Land of the Pharaohs - Day 6: The White Desert to El Kharga

Day 6 – White Desert, Farafra Oasis, Dakhla Oasis and Kharga Oasis

Today's route. It's a long drive.

06:30 Gouda’s alarm breaks the silence and I get up. Dawn has just broke. I grab my camera and head off to get some pics before sunrise. It is a hazy, overcast morning. Not at all what I expected.

Our camp

 Jackal was here. His tracks are lying over mine of last night.

 
As I wander off into the chalk-field, I start to discern the geology in the growing light. The chalk mounds are slowly being eroded by the sand, which lies on top of solid, purple-blue rock.

Bedrock

Thousands of years of erosion produced this.

King of my hill.

The view to the other side.

The girls go for their last ablutions in the desert loo. I spot them in the distance wandering around trying to find some privacy in order to do a quick wash without an audience.

The throne room

7:30 Breakfast is served. Spicy beans and bread, prepared on the coals. With mint tea, of course. After breakfast the ‘washing up’ is done by scouring everything with sand and then giving it a quick rinse.

08:35 We say goodbye to our hosts who are having tea around the campfire before they pack up the camp and we head south to Farafra Oasis. Out of the mushroom forest the character changes again. The desert is now a fine, pale yellow, sandy desolation from horizon to horizon.

Over a slight hill and we see Farafra Oasis lying in front of us like a green jewel. As we get closer we see open water: Irrigation dams. Things are happening in this town. Lots of construction. A distinctly more upbeat atmosphere than Bawiti.

09:00 We stop to fill up with petrol and a get to see one of the renowned long range safari groups doing the same. Three Land Cruisers and one land Rover filling their tanks and auxiliary tanks. The advance party would have gone ahead already. From here they go eastwards into the Great Sand Sea for a few days, then back again. That is one of the most forbidding places on earth. Not even the Bedouin will live there. Camel caravans frequently get lost, never to be seen again.

Cambyses, emperor of Persia, sent an army of 50 000 men from Luxor to attack Siwa oasis. Their route took them through the Great Sand Sea. We know that they passed Kharga oasis, but they did not arrive at Siwa. To this day, no trace of them has ever been found. Or maybe it has?

The Great Sand Sea stretches for 1,000 km east to west and 1,100 km north to south. Most sand dunes there are about 100m high, but some have been measured at over 500m high. There is no water. None. In earlier times it took 40 days by camel to cross the desert from Darfur in the Sudan to El Kharga on the edge of the Great Sand Sea. During those 40 days, three quarters of the slaves and three quarters of the camels would die.

Our route will take us along the edge of the Great Sand Sea to El Kharga and eventually back to the Nile.
Gouda goes off to make some photocopies of our documents and to find some batteries for one of our cameras. Around this time he realises that he left his shoes at the campsite. No hope of going back – we have a lot of driving in the other direction to do today. He is not happy.

Before we hit the road, we stop at studio and gallery of a local artist, Badr Abd El Moghny. He uses natural materials, mostly rocks, stones and sand from the surrounding area. From this he produces the most stunning sculptures and sand paintings. Not only that; the whole studio is a work of art, with murals that he painted and pots that he made.

One of the rooms in the studio.

It is the desert, after all.

Here I find a headscarf for a reasonable price. I buy it and go Arafat. Mom and Eli find some headscarves, a tablecloth and some camelhair fabric to buy. Another box ticked – bought some fabric and trinkets to take home.

10:30 On the road. Every now and then, we see newly built settlements. Several houses together with irrigated fields around. They are owned by retired soldiers, given 5 hectares upon discharge.

The desert alternates between white chalk, black iron and yellow sand, but fewer and fewer hills the further we go. When we reach Abu Munkar the land is a flat expanse of sand, the sun is high and the horizon disappears in a mirage.

The edge of the White Desert

As we approach Dakhla oasis, our first stop is Deir el Hagar Temple. It is a temple built in Roman times, venerating the Roman emperors as the rulers of Egypt.

The temple is reasonably well preserved, but I did not understand the context of the temple. Egypt became a Roman province in 30BC, after Augustus defeated Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra VII. I would have liked to spend more time here. 

A mural depicting emperor Titus making an offering to the gods.

 

 The same scene, but with some colour remaining.

The surrounding mountains had tombs for nobles cut into them.

This used to be a major source of grain to the Roman empire. My early ancestors probably ate the bread that was made from the grain that grew here. 

After spending some time looking at the farms of Dakhla (due to a confidentiality agreement, I am unable to comment), we take the road further into town. Even from the road it is clear that it is still very fertile. Everywhere you look, you see field upon irrigated field, tended by people folded double and donkeys watching the world go by. There is clearly also a lot of new development going on here. The whole atmosphere is buzzing; this town is moving! We see polytunnels and even an irrigation dam. In the desert!

