Nothing Is Real
One of my favourite Middle Eastern CD's; listen to the sound clips and you'll agree.
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Travel notes from Cairo
Hi Everyone
It has been just over four years since I was last in Egypt and it was great to be back in Cairo again amid the chaos and hustle and bustle. The main purpose of this two-week trip was to spend time relaxing out in the Libyan Desert, visiting the Western Oases and exploring the vast deserts in between. I spent a day in Cairo, mainly visiting my favourite restaurants and cafes and enjoying some good Middle Eastern food before taking a bus on Monday to Siwa Oasis. Siwa is close to the Libyan border and the bus ride took 13 hours from Cairo, changing busses at Marsa Martuh.
I arrived late in the evening to find this normally quiet, peaceful oasis in a state of chaos as the 2003 Paris - Dakar rally was passing through. This year's race took the competitors from Marseilles to Sharm El Sheikh, via Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. It just happened that we all arrived at this oasis at the same time. Accommodation was in short supply because, as well as all the competitors, there were also 200 police in town. I managed to find a place in a large tent in the garden of the Palm Trees Hotel. Siwa is described as one of the most picturesque and idyllic places in the country. The remains of the Shali fortress, a mud brick structure built on a small hill, dominate the centre of the town. Approximately 300,000 palm trees and 70,000 olive trees surround the town. Beyond this carpet of green to the south is the Great Sand Sea and to the north a rocky desert stretching all the way to the Mediterranean coast.
The idea for this trip was to explore some of the desert on the back of a camel; unfortunately there are no camels at Siwa, so I quickly had to rearrange my plans. The people of Siwa are Berbers but it is the Bedouin who use camels. Once the rally had passed through and life in this oasis returned to normal I spent a few relaxing days exploring the area. I rented a bicycle to cycle through the palms to visit some of the ancient ruins and natural springs surrounding Siwa. Together with a few other travellers we hired a 4WD to go out into the dunes of the Great Sand Sea and also to visit a natural hot spring in the desert.
After a few days I decided, together with another traveller, Richard, staying at the Palm Trees Hotel, to hire a 4WD and driver to take us across the desert to the oases of Bahariyya and Farafra. To make the journey affordable we needed to get a group of at least five people together. By lunch time the next day we had our five people, Christian from France and two girls from Korea, Sook and Sun. The desert is regarded as frontier territory by the Egyptian government and involved a lot of red tape in getting permission to cross. We needed permits from the police, the military, immigration and the ministry of tourism. This all took time and it wasn't until Friday afternoon that we left.
The trip didn't start well; we blew two tyres on our Landcruiser after only travelling 50km out of Siwa. We stopped to make a makeshift camp for dinner in the sand dunes while our driver, Omar returned to pick up some new wheels. A couple of hours later he returned, it was now dark but the light from the full moon illuminated the desert in a silvery glow. After eating we continued driving through the night to El Arag, a small-uninhabited oasis. The scenery here was breathtaking even by the light of the moon. We camped below some cliffs where some ancient tombs were carved into the rock. I began exploring with my torch and soon found that some of the tombs were still occupied, by mummies. Human bones and cloth were scattered around inside the tombs and around the base of the cliffs. This location was absolutely stunning; we were about 175km from the nearest human settlement. This isolation, space and peace is why I had come all this way to the desert.
We slept on a blanket under the stars that night; it was cold. The sunrise in the morning was beautiful, casting a warm light across the golden sand and white cliffs. We continued on our way to Bahariyya stopping at Bahrain, a lake that suddenly appears out in the middle of the desert. I'm surprised at how much water there is out in the desert; oases, lakes and springs appear when you least expect them. The most unusual spring was at Sitra, a large barren depression with an industrial size pipe rising straight out of the ground. Turning a couple of wheels brought forth a huge gush of water as gallons of water spilled out onto the desert floor.
The road to Bahariyya is in a very bad state, many years ago it was tarred. We stopped for dinner at one of Omar's Bedouin friends in Bahariyya before continuing to El Alkabat where we camped for the night, again sleeping on the sandy desert floor. From here we drove off road further out into the desert stopping at Magic Spring, a tiny oasis where a natural spring sends a trickle of fresh water to the ground. From here we drove into the White Desert, a lunar landscape of wind-carved chalk rocks. The whole landscape looked tortured. We camped our final night in the Western White Desert and I enjoyed my last night of absolute silence and peace before we returned to civilisation the next day. Civilisation took the form of Farafra Oasis, the smallest of the western oasis with a population of 3000.
I intended to spend a couple of nights here relaxing before returning to Cairo, but the government minister for the New Valley was paying a visit to the oasis with his entourage and had booked up all the hotels room. We were left with no option but to leave town. The two Korean girls travelled on to Luxor the afternoon we arrived. The next day Richard and Christian took a service taxi to the next oasis, Dakhla and I took the bus back to Cairo.
This trip has gone between extremes, from the peace of the desert where we were hundreds of kilometres from the nearest human settlement, to Cairo with the noise and chaos of millions of people living together in one place. I love both places; I needed time to connect with nature in the desert, now I'm going to enjoy my last couple of days in the city.
Safe travelling everyone, wherever the road may take you.
Geoff.
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