Western Desert Expedition (16 Days)
|
|
Destination |
Accommodation |
Program Itinerary |
|
|
Cairo |
Hotel in Cairo
|
On arrival at Cairo Airport, you
will be met by a Peregrine representative and transferred to
your hotel. This is simply an arrival day so you may arrive in
Cairo at any time. Note that hotel rooms are generally only
available after midday. The balance of the day is free to
explore your surroundings and our safari leader will make
contact in the evening. |
|
Day 2 |
Cairo
Bahariya |
Minamar Hotel |
After breakfast we meet our safari crew, load our gear and set
off towards Bahariya, the nearest of the Western Desert oasis
towns. Midway there is a rest stop and cafeteria, where we can
stretch our legs and enjoy a light refreshment before continuing
our journey. Eventually the road begins to drop through the
Bahariya escarpment and we enjoy a panoramic view as the entire
oasis comes into view. We reach the main town, an amalgam of two
villages, Bawiti & Qasr, where there are several places of
interest to explore. We visit the surreal art gallery of Mahmoud
Eid, housed in the Oasis Heritage Museum, with its superb
collection of paintings and clay sculptures depicting life in
the oasis. Nearby we visit the Temple of Muftillah and as the
sun slides towards the horizon we ascend Black, or 'English'
Mountain, with the ruins of a WWI lookout post on one corner of
the summit. Here we enjoy a spectacular sunset dinner over night
Minamar Hotel.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 dinner
|
|
Day 3 |
Bahariya
Dakhla |
Hotel in Dakhla
|
After a traditional breakfast of
local bread, salad, eggs and cheese we pack our gear and
continue our journey south. We soon leave the yellow sand and
black-topped hills behind and find ourselves in an entirely new
landscape, dotted with white chalk hummocks and inselbergs. Even
the sand itself seems white, a result of the perennial erosion
that has left fine limestone powder on the surface. Farafra,
like Bahariya, is an ancient settlement with a history that
recedes back to around 9000BC and we stop for a break before
continuing our journey south, to Dakhla, which we reach around
lunchtime. In the afternoon we visit El Qasr, an ancient
mud-brick town built on the site of a Roman city and believed to
be one of the oldest inhabited sites in the area. In the
mid-18th century, the town is estimated to have had a population
of some 4,000 people and today we can roam around the old
houses, many of which still have their carved door lintels
intact. We can also visit the excellent little Ethnographic
Museum. We spend the night in a basic hotel near the centre of
the modern town.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 dinner
|
|
Day 4 |
Dakhla-
Abu Hussein Dunes |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
We drive south along the Darb al-Tarfawi,
an ancient caravan route (now surfaced) which we follow for some
hours as we make our way towards the northern edge of the Abu
Hussein dunes, where we pitch our tents for the night.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 5 |
Abu Hussein-
Eight Bells |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
Heading due west we now enter the
heart of the Western Desert, traversing around 200kms of flat
sand beds on our way to Eight Bells, located at the
south-eastern flank of the Gilf Kebir. This area is the result
of a massive ancient drainage system which, at one time,
discharged large qiantities of water some hundreds of kilometres
south of the present plateau. The flat plain near Eight Bells is
the site of an old WWII runway, and we may be able to see the
airfield markings made out of buried petrol cans. We camp here
for the night.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 6 |
Gilf Kebir-
Karkur Talh |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
We are now at the Gilf Kebir, a
massive flat-topped sandstone plateau that measures around 7,770
square kilometres. Located some 720 kilometres from the Nile and
600 kilometres from the Mediterranean, it towers 300 metres
above us and plays host to dozens of valleys, formed by water
erosion, which stretch like fingers into the surrounding desert.
We visit Regenfeld, a place of great interest to desert
explorers, where rain fatefully fell during the 1874 expedition
of Gerhard Rohlfs, thus saving his life. Rohlfs marked the spot
with a small cairn, which is still there today. We also see the
marble tablet erected in 1933 by the Hungarian explorer, Almasy
(of 'The English Patient' fame), in honour of the Egyptian
explorer Prince Kemal el Din. We continue our journey through
the Uweinat Desert, remote, desolate, haunting and fearsomely
dry, and reach a large valley known as Karkur Talh, where we
pitch our tents for the night.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day7 |
Karkur Talh |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
Karkur Talh is the largest valley
of the mountain. Its mouth, marked by two acacias visible for
many kilometres, opens onto a broad sandy plain that flanks the
Gilf on the north-east side. From the narrow mouth choked with
sand dunes, the valley winds for some 25 kms towards the base of
the sandstone plateau forming the highest part of Jebel Uweinat.
Thousands of rock-art images have been found in this area,
depicting lions, ostriches, gazelles, giraffes and other
animals. Clearly this was an important pastoral area in ancient
times and we spend much of the day visiting the key sites.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 8 |
Wadi Sora |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
Wadi Sora contains the now famous
'Cave of the Swimmers', also featured in 'The English Patient'.