Our guidebooks mention that the old town of Dakhla is worth seeing. From the road, we can see an ancient fort, but we don't have much time to stop. This is one of those terrible times on tour when time only allows you to choose one option. I make the decision, and I choose to press on to Kharga oasis. On the way to Kharga oasis we will get to see the sun set over the Great Sand Sea, and from Kharga it is only half a day to Luxor. If we stay here longer, we lose out on Luxor. 

I can see that Gouda wanted us to have a look at Dakhla. Next time.

On the southern outskirts of Dakhla we stop at a resort complex for a loo break and a look around. We could potentially stay here for the night. It looks good, and we could go back to El Qasr. They make me choose again, but I stick to my original plan.

Back in the bus and we head southwest to Kharga oasis. It’s a three hour trip. The desert becomes monotonous. 

Not much to see here.

I fall asleep, only to be woken up at each police checkpoint. The guards are close to their relief date, but they have run out of water and cigarettes and ask Gouda and Talat to help them out. They even ask us for two day old newspapers! It’s newer than the ones they have. At least we get through the checkpoints with minimal hassle.

Eli finally loses it...

 

... and decide to make a 'sand angel'

We continue on, but we are nowhere near the Great Sand Sea to watch the sunset! That will have to wait for next time too.

Sunset through the date palms.

 
We are all feeling rough. Not enough sleep, a day’ s worth or jarring in the bus, the heat, the lack of loos and the monotony takes its toll. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just hard work and we need to get through it.

I wake up in the outskirts of Kharga oasis, about 8 o’clock. Police checkpoint in the dark. Continue. Then a mass of police cars, lights and shouting. Apparently we are not going where they thought we were going. More shouting. We stop at a hotel, our destination, while Gouda clears things with the police. No problems in the end. I must say though, that I saw what I think was an officer. Dressed in a cream coloured uniform. He looked at us like a cat looks at a mouse. Dead eyes. Very, very disconcerting.

After some negotiation, we got some rooms with working showers and working toilets. Bliss! They are on the first floor, which means that mom needs to get up two flights of steep stairs. The rooms could do with a clean, and have never seen a vacuum cleaner, but we are beyond caring. Gouda goes off to find us dinner and a beer for me. He comes back. No beer! No worries, Coca Cola will do fine. Dinner is basic, but OK. Not a patch on the Bedouin fare, though.

After dinner I get into the shower. It has barely started, or it dies down to a trickle and then nothing. My somewhat fragile nerves are exercised by this. Down at the reception desk, the receptionist explains to my dripping self that the town’s water is cut off every night at 10:30. Not to worry, the hotel has a tank on the roof, he says, which should provide all the guests with water until the town’s water comes back on.

Riiight.

Back in the room, it’s 10:30, the shower tap is turned open all the way and I watch the slow drip like a half-wet hawk awaiting Chinese water torture. This is an ideal time to practise swearing: Single words, multiple words, concatenations, speculations upon ancestry, equations with bodily functions, comparisons with camels, likenesses to organs, etc. I could stay up all night.

Then, with a rattle and sputter, the shower comes to life. I conclude my diatribe and watch it for ten seconds. Close tap. Open tap: Water. Yep, it’s a shower.
I turn it off and retract some of the things I said earlier. I wait five minutes. Turn it on again. This time, the water is warm too.

Glory!

Land of the Pharaohs - Day 5: Bahariya to the White Desert

Day 5:

From Bahariya to the White Desert

07:00 ish. The curtains work well, so I pretend it’s still dark and lie in for a while.
Everybody's had a good night sleep, except for my mother.

Breakfast is served in a palm tree and mud hut, with mat covered seats built into the wall.  We are expecting backpacker style fare, but Egyptian, bread, jam, cheese and omelettes, along with Egyptian tea as ordered arrive freshly made from a hidden away kitchen.

Breakfast is served!

Eli gives the bus a once over to get rid of the desert sand, and we're off. Our first stop for the day is some recently discovered tombs cut into the red hill.  A football field size area is camped off and has several holes dug into the earth. Most are only a few metres deep, but two of them go down for ten meters or more. Steep steps lead down to a low entrance which opens into a rectangular area with brightly decorated walls showing scenes of Egyptian mythology. From the central area, several burial chambers are visible through holes cut into the walls. It’s a squeeze, but we get into the best looking ones.  The guard allows me to take a few pictures for a small unofficial fee.

It's down there!

The walls are covered with painted plaster. The colours are still as vivid as if it was painted yesterday. No conservation work has been done here, other than to remove the accumulated dust of the ages, and the mummies that were buried here. These were tombs for nobles and high officials. Evidently, mummification was a service available to the rich or influential.

