Western Desert Trip - Black and White Deserts

The (New) White Desert

It was just as well that no one told me beforehand that this trip would entail getting up every morning at 0530 so that we could leave at 0600. I might have opted out. As it was, even if it was painful to do, the whole experience was definitely worth it.

I’m not sure at what point our routines became obvious, but there was also the routine of eating breakfast in the car, sometimes without having appropriate utensils (fortunately, Joke had brought a knife, which turned out to be invaluable). Lunch (pre-ordered, in a restaurant or someone’s house) would be chicken, potatoes in tomato sauce, bread, salad. The first time they brought this out, I unwittingly said “oh yum, chicken! I could eat that every day.” Then we had the exact same thing (pre-ordered, in another restaurant) for dinner. And the same thing the following day for lunch. And then for dinner. And so on. For the first time in my life, I had five days not eating chicken when I finally got back.

Anyway, now it was on to the black and white deserts. It probably took around four hours driving in the morning to get to the black desert (hence the early start). It was astonishing how you’d see mosques in the middle of nowhere or a bus stop in the middle of the road that you’d been traveling along with no soul in sight for hours. The roads had sand piling up either side and spreading over onto the asphalt/concrete. Apparently, these do get cleared from time to time.

Sand Coming Over Onto Road

We weren’t allowed to go out into the black desert much, but basically the whole area used to be active volcanoes millennia ago, but is now just a vast expanse of basalt and the remains of extinct volcanoes. It was quite eerie as I could imagine dinosaurs roaming around and smoke coming out of the many black mountains. I have no idea if the timing is correct, but that was the fantasy I had in my head.

Black Desert Mountains

Someone Had Fun?

Demonstration of Scale!

The plan was to camp overnight in the white desert. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to no toilets and roughing it, but actually all the toilets from here on were basically like holes in the ground and I got used to it (and using the great outdoors) more easily than I thought.

Anyway, before we got to the white desert, we stopped off to see a natural hot spring (there seem to be quite a few around Egypt, since we saw them in Siwa as well), and then off to see quartz mountain. This was just before the white desert and it’s famous for being made of quartz. Actually, the area around had many different colours – red, yellow, white, and blue rocks.

Quartz Close Up

Joke Among Red, Yellow, and Blue Rocks

After that, it was into the car again and our first overview of the “old” white desert. The old white desert isn’t necessarily older than the new white desert, but it’s made of limestone, which makes it seem faded compared to the stark white of the so-called new desert that’s made of chalk. When you think of desert, you always think of golden sand, but there are many different types of desert. Anyway, we were taken to an amazing viewpoint where you could see the remaining boulders of limestone still jutting out in a vast landscape, all shaped and smoothed over by the wind and sand.

Old White Desert Viewpoint

Deeper into the white desert, the landscape changed from limestone to chalk. Here, the area is famous for the chalk boulders being shaped naturally by the sand and wind into various figures – the chicken under the tree, the rabbit, the camel, the mushroom…. If you see photos, at first it looks as if there’s been snow in the desert, but it’s not snow; it’s chalk.

Chicken Under The Tree

Rabbit

It's not really allowed to camp in the white desert, but apparently the police will turn a blind eye on certain days. Consequently, we were told, it’s not always easy to book to do this. Tents were set up, a bonfire was lit, the chicken and potatoes in tomato sauce etc were cooked over the fire, and a good time was had by all. The stars came out in their multitude as you can only get in the middle of nowhere, but my camera couldn’t capture it, unfortunately.

Dining in the Desert

Sleeping overnight in a tent in the desert was cold! It was pleasantly warm during the day, but only around nine degrees at night. I had a camel blanket, doubled-over, but I was still a bit on the chilly side. Nevertheless, I slept quite well, considering, probably because I was tired after the early start.

Our Tents

The desert actually looked its prettiest early in the morning, so I took some additional photos before we set off for the next part of our trip.

