This past weekend a group of thirteen of us went camping in the White Desert, a hundred kilometers or so southwest of the Bahariyya Oasis. We picked up bus tickets a couple days before hand and boarded the 7am bus to make the five hour trip from Cairo to Bahariyya. The bus ride itself was quite a trip. Before we got out of Cairo we made a few stops within the city after leaving the major bus terminal. The terminal is by far the nicest public fascility I have seen in Cairo. It was clean, efficient, and easy to find help. We drove southwest through the city and had to go through Giza before getting out of the city and into the major highway that would take us through the empty desert to the oasis. In Giza we made a stop to pick up some more passengers. We also picked up a few salesmen. A guy got on to sell bread to people, which made sense since it was the so early in the morning. The stranger thing was when the guy hawking wathces got on the bus. I had to try hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. I've also come to expect this simbiotic relationship between those who have custody of large groups and those wishing to sell to a captive audience. I'm sure the driver got a kickback to let the hawkers onboard for the duration of the stop.
Once we got into the desert, it was smooth sailing. Every now and then we would stop and a seemingly islolated concrete bench and pick up more passengers, which left me wondering how these guys got out there in the first place. We stopped at a run-down rest area half way through the trip, which had such modern ammenities as squat toilets and Nescafe.
Bahariyya is not much of a town. The building are pretty simplistic and pragmatically built, and we pssed many rusted out pickups and 4x4s as we drove through town. We hopped off at the bus stop and met up with Badry, the man behind Badry's Desert Tours. He was the man. The thirteen of us were packed into three Toyota 4x4s while he and the other drivers dealt with the Egyptian tourist police. We were instructed to pretend to not have our passports if we had them, since being American would require the accompaniment of a tourist police officer for the duration of our trip. Thankfully no one asked for our identification, but we all practiced the accents of various English settlements just in case. I even practiced speaking Arabic in an Aussie accent.
The drive to the White Desert itself was almost worth the trip. The road leading there winds through uninhabited desert, slowly transitioning from hard, sandy, brown terrain to the mountains and plains of the Black Desert. After maybe thirty minutes of driving we stopped for lunch at a cafe apparently run by Badry or having business relationship with Badry. The meal was included in the price for the weekend and was not remarkable. It consisted of water, bread, tuna and veggie dip, yogurt and veggie dip, oranges and bananas, and our choice of Nescafe or tea. What was remarkable was the setting. We sat Indian-style on mats on the ground at low tables under a thatched roof pavillion.
Bahariyya is not much of a town. The building are pretty simplistic and pragmatically built, and we pssed many rusted out pickups and 4x4s as we drove through town. We hopped off at the bus stop and met up with Badry, the man behind Badry's Desert Tours. He was the man. The thirteen of us were packed into three Toyota 4x4s while he and the other drivers dealt with the Egyptian tourist police. We were instructed to pretend to not have our passports if we had them, since being American would require the accompaniment of a tourist police officer for the duration of our trip. Thankfully no one asked for our identification, but we all practiced the accents of various English settlements just in case. I even practiced speaking Arabic in an Aussie accent.
The drive to the White Desert itself was almost worth the trip. The road leading there winds through uninhabited desert, slowly transitioning from hard, sandy, brown terrain to the mountains and plains of the Black Desert. After maybe thirty minutes of driving we stopped for lunch at a cafe apparently run by Badry or having business relationship with Badry. The meal was included in the price for the weekend and was not remarkable. It consisted of water, bread, tuna and veggie dip, yogurt and veggie dip, oranges and bananas, and our choice of Nescafe or tea. What was remarkable was the setting. We sat Indian-style on mats on the ground at low tables under a thatched roof pavillion.
After lunch we continued the drive through the desert. After another 20 minutes or so we arrived at a desert overlook peering over desert more similar to what one would think of when picturing the Sahara. Borderd by rocky brown hills was a valley filled with large dunes of sand. A numer of us made sand angels, and, being young tourists, we climbed the nearest, steepest hill and got an even grander view. I'm sure we stayed much longer than Badry had planned, since he mumble something about having to make it somehwere before sunset as we all packed back into our Toyotas.
We traveled down the desert road a short while longer after this before suddenly breaking off from the road and taking a shortcut. Off-roading through the desert was awesome, and I was reminded of driving through snow as we fishtailed through the deep, loose sand. After winding through the desert a while we made it to a large sand dune bordered by two chalky white rock hills. Our driver gunned the Toyota and frantically shifted gears as we tried to climb the dune. Two of the trucks had made it up the hill already, and we stopped a couple feet short before the Toyota bogged down in the sand adn we had to back it up to try and make another run. We and the other two Toyotas parked so that some air could be let out of the tires, presumably to get better purchase in the deep sand. In the end none of us made it up the hill besides the two that were there originally. Everyone in my 4x4 had a good laugh as we came up just short on our fourth pass at the dune.