Anubis and Horus carying feathers

Eli emerging from a side chamber.

The work inside is not of the same craftsmanship that we saw at the Egyptian museum, but it is amazing to see the funerary paintings in their original setting.  The sands of the desert have hidden it for 3500 years. Today we can see it almost as it was back then.

As we leave the compound, we are waylaid by some very young date sellers. We make a substantial contribution to the economy of Bahariya, and in return receive a bag of dry-ish nutty dates and another bag of juicier, sweet dates.  The dates are excellent, and I don’t even like dates.  They turned out to be a hit on the long road-trips.

The date-mafia of Bahariya. Don't mess with shorty!

From here we drive to a museum built to house some the ‘Golden Mummies’ found in the region recently. The original Golden Mummies were found by a farmer that saw a half-burnt mummy sticking out of the ground after burning some crop residues. The authorities were informed, eventually, and an excavation effort got underway. From that point on, things get a bit murky. The ‘official’ details of the find do not quite match up to what the locals say; dozens or maybe hundreds of mummies are unaccounted for, probably sold. The finds were hyped up by the authorities to give the impression of something rivalling the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. In reality, they found a graveyard. It was filled with thousands of people’s mummified remains in various states of preservation. The people were mostly well to do, because they could afford mummification, but we are not talking about king Tut here.

The museum where 12 of the best preserved mummies are housed is an ugly, squat building set on a bare patch of land. It is newly built but looks derelict already. The inside is dirty and dusty. Dozens of people with no clear purpose seem to hang around. In a dark room at the back, the mummies are housed, each in its own cabinet with temperature and humidity control and no lighting to speak of. The mummies are wrapped in many, many meters of linen and then covered with plaster. The plaster was then painted, mostly a gold base covered with Greek-style painted faces.

The mummies are not completely preserved. Apparently the mummification process was not of the highest standard and over time some of the plaster and lined have also disintegrated. This allows us to see the linen wrapping, which looks like criss-crossing bandages. Here and there, the linen has come off and you can see the body of the mummy, mostly patches of skin or black hair.

It is very interesting but I am sad and disgusted that more has not been done here. It deserves better.

As we drive back to Rabir’s, we get another look a Bawiti. The houses are a curious mix of disrepair, disuse, new-build, newly-fixed and not-broken-yet. Mud bricks are used extensively, since it never rains. In addition, they use limestone bricks. TheLimestone is cut into brick size blocks which are a brilliant white and we see them everywhere. They are cool, light and cheap - ideal for the desert.  The limestone walls are rendered with a mud plaster (when the builder can be bothered to get round to doing it).

Many of the people here are small-scale farmers. They may cultivate a grove of date palms or banana trees, some fields of alfalfa, some vegetables and some goats or cattle. All of these are watered by myriads of irrigation ditches. Donkeys do most of the pulling and carrying. Enclosures are built from whatever a donkey will not eat. Out here, that turns out to be dried palm leaves and mud bricks.

An irrigation ditch leading past an enclosure into a palm grove.

The shops which were still open late last night when we went left Rabir, are now still closed in the late morning.

We arrive back at Rabir’s place, but there is no sign of anybody. Oh, well. Between Gouda and Talat they get a brew going and we have some tea while we wait for the rest of the convoy to arrive.

Eventually the Land Cruiser arrives. It is loaded up with all the supplies needed for desert camping, Bedouin style. We gawp as the packing gets underway and more and more items get loaded onto the roof of the Land Cruiser.  A stack of firewood tied to the roof of the Land Cruiser signifies packing is complete, and we're off. Yalla, yalla!

Talat watching  Islam tying the firewood; Hussein doing some last minute checks and Rabir harvesting salad.

Its 12 pm, and the shops are now open. We stop on the way out to replenish supplies. Cigarettes for Gouda and Talat.  Gouda buys Egyptian style baklava which we manage to polish off in no time.

As we leave Bawiti and the surrounding towns behind, the desert becomes blacker and blacker. Outside the oases, nothing grows. It is a forbidding, black expanse as far as the eye can see. Conical black mountains in the distance gives it an almost surreal air. The road takes us close by one such mountain and we get out for a climb and a look.

The guys think we are crazy as they hang around in the shade of the Land Cruiser, waiting for us. The view is amazing. It looks like an alien landscape straight out of a movie.  Down below, Mom and Gouda explore the lower slopes, and find the most beautifully coloured sandstone rock, stones and sand.

The view from the top.

Coloured sandstone at the foot of the hill.

