which the guides carried for the start. Zaib was the most frightened and her camel seemed to be rather awkward at the beginning, and she was sort of lurching from one side to the other until she was finally balanced on it. But she was never happy on the ride and felt very insecure. Her guide was the oldest - being 21. Mine said he was a cousin of the oldest boy. They told us that school was not on because of Ramadan - and we believed them - but later I remembered that when we were in Turkey during Ramadan the children there were certainly still going to school. But never mind. These children were not at school, they were guarding our lives during this one hour ride on these camels on a foot path along the Nile.

I think that this was a close as we got to seeing what real life in Egypt was like. All along the Nile were small fields which were divided into about 50 ft patches, surrounded by shallow ditches - and then the spaces between up and the river on one side and extending on to the desert on the other side were surrounded by bigger irrigation ditches which crossed our path about every half a block or so.

The guides pointed out to us what was being grown in the fields - onions, tomatoes, egg plant, things like that. There were workers in some of the patches - but whether they were weeding or planting or harvesting, I couldn't tell. All along our route, and when we first got on to the camels there were children from the nearby villages who were begging for us to buy their bits - stone scarabs, stuffed camels, or obelisks or whatever. I really intended to spend money on the children - having felt so badly that I had not done well when we saw the children by the Alabaster factory - and I had even gotten lots of small notes so I could give lots of the children something, but my money was in my handbag, and to get it out meant letting go of the horn that was my only safeguard, and I just couldn't make myself do it.

So I told the children "Later, on the way back."

One little girl said, "Do you promise?"

I said, "Yes, I promise."

The walking was very slow, and after I got used to the pace, I really quite enjoyed the sensation. The guides would have liked us to go faster, and to take control of the reins ourselves, but we were all too scared to do anything but just cling on for dear life. We walked by a house where one woman was washing clothes in a tub outside - and another was putting flat pieces of bread on rocks in the front yard which were going to be sun-baked bread. I would have liked to have taken a picture, but that again would have involved taking my hands off the saddle horn.

Later, Farouk said would I like a picture of myself on the camel - so I got him to take the camera out of the bag on the saddle and take the picture and put it back into the bag without me letting go of anything. He had to hold the reins of the camel for awhile, so he could pick some sugar cane and eat it (he did offer me some) and I wondered if he knew he was breaking the Ramadan fast by eating sugar, but didn't try to make him feel guilty.

One little boy came and joined the party and he picked some weeds and gave them to me to hold, and obviously expected a tip for this. "Later" I said.

"But I live in the house" he said and was almost crying. He obviously was not allowed to walk the full way there and back with us and couldn't wait for his tip - so I'm afraid he missed out.

And in fact all the children missed out, because when we made the return journey and the girl I had promised reminded me of it, I was still clinging to the horn and told her I would buy her camel when I got off my camel, but she couldn't come down to the boat area either, so she also was disappointed in me. Another rich foreigner who doesn't keep her promises.

As we went along there was a woman dressed in black working in one field. Zaib waved at her - just to be friendly, I think, but when we were making our return trip, there she was waiting for us beside the path, smiling and looking expectant. I wonder if she thought we were gong to tip her too but we didn’t.

I felt rather embarrassed about our inexperience in the situation and wish we had been told more about how to deal with the people. But Zaib was also clinging firmly onto her saddle horn and the lady was disappointed. We passed two areas where the water from the Nile was being pumped up into the larger ditches. I suppose these were about half a mile apart. We were gone an hour all together - and walked at a slow walking pace, so probably didn't cover more than a mile in each direction. When we were on the return journey we met another group of camel riders - perhaps 20 in all - and certainly some were Americans. The man in front was riding his camel with great authority and comfort.

We encounter the odd donkey - doing donkey-work - laden with cut sugar cane or whatever. There was a donkey who brayed most unhappily when we walked by. He was tethered in a yard - and we wondered what was wrong with him. The guides said he was just greeting us, but he sounded as if he was being beaten. I expect he just wanted to be free to join in the walk too. I remember when our bridge group was in Tunisia, I heard a donkey making just the same sort of noise and I assumed that he was being mistreated in some way. But this one was just letting us know his opinion about our camel ride.

Each time we got to an irrigation ditch, which was far too often for our comfort, we would lurch forward and our guides would put their hands on our legs to steady us. But we dreaded each drop.

But the worst of all was getting off the camels at the end. My guide told me to lean backwards, which I did, but even so, when he sat down - bit at a time, I lurched forward and nearly went flying over his head - luckily the guide kept hold of me. But I was so grateful to be safe and down - and my camel had actually behaved very well, and I didn't see any of the fleas and sores on him that we had been warned we might find.

I gave my guide a big tip - thinking that somehow would make up for all the children who I had disappointed along the way. There were children by the boats too, and they were selling things, which I would have bought if they had been cheap, but they were more than I anticipated, and when I was thinking about bartering, the tour guide took me by the elbow and quickly escorted me over the gangplank and into the boat - and shouted for the children to go away.

I didn't realise what was happening, but the others who followed more slowly, said that our tour guide was in some sort of argument with the guides about payment, and I think he must have found out that I gave a big tip (£E20) and took it back from him, or else claimed back some of the money he had paid for the trip. And I had been hurried away from the scene so as not to know what was going on.

We had two young men on our felucca going home - and I tipped them - and then our cab driver back to the hotel and I tipped him too, so I didn't feel quite so guilty about all the poor people that we saw that I hadn't done very well for. Our tour guide said that the camel and donkey rides were the thing he organised for the tour company - and asked if would like to do a donkey ride next. "No!" - I said, but I would possibly do another camel ride if I ever went to Egypt again. It really was the best chance we had for seeing the real life in Egypt, and I only wish I had been able to take it in more and find out more about what was really going on.

The guides knew some English and asked us questions about where we came from, whether we had children, how old we were. They asked us if we would marry them. This was treated as a joke at the time, but later I came to realise that perhaps it wasn't such a joke after all.

There was another bunch of people who I felt guilty about not tipping (Baksheesh was what they called it) - but in fact I gave them all the small notes that I had really intended for the children on the camel ride - at the end of the holiday. This was a group of four musicians who sat outside the hotel each day and played each time somebody went in or out of the hotel. It was so awful - the music, that I almost felt like paying for them not to play it. But some people liked it quite well, and Pat even thought about buying an instrument like the two stringed thingy that was being plucked. Sometimes people had their pictures taken with the musicians and then paid them something for that. But everybody expected something for everything they did.

The man in the temple who showed me where to stand for a good photograph - I never asked for hits information - expected a tip - but he didn't get it. The people in the tombs who told us to watch our heads so we didn't hit them on the low ceilings expected a tip. I noticed that our guide went around and tipped a lot of the old men who were stationed around the tombs - but I never saw our temple guide tipping anyone, but he was bad tempered anyway. I gave him a tip at the end - but first I asked him about some flowers - just about the only flowers in bloom in Egypt at this time of year - and he told me so gruffily and almost angrily that I almost didn't give him one at all.