THE EGYPTIAN WESTERN DESERT OASIS LOOP

It is possible to get from Cairo (or Alexandria) to Luxor to view the great temples of antiquity via the back door – by taking a western loop through a string of oasis stopovers and Bedouin pit stops dotting the White and Black Deserts of mid-Egypt.  I had wanted to complete this loop in one direction, but found out trains at the southern end headed for Luxor were not operating at the time of my visit.  And exiting the desert overland to the east required a specially outfitted 4WD vehicle that simply was not worth the expense.

So I opted for a single visit to the Bahariya Oasis, that would allow visits to a number of local attractions, including the White and Black Desert.  The oasis is located about one third of Egypt’s length south of the famous WW II battlefield of El Alamein – where British troops under Major General Bernard Montgomery stopped the advance on Cairo (and the Suez Canal) of German Panzers under command of “The Desert Fox,” General Erwin Rommel.  This success and follow-on advance west through Libya in November of 1942 was the first Allied victory on land in Europe or North Africa.

The trip takes five and one-half hours by bus.  The desert is largely featureless, and provides an excellent opportunity to catch up on sleep.  Upon arrival Bahariya is hardly an oasis at all.  It is a dusty, flat commercial hub of 10,000 people with hardly any greenery – just a desert crossroads.  The type military commanders would want to know the name and location of, but hardly give it any second thought.

A transfer is made to a 4WD vehicle (yet another Land Rover).  I am introduced to my driver, Abdul, and guide Mohammed (which I subsequently learn is the most common male name on the planet).  We are joined by a Malaysian lad, adopting the westernized moniker (as most Asians do) of “Joe.” It is another 220 kilometers from there to our evening camp destination amidst the mushroom rock formations of the White Desert.  After 40 kilometers, we stop at the much smaller burgh of El-Hayz Village.

The first thing you notice about El-Hayz is gushing water.  An electric pump (diesel fueled power is only on three hours a day here) drives a torrent of water from 3000 feet below the oasis through irrigation troughs to a series of cisterns.  One of them is diverted through the center of our well-shaded sleeping hut.  I am dissatisfied with the amount of greenery; it does not really conform to what I had hoped to experience in an oasis.

Nevertheless this layover spot is one of the highlights of the western loop leg of Egypt.  A delicious meal is taken of tuna on Bedouin fry bread, beans, rice, tomato paste, and cucumbers.  This is accompanied by endless cups of Bedouin tea.  The opportunity to nap and escape the desert heat is especially enjoyable while propped in cool repose against Turkish cushions, with feet dangling in the cool flow of the irrigation trough which divides the hut.

We continue deeper into the desert.  There is very little visible animal life.  Or plant life, for that matter. Just plenty of what appears to be a thick pepper sprinkle, the residue of long-ago volcanic action which has coated the desert floor and lent its depiction to “The Black Desert.”  Along the way we are introduced to a number of geographic features with great fanfare and elocution.  Mohammed and Abdul go overboard to build anticipation for what it is to be shown us next.

First is The Crystal Mountain.  It is really a flat tableau of rocks with a glittery presentation.  Hardly a mountain at all.  Then English Mountain – an opportunity to ride polished sandboards (like skateboards, but sans wheels) down a sand dune.  Once again, hardly a mountain.  Then Wadi Aqabat – described as a “Very High Mountain.”

I made fun of our two hosts.  “You call that a mountain?” I impugned.  “We have manure piles at home higher than that.  Most of them are located just outside our congressional offices in Washington, DC.”  They grin.  They know I am toying with them, while serious at explaining this is a hillock, at best.

Near dusk we finally arrive in the White Desert.  The transformation is gradual at first.  The usual black surface coating becomes interspersed with hints of flecked white.  It gradually transforms to be a solidified surface of marbled salt sheets, interposed among glaring white limestone rocks.

Further and further into the desert, the white begins to dominate.  Soon all the ridgelines are chalk white, the ground track is crusty white, and the pale rock formations take on the fantasy shapes of cartoon characters and washed-out solidified play dough.  They are especially pleasing bathed in the creeping orange rays of the descending sun.

We make camp, in fact, 50 yards from a baffling rock sculpture so accurate it almost seems deliberately carved.  It represents what is clearly a hen, looking upward at a giant rounded boulder perched menacingly above its head.   Depending on one’s thoughts at the time, the caption could be survival mode: “To be or not to be.” Or, self preservation: “This is why the chicken crossed the road.”  Or pecking order (sorry about that): “Which came first, the chicken or …”

The Land Rover is parked in hard sand.  Abdul sets up an attached cloth/pole screen so we are protected from the wind.  Cushions are laid down along with a small table to form a makeshift dining area.  Both Mohammed and Abdul tend to the meal of barbecued chicken, rice, beans, tomato slices, chickpeas, fry bread, and of course … Bedouin tea.  This takes nearly two hours to prepare.  It affords Joe and me plenty of opportunity to walk about and take a variety of photos in the exquisite changing light of the setting sun.

Probably the most fun of this leg was during dinner.  Talking about the election.  Querying Mohammed and Abdul about the Muslim Brotherhood and how they are perceived in Egypt now.  [ The answer was: “Badly.” ]  Nobody has tried to defend them, even in part.  They are all Muslim.  But all are praying for normalcy and prosperity.

The next best part was playing cat and mouse with the Desert Foxes, who furtively approached the camp upon smelling our chicken.  For hours, they saunter in, run off, then play tag team as one boldly struts in full view while the other slithers in toward the campfire from behind.  We admire their pluck.  After shooing them away and throwing small pebbles all along, we finally throw chicken.  They snarfed it, bones and all.  They seemed to know we would cave eventually.

Our return trip the 220 kilometers to Bahariya and then six hour return leg to Cairo is unmarred by surprise or stimulation.  For five minutes, about twenty miles outside the oasis, I finally do get to see disjointed parts of what I had always imagined as an oasis.  Mud-brick homes, plenty of donkeys, a few camels, a lazy spinning windmill, the central community well, a lush florid canopy of date palms, and slowly running brook of water to give me the illusion I had gotten my money’s worth.  I did not.

Next go round, I will visit more than one oasis.  Perhaps further west in Siwa, with its salt lakes, shifting dunes, and olive groves.  Or Farafra, 200 kilometers to the south and considered the best jumping off place for the White Desert.  Or Dakhla  It features over 600 hot springs.  Twelve orchard surrounded hamlets.  Palm groves, and a medieval mudbrick citadel at Al-Qasr.

The second-longest driving day of this epic 5-month journey continues in Cairo with an all-night bus trip to Aswan.  That 13 hour leg was made the more tolerable by the iconic scenery passing before me.  This was Egypt finally just as I had imagined her.  Date trees bowed with amber colored fruit clusters … leaning trimmed-trunk palms … emerald green crop fields sloping down to the Nile … the river blue with its laziest of flows … papyrus cattail marshes … magenta bougainvillea blooms … crumbling stone and mud brick huts … reflective irrigation ditches … and minarets piercing the skyline, calling silently out to the faithful.

Next:  Aswan – A Flooded Temple Is Saved For The Ages