It is not really a wadi, but rather a sheltered inlet among a
promontory and a couple of detached hummocks from the main
plateau. Having found some splendid rock art at Ain Doua, in
1933, Almasy returned in the same year to the valleys of Uweinat.
He began to explore the western slopes of the Gilf, and found a
number of paintings and drawings including the swimmers. Their
importance does not lie solely in their beauty: they also prove
the presence of a lake in ancient times which, of course, no
longer exists. It was Almasy who named the place Wadi Sora - or
'Picture Valley'.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 9 |
Wadi Sora-
Wadi Kopa |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
Driving north from Wadi Sora we
reach the Foggini Cave, a major rock art site discovered in
2003. A unique feature of the site is the large quantity of hand
prints, along with strange headless animals. Some figures are
partly engraved, and others are partly coloured. The paintings
conjure up the life and customs of what may well be several
human societies who once lived in this now extremely arid and
remote part of Egypt. This Neolithic shelter is by far the
richest ever found in this part of Northeast Africa. We camp
tonight at Wadi Kopa.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 1o |
Libyan
Desert Glass |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
After a long drive north we reach
the plains at the western edge of the Gilf, where we turn east
and travel towards the edge of the Great Sand Sea. Here we
encounter one of the strangest mysteries of the desert, nestled
among the giant dunes. In December 1932, the English explorer P.
Clayton was driving in this area when he felt his tyres
crunching on something that wasn't sand. It turned out to be
large pieces of clear yellow-green glass, now known as Libyan
Desert Glass. The ancient Egyptians had also discovered it and a
scarab carved from LDG can be seen today in the Egyptian
Museum’s Tutankhamun collection. LDG is the purest natural
silica glass ever found. Thousand of pieces are strewn across
this region, mostly small, angular pieces looking like shards
from a gigantic green bottle.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 11-13 |
Great Sand Sea |
Desert Safari
Camping
|
The Great Sand Sea is around
72,000 kilometres in size, an area somewhat larger than
Tasmania, or Ireland. Essentially enormous expanses of sand,
sand seas are made up of processions of dunes aligned to the air
stream, either raising the ground level or dipping into
escarpments that tend to face south. The dunes respond to the
wind, moving at a rate of 20- 100 metres a year. The longest
dune in the Great Sand Sea, known as the Abu Mhara Dune, is
estimated to be 140 kilometres long. For three days we traverse
this extraordinary landscape, exploring endlessly undulating
curves that create an amosphere of infinite and unparallelled
tranquillity. Our final camp is at Bir Wahed, close to Siwa,
where the hot spring and desert lake provide a pleasant
diversion after days in the desert.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1
dinner |
|
Day 14 |
Siwa Oasis |
Siwa oasis Hotel
|
We reach Siwa Oasis, a
magnificent green tablecloth spread across the desert sands
where we check in to our hotel and enjoy a welcome shower. Later
we head into the town centre to explore this beautiful and very
unusual oasis town. Unlike Bahariya and Dakhla, Siwa is a Berber
town and the language, traditions and culture are more closely
aligned with the peoples of the Maghreb than with Egyptians. We
visit the crumbling remains of Shali - the fabulous fortified
mud-brick citadel that dominates the skyline - and we explore
Gebel al-Mawta (Mountain of the Dead), where tombs from the 26th
Dynasty, Ptolemaic and Roman periods are cut into the hillside.
Tonight we reflect on our epic adventure and prepare for our
return to the modern world.
Meals included: 1 breakfast, 1 lunch
|
|
Day 15 |
Siwa Oasis-Cairo |
hotel in Cairo |
From Siwa it's a long day's drive
back to Cairo. We travel north to the Mediterranean coast,
passing through Marsa Matrouh on our way to Alexandria, where we
make a right turn and follow the desert highway back to Cairo.
We expect to reach our hotel in the evening.
Meals included: 1 breakfast
|
|
Day 16 |
Cairo |
|
Your trip ends today, after
breakfast. If you have arranged a private airport transfer you
will be advised of the pick-up time.
Meals included: 1 breakfast
|
This is a serious expedition for lovers of the
desert. We carry all supplies with us, including fuel, water and
food, and venture where few people have ever been. From Cairo we
travel to the oasis towns of Bahariya and Dakhla before turning due
west. We reach the Gilf Kebir, a huge plateau with dozens of valleys
digging into its sides, some with red sand dunes. At Uweinat, a
strange and mysterious place made famous by The English Patient, we
discover thousands of rock art images left by ancient nomads. We
drive north into the Great Sand Sea, where we find hundreds of miles
of high dunes; and at night we camp so close to the stars we can
almost touch them. We emerge from the desert at Siwa Oasis and then
return to Cairo.
|