Since we could not make it up and over, we took a differnt route down and around the hills and finally made it to our second desination: a beautiful overlook at canyon of white rocky hills and mesas and a valley of sand. The sky was blue, there were wisps of clouds, and the daylight was just beginning to turn to dusk, lending a unique light to the white and brown of the valley.
We got back on the road and made it to the White Desert just as the sun was beginning to set. It was all offroad as soon we passed through the checkpoint to enter the reserve. We were racing the sun as we attempted to make it to our campsite before it went down. The views out the side of the 4x4 were spectacular, but they were nothing compared to what we were about to see. We finally made to our campsite just as the sun was only an inch or two above the horizion. When we hopped out of our vehicles we were greeted by indescribable reds, oranges, and then purples painted on the uneven canvases of cirrus clouds as the sun finally sank beneath the horizon. Once the sun set, the sky was filled with pastel purples, giving the unbalanced white rocky outcrops of the otherwise flat and sandy White Desert pinkish tints.
The 4x4s were rounded up in a half rectangle shaped like an unused staple and tapestries were draped along the interior walls of the enclosure to create a dining area. We at again at low tables sitting on pads on the ground beneath electric lights hooked up to the batteries of the car engines. Dinner was amazing. I don't know if it was because lunch was so dull and I was starving, but grilled chicken, rice, and stewed vegetables never tasted so good. After dinner we sat around the campfire for a while before walking a distance away from camp to take in the sites that can only be seen at night in a place so secluded from civilization. Everyone knows that we live in the Milky Way, but knowing this is nothing until you have acutally seen it. Every inch of sky was filled with stars, and running on an approximately north-south line across the night sky as an even thicker band of stars otherwise known as the Mikly Way galaxy. Constellations like Orion, so easy to spot in the suburbs because these stars are the only that can be seen, were difficult to find out first becuase the gaps between his head, belt, and sword were filled stars barely fainter than the ones that made up the constellation itself.
After stargazing for a while we returned to camp to drink tea, Nescafe, and listen to Badry and his crew play music on hand drums and a trumpet like instrument that sounds similar to a bagpipe. This may or may not have resulted in some dancing on the part of Mark and I. As the night wore on, we picked a spot on the desert floor away from the camp to put down our sleeping bags and camel fur blankets. We wished to be woken by the sunrise and tried to pick our spot based accordingly. Mark knew from Astronomy class that Orion follows the same path as the sun, so we extrapulated his trail until it led us to an unobstructed view, between two white rock hills. The night was cold and we kept this in mind as we debated sleeping arrangements for a while. We finally fell asleep beneath the brilliant night sky, listening the tinny sound of Jack Johnson, Enya, and John Mayer coming from the portable speakers of someone's iPod.
The morning was cloudy so we did not see the sun break the horizon, but the haziness did allow us to look directly at it was it edged its way higher into the sky. We stayed in bed until the sun warmed up enough to make getting up bearable. We then made our way to breakfast at the campsite, which consited of toasted bread, jam, cheese, and fruit. We had time to wander around and climb rocks for a while and generally contemplate the secenery while Badry and the other guides packed up camp and tried to get the vehicles started. They had left the lights plugged in most of the night, so gettin all of the 4x4s started was quite a puzzle. I'm pretty sure at least three of them had to be jumped.
We blew out of the White Desert and stopped at a couple of notable natural formations, the most notable of which was large, steep mountain looking out over Black Desert. We climbed to the top and were greeted with a gorgeous view of valley of yellow and black sand bordered by black mountains. The wind on top was incredible, some of the strongest winds I've every experienced. This was our last stop in the desert before Bahariyya; or at least it was our last intentional stop. On the way back our driver would randomly pound the dashboard above the fuel gauge. Somewhere between this overlook and Badry's thatched-roof hotel complex our 4x4 began to slow, then it cruised and slowly came to a gentle stop. We were completley out of gas, and to make matter worse, we had no cell phone service. But none of us were worried. The whole car simply burst out in laughter when the car finally rolled to a stop. We hopped out sat on the roof of the 4x4 while we waited for help. Our driver eventually found cell phone servcie and contacted Badry. They had a good laugh and we soon found out why: another car behind us was broken down and was being towed by a second 4x4. They had already broken the tow rope 3 times before they reached us. We were all loaded into the two-truck train and were about to take off before a fourth 4x4 came flying down the road towards us carrying gas in plastic tanks. Our original Toyota was filled up and we finally took off again.
We arrived at Badry's "hotel" around 2pm, and had a decent lunch of beef, rice, and vegetables. Then we were carted back to the Bahariyya bus station and boarded the bust back to Cairo. The return bus ride was not the best, to say the least, but the weekend as a whole had been incredible. It was one of the best experiences I have ever had, period.
Additonal Photos:
2 comments:
Your pictures are amazing! Please post links so others can see them.
Hi Paul,
The pinkish-purple sunset is breathtaking! Thanks for a great trip. I may or may not have danced, too.
Sandy Shaw
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