Blogs from Siwa Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt, Africa

Strano l'Egitto: piu' di 100 milioni di abitanti si concentrano in solamente il 5% del paese a loro disposizione, prevalentemente lungo il corso del Nilo ed in minor misura lungo la costa mediterranea, ammassandosi in citta' sempre piu' sovraffollate ed inquinate; poca colpa ne hanno perche' tutto il resto e'.... deserto! Decido allora di lasciarmi alle spalle la cosiddetta "civilta'" e di allontanarmi dai grandi centri abitati per andare a scoprire quello che gli egiziani chiamano Deserto Occidentale e che noi conosciamo piu' semplicemente con il nome di Sahara. La mia attenzione si concentra su Siwa, l'oasi per eccellenza, quella piu' lontana da tutto e che ha mantenuto piu' intatte le sue peculiarita' di isola sperduta in mezzo al nulla. Oggi si raggiunge facilmente con l'autobus in cinque ore partendo dalla costa, lungo una piu' che ... read more

So here we are, underway once again. We've been in Egypt a week so far and it has been great, absolutely manic in Cairo with late night, bright lit commercialism gone mad but friendly people and a chaos that just seems to work. We used the tram, bus and metro to go to all corners of the city and see thousand year old mosques, hundreds of cafes and the odd McDonalds and KFC (nothing purchased, promise). We then headed by train to Alexandria which was less congested but no less full of shopping madness, the sea cleared the air and cooled things down which was nice relief from the petrol headaches we've had. We also had more than our share of loooooooong tea stops in waterfront cafes. The bus then took us the 9 hours west ... read more

I spent the morning debating whether to go back to Cairo that night and once I deceided I would, I packed my bag and checked out of the Palm Trees Hotel. I got some lunch and then went back for the desert safari. It turned out there was 9 of us doing the desert safari, but I was the only one not camping out in the desert. At first there was just one jeep, whihc looked in reasonable condition. This battered old Toyota then pulled in and was to be our second jeep. It didn't look like it would make it to the desert, never mind drive through it. Of course, this was the jeep I ended up in. As great as Wadi Rum in Jordan was, this was proper desert. Sand dune mountains roling on ... read more

GAP Adventures offers both one week and two week tours of Egypt. The former seemed a bit short to me, and the latter seemed a bit long. In hindsight, I still feel the same way. The second week of our tour definitely did not have the consistent “wow” factor of the first. Most of it was just OK (Alexandria, for example), and we had to spend a lot of time on the road. There’s no way around it, though. If you want to see the White Desert (and believe me, you do), you have to spend some time out there. As much as I’d like to have the verbal dexterity to describe the experience of sunset and sunrise in the White Desert or, even more, the experience of waking up there in the middle of the ... read more

Day two in Siwa, and I join Mike and two others (Neil, yet another person doing Cairo to Cape Town, and Selina, a German living in Dublin) for an overnight tour into the Western Desert - which will include sandboarding, visits to hot and cold springs, and then sunset and a night under the stars. I get lucky and ride shotgun in the Land Cruiser, and we bounce out of the town, down a dusty track, past swaying palm trees, towards the Great Sand Sea. I thought I'd lost my heart to Siwa the night before, but it was during that first trip into the desert that I became truly besotted - with travelling, with Siwa, and most importantly, with the desert. There really is nothing like it. As we sped through the dunes, up and ... read more