Western Desert Trip - Valley of the Whales

 

Whale Skeleton in the Desert

I forgot to mention in my previous blog that when we arrived at the Sakkara pyramid, our luggage was searched by security before we could enter. What were they looking for? Bombs? Guns? Contraband of some kind? No. It turned out they were checking that we weren’t bringing in drones.

On our way to the bent pyramid, we somehow got a bit lost. New roads are being built everywhere in Egypt. Consequently, many people no longer know which roads are functional and which aren’t. You can drive along and then suddenly see that the road in the opposite direction comes to an end in the middle of nowhere because it’s not yet finished. Workers are busy constructing new ones. Old roads, I believe, have disappeared, leaving people who aren’t in that area very often a bit befuddled.

We ended up traversing over sand. Bump, bump, bump! Sand flying up so that we couldn’t see where we were going. And then we hit the road again and travelled in the opposite direction. It seemed to be garlic delivery day because loads of trucks piled high with garlic zoomed past us. 

Garlic Truck Passing By!

Along the side of the road, random vehicles were parked. It turned out that these were selling coffee. We passed a cactus farm.

Coffee Van

Lunch was in Fayoum in a beautiful place overlooking the lake in typical Egyptian style. I’ll include a photograph as it’s worth seeing, even if there’s not so much to say about it.

Lunch in Fayoum

Anyway, our next stop was the whale valley in or near Fayoum. It’s still in the middle of the desert, of course, but many thousands of years ago, it used to be an ocean, and they’ve found skeletons of sea creatures (whales and, I think maybe even extinct sea life) buried in the sand. They’ve been left pretty much where they were found, so it’s an area of sand with lots of whale skeletons. It’s a world heritage site (hello, Geraldine!). There’s also a nice museum and a small café there.

Valley of the Whales - Main Site and Museum

Example Skeleton

We were behind schedule, so we didn’t stop for as long as I would have liked and it’s in my mind to return there some day.

We got back in the car and stopped off at a beautiful viewpoint for a few photographs. 

Viewpoint

After that, our final visit for the day was to a waterfall (yes, in Egypt!). We got there in time for sunset. It’s a hugely popular tourist destination and a school trip was exiting just as we entered. It’s best to get thee either early or near sunset if you want to see it in relative peace (even in these pandemic times).

Waterfall

And we’re still on Day 1! I’d intended to write this blog also about the black and white deserts (Day 2), but I think that’ll now have to wait until next week…

NB> Email subscribers: I’ve just received this message - After July 2021, your [email subscription] feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported. I don’t know what it means (I think it’s telling me that emails will no longer be sent out) but if I can swap you over to an alternative, I’ll let you know.

Western Desert Trip - Pyramids

Step Pyramid at Saqqara

I got back from my trip safe and sound. I’m not sure how many blogs I’ll take up with my trip, but I’ll see how I go.

The first part of the trip was to get to Cairo by bus.

I’d ordered a taxi to the bus stop in Hurghada, but my usual taxi driver didn’t have a car (he didn’t have enough money to pay for the license any more – sad times [this is not Esmat; it’s another driver called John]). Then I called ABC taxis, who are usually very good. I stood outside. A taxi was waiting and I got in. He took me to the Baron hotel in Sahl Hasheesh, so I asked if he was picking someone else up. It turned out I’d got into the wrong taxi.

At this point I was stressed, because I had to get to the bus station on time and I was now running late. On top of that, the driver didn’t seem to know where he was going. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing start to my trip. When we arrived at the bus stop, he overcharged me, but I didn’t argue as he’d probably get a bad review for messing up his own customer while he took me to the bus stop (I insisted he not go back to his own customer or I’d miss my bus).

Anyway, I got to the bus stop in time. I’d booked first class, which meant a single seat quite spaced out from other seats. I wore my antiviral mask the whole time, although the air conditioning was pretty severe to promote air flow. I was a bit nervous about being on the bus when coronavirus cases in Cairo are high. We were picked up in Cairo by Joke’s friend and we stayed at his hotel.