The Black Desert starts to change and show more sand, less iron. We drive through alternating areas of black iron-strewn desert, and yellow sandy hills. Every now and then we see evidence of the harshness of the desert: Many ruined farms, or about to be ruined farms, line the highway. Drawn by the promise of cheap land, abundant oasis water and a new start, many people come here to try an extract a living from the desert. Unfortunately, many of the wells are unpredictable and the water level in the borehole can drop by 50 meters in ten years. There is a very good reason why the Bedouin do not farm in the desert: They know where the water is dependable.

We stop for lunch at a palm tree and mud built roadhouse near Farafra Oasis. It is a few kilometres off the main road, next to a well. Water is pumped out of the well and then runs through the eating area, giving it a lovely cool and calming atmosphere. Lunch is Bedouin fare: Several dishes of salads, dips and delicious bread. Yum, Yum.

Inside the roadhouse

After lunch, I attempt to buy a Bedouin headscarf, but the price is too dear, and the guys agree with me. Gouda has a talk to the trader as well, but he does not budge. He says another tour bus will be along in a minute. I make a final offer, but no deal. As I emerge from the shop without the headscarf, there is all-round approval from the guys.

As we drive on, we start to see patches of white chalk sticking out through the yellow sand and black iron. This is where the Black Desert ends and the White Desert starts. While the black iron was produced by ancient volcanoes, the White Desert is the remains of ancient sea beds. The land becomes flatter and flatter too. Sometimes featureless, except for patches of yellow and white from horizon to horizon. Nothing grows here – there is no vegetation whatsoever.

Some crazy people cyclists we met along the way.

We stop at Crystal Mountain, which sounds more impressive than it is. It is a natural rock arch on a bed of quartz crystals. Unfortunately it has been badly damaged by collectors and tourists in the past. The area is now cordoned off, but I suspect that once the lone official leaves his post, people go back to their old habits. There is a lot to explore here, but we are a bit behind schedule so we don’t dawdle. We walk back to the vehicle collecting pieces of quartz crystal as we go – priceless mementoes to remind us of the secrets of the Sahara.

As we drive further into the White Desert, weird chalk mounds start to appear. They have been carved into fantastical shapes by centuries of wind. They remind me of white dragons in a forest of mushrooms! This is where we camp tonight: Under the stars in the Sahara, surrounded by the surreal shapes of the White Desert.

We swap vehicles and set off deeper into the desert in the Land Cruiser, while Rabir and Talat stay behind to set up camp. In the gathering dusk the towering white shapes become stranger and stranger. We stop to watch as the last pink and purple light of the day fades from between the chalk sculptures.

Back at the camp, the fire is going and our tents are set up, but we have a more immediate problem: There are no ablution facilities, just the open desert. To fix this, we find a convenient outcrop and I build a throne behind it with a few large, sturdy stones. Eli and Mom are most satisfied. From here, royal edicts can be issued and covered up with sand. What a wonderful place to do the daily meditation.

With the Land Cruiser back, the Bedouin "tent" can be built.  Canvas panels are attached to poles to form an L-shaped windbreak against the elements. This is where the low dining table is set out, with cushions and mattresses around to sit on.  Another woven mat on the ground close by is the "kitchen".  All the food preparation is done whilst sitting on the ground on the "kitchen floor".

Sleeping arrangements pose a problem. We had thought to build a high enough bed out of cushions, but it is still too low. Mom will not be able to get down or up. After some head-scratching, we realise that the best sleeping place for her would be in the bus. This is a genius plan. She can get in and out and she even has a reading light!

Around the fire the men are preparing dinner over the coals. I join the men and watch: Rice is first fried until light brown then some more rice is added and fried. Stock and herbs are added and the rice is simmered. On another section of coals, pieces of chicken are barbequed. Salads are prepared and garnished with fresh herbs. All of this is served with Egyptian bread.

So here we are: In the Western Desert, eating deliciously barbequed chicken, Bedouin rice, fresh salad and bread. It could be worse.

The teapot goes back onto the coals whilst dinner is served for some shai bi na-na to wash down the chicken.
After dinner the fire is stoked up again and the men take position around it. Except for Talat – Egypt are playing Algeria in the Africa Cup of Nations, so he spends half the time listening to the bus’s radio to hear the football commentary.

The tea flows and the cigarettes are passed around. There is not a breath of wind, the stars are so bright I can almost touch them. I have never seen Orion like this. The palpable silence of the desert is only broken by the intermittent crackle of the fire and the words of a language that have been spoken in the desert for thousands of years.

Post-dinner contentment.

After a while Hussein starts singing. We have no instruments other than our hands. We clap the rhythms and sing the choruses. After a while, two complete strangers appear out of the night, exchange greetings and cigarettes, sit down and join in the singing. I find out later that they were camping with another group when they heard Hussein’s singing and decided to come and join us.

Mom decides to retire for the night and we soon follow. I lie in the tent listening to the men singing and thinking how fortunate I am.