The Western Desert is definitely off the beaten path as far as touring Egypt goes. It takes 4-5 hours to get from Cairo to Bahariya (the main village), by bus. We booked cheap and traveled by local bus which made for a very cramped, smelly, and long ride. The scenery along the way isn’t much: a vast expanse of desert stretching as far as you can see in any direction. Occasionally, the monotony is broken by train tracks or a cinderblock building, but it’s mostly just desert.
When you finally see the greenery of the Bahariya oasis, it comes as a salve to the eyes. Palms spring out of the desert valley and there are even little ponds with lush green grass growing around them. The town itself is small and unsophisticated with nearly as many horse or donkey carts as cars.
For a time, before the specter of Libyan terrorists kidnapping tourists arose, Bahariya was an up and coming Egyptian destination. Over the past decade or so, however, the region has fallen on hard times as evidenced by the numerous abandoned ghost hotels and tourist camps visible on the hillsides.
We arrived at last to our hotel, small and simple, but picturesque in its own way. It lay on the edge of town right next to a village hot springs and had its own date palms which allowed me to sample them right off the tree. After a couple of hours to eat lunch and explore the hotel grounds, we were taken by the guide on a tour of the village sights. We were shown several volcanic hot springs, one too hot to touch, and driven through the lush green valley to the main lake where it looked like villagers had set up duck blinds. As the afternoon wore on, we were taken to a nearby hill that Chris and I climbed. I was on the lookout for fossils since I’d read many dinosaur fossils had been discovered in the area. I found a couple of shell fossils, but sadly no raptors. I did see a desert fox on the way back down to the truck however.
Our last destination was the ruins of a fortress on the cliffs above the valley, built and occupied in WWI. Here we watched the sun set while our guide made tea in the Bedouin tradition over the flames. We sat on rugs he set out and drank the tea as the heat of the day quickly left with the sun.
The next day we began our tour of the Black and White deserts. The Black Desert is so named due to the volcanic activity which has left black gravel across the desert for miles. I found it mildly interesting, but nothing to write home about yet. Our next stop was the Crystal Mountain. Not really a mountain, per se, but the ridge that juts up from the desert is nonetheless covered with quartz crystals. We were allowed to collect some with our tour, but I couldn’t help but wonder how long the “Crystal Mountain” would remain a destination of every tourist was encouraged to grab a handful of the crystals.
Finally, we were off to the location I’d been anticipating: The White Desert. On the way we stopped on some pretty spectacular sand dunes to watch the sunset and arrived at the otherworldly entrance of the White Desert just as the night was closing in. It truly did look like some landscape from Star Wars with white limestone rocks shaped like giant mushrooms protruding from the golden/white sands and almost had a mystical feeling to it, especially that time of day.
We would be sleeping under the stars this night, using Bedouin camel blankets for extra warmth and we quickly claimed a spot in the sands and then set out to explore in the last bit of twilight until dinner was ready. The stars became visible and shone out as only desert stars do, perfectly bright and clear. The white sands almost looked like snow, bringing a brightness to the desert and enough light to see fairly clearly. It almost felt cold enough that it could have snowed after a little while and we were all very glad for the fire the guides made. There were a dozen or so tourist groups camping in the same area and we could see their fires in different places across the sand. At one point, some of the Egyptians from another camp came to ours, bringing their instruments, and we had a kind of dance party for a while. One of the guides even put together a ghetto-rigged shisha and passed it around for anyone who wished to take some.
The next morning, we woke early and spent the first couple of hours in further exploration of this wild and striking landscape, seeing some of the most famous limestone features of the desert. We saw wild camel tracks in the sand at one point and it was neat to think there are still places where camels roam undomesticated. Finally, it was time to leave, heading back to the village for a brief lunch before being put on the very long bus ride back to Cairo.
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The Traveling Acrobats 