All mornings were early starts, including the first one. Generally, we had to leave at 6am each morning, but now I’m thinking maybe Cairo was a bit of a lie in by comparison and we left at 7am. I can’t really remember. No matter.

Our first three stops were pyramids: the stepped pyramid, the red pyramid, and the bent pyramid. These were all precursors to the famous pyramids in Giza in Cairo. It’s a mistake to think that the only pyramids in Egypt are the ones at Giza. There are pyramids all over the place in Egypt, just not necessarily so well preserved.

Our first stop was at the step pyramid (top photo) in Saqqara. The limestone pyramid was built in c. 2600 BC, which is pretty mindboggling. There’s a complex to the side, with pillars representing bundles of plant stems (photo), and then tombs to another side, still bearing depictions of sacrifices to the gods (photo).

Columns into the Court

Food for the Afterlife

The second stop was to the red pyramid (photo below), built in 2500 BC. Here, we were able to climb down, but not take photographs. It was a scary descent as the ceiling was low and you had to go down backwards for 60m on a stepped plank where the grip was not always that great (and I was in flip flops!). My thighs ached the next day with all the exertion! The photo is of me coming out. If you look carefully, you can probably see that I’m sweating!

Red Pyramid

Finally Made It!

The third stop was to the bent pyramid (photo), built in 2600 BC. We had another climb inside and then up wooden steps (modern) constructed inside so that we could see the top of the pyramid from within.

Bent Pyramid

After that, it was finally away to the desert…. 

El Andalous - More Parties

 

View from the Rooftop

Happy Easter! By the time you read this, I’ll be in the middle of a trip to the Western Deserts of Egypt. Hopefully, I’ll be having a good time, but I’m not sure I’ll have internet and even if I do, I won’t have time to write my blog, so here’s one I prepared earlier….

I thought I’d write a blog, even though, apparently, one of my most visited blogs is entitled “blog holiday” where I didn’t write anything at all. Ho hum.

Anyway, before I left, I’d had a fairly busy month of parties (yes, even in this time of coronavirus). I’ve already talked about a housewarming party, and our beach party, but then there was also a birthday party. Actually, the housewarming party was also a birthday party, but the other party I'm talking about now was dedicated solely to the birthday. I’m not mentioning the name as I’m not sure she would want that. There have been a ton of birthdays in March. Happy birthday to all readers with birthdays in March!

But the important thing is that she had a party! Woo hoo! This one was held on the rooftop of El Andalous. It’s really stunning up there and I’ve posted photos on several occasions, I’m sure. But I probably won’t be able to resist posting yet another one on this blog.

Theresa did all the catering and as usual she did a great job (and thanks to our host for paying for it and organizing and probably loads of other stuff that I’m not even thinking about). We had salads, chicken, pizza, wraps, and CAKE.

There were birthday balloons and birthday streamers, so those emojis on FaceBook of balloons and streamers are really appropriate. And beer and wine were flowing, of course.

Around eighteen of us took part in the festivities. Alexa played us any music we requested (but, shock horror, Alexa did not recognise Mohammed Ramadan’s 'Coronavirus'). We had a little area to dance in. Actually, the roof is huge, so technically we had a huge space to dance in, but we settled for the region  at the edge of the roof where the music was playing.

It was a super evening. I knew everyone there and people moved around from group to group. These events where we get together are always so nice. And we all end up remarking how blessed we are to be here where curfew is at midnight rather than in Europe at this time.

Fingers crossed that the more infectious variants don’t land in Egypt (if they’re here, they have yet to be detected in the hospitals) as I’m sure things could change very quickly. Having said that, even just having sunshine and blue sky every day is a blessing, not to mention that it’s a free source of vitamin D.  On the other hand, I hate saying this, as it feels like I’m tempting fate. Watch me come back from my trip now and eat my words ☹