Day 3, fridag 1 december 2017.

Program today: Wadi Sannur Cave and the pyramids at El-Lisht.

After a delicious breakfast, it was time to leave for the dripstone cave, which should be in the middle of the desert, I'm curious.

To get here you need to take the highway from Beni Suef to El-Minya, after about 25 km you get the exit to Sannur, here you go off and then turn under the highway to the other side there you have a workplace of one or another with next to it almost invisibly a sandy path, you drive up to this one and then it is another 30 km straight through the desert.
We were glad we had a guide with us because on our own we had never found this and certainly not the route through the desert.
Again a 4WD is recommended.
After an hour of bumping through the desert you finally arrive at a quarry where alabaster has been won for the citadel in Cairo. During these excavations, people stumbled upon the dripstone cave in 1980.
The cave itself consists of 1 large room of approximately 700 meters long and 15 meters wide.
It is a limestone cave covered with alabaster formed by thermal springs. The unique geology and beautiful formations of stalactites and stalagmites have ensured that in 1992 it was appointed as a protected area.

Click on the picture to see more of the cave.

Great such a dripstone cave and that in the middle of the desert, fantastic.
After a drive of about an hour through the desert and than half an hour to Beni Suef to drop off our escorts, we continue to El Lisht to visit the pyramids of Amenemhat I and Senusret I.
On the way there, we also passed the pyramid in Meidum which produced some nice snaps.

Click on the picture to see more.

After some questioning and searching, we went through a winding road through the nearby village to a pyramid, which one we do not know yet and to our surprise just before the pyramid is the local cemetery.
Because we do not want to cause any fuss, we took a few pictures and decide to go to the other pyramid which is about 600 meters away.
On the way there we meet a local guard and he wants to show us around, he also shows us the way we could drive the best.
First we go to what appears to be the pyramid of Senusret I, the other pyramid with the cemetery for it is that of Amenemhat I, his father.
Unfortunately, this pyramid from the 12th Dynasty is also in need of maintenance just like the one at Hawara and El-Lahun, but whether it ever comes from it? I doubt it.

Click on the picture to see more of the pyramid of Senusret I.

It remains cool to be able to view such a monument from antiquity up close, although the local population thinks differently about it, just because they were playing on top of the pyramid of Amenemhat I.
When they saw us coming under supervision, however, they quickly disappeared from our sight view.
When we asked the guard about this he also knew that it did not really belong, but he also did not know how to prevent this, because even here hardly anything was done to maintain these monuments unfortunately.

Well the pyramid of Anemenhet I, meanwhile the fifth pyramid during this trip, judge for yourselves on the basis of the photos I've made.

Click on the picture to see more of the pyramid of Amenemhat I.

That was it again, at leastfor today, now up to Cairo to stay in the Aracan Pyramids hotel for the rest of the week. Tomorrow the pyramids of Dahshur as well as Saqqara are on the program, so a reunion with some old acquaintances as well as getting acquainted with new things, so that promises to be a beautiful day again.

On the way to Cairo we were served with a beautiful sunset.

Click on the picture to see more of the sunset.

See you tomorrow.