Another Egypt

For a long time we had wanted to visit western Egypt and the oases on the western border, and finally the opportunity came! TUESDAY we land at the small airport of Al Alamein, then by minibus we set off on a route of 500 km through nothingness: earth and dust. Suddenly here is the Siwa oasis: immense, green, bathed by 4 lakes, 200 springs of which half are hot water, and 2 million palm trees. We stay at the Shali Siwa Resort, very comfortable. WEDNESDAY visit to the village of Shali: here the citadel collapsed years ago because 3 days of rain dissolved all the salt contained in the clay of the walls! The setting is frozen many years ago, still authentic, not touristy, light years from places like Cairo and Sharm: people cultivate vegetable gardens and date palms, live on small trade, the women are completely veiled and the most common means of transport is the donkey.

We visit the springs of Cleopatra, a natural pool where Siwan brides bathe to gain fertility, then we witness a wonderful sunset on the shores of one of the Siwan lakes. THURSDAY jeep excursion into the Great Sand Sea, the Libyan-Egyptian Sahara: we are 40 km from Libya: dunes 300 m high, blue ponds surrounded by small palm groves, springs gushing at 37° of temperature, a valley where the Mediterranean Sea once was, where we find thousands of fish skeletons and fossils of shells and corals scattered in the sand. Returning to Siwa we stop at the temple of the Oracle, where Alexander the Great was consecrated and recognised as emperor of Egypt: the temple is in ruins, but it stands on a rocky hill that rises above Siwa and from which you enjoy a splendid panorama.

FRIDAY The great crossing of the western desert begins: we load onto the jeeps tents, blankets, camp kitchen and also wood for the fire, and we set off: the track first passes over the strip of packed earth that divides the lakes of Siwa: it feels like travelling on water, then the desert opens up suddenly with its dunes and we travel fast over a very fine sand that feels like velvet. About every hour there is a checkpoint, some soldiers and an outpost, a barrier and a myriad of little dogs. We wonder how one can live in this perfect silence for months. At midday we deviate for a kilometre from the track: suddenly from the sands emerges a rock at least 30 m high, shaped like a fan, at whose base we park the jeeps. Approaching, we discover that this formation is made of millions of fossilised shells and corals, a reminder of when the sea was here.

We eat a packed lunch sitting in the shade of this wonder: all around, nothing. We continue, and towards evening there appears to us like a mirage a stretch of palm trees: the Bahariya oasis. It is a very poor place, the people live on what the vegetable gardens produce. We stay overnight in a nice hostel, right on the slopes of the hill planted with palm groves: the feature of this small hotel is that it has in the centre of the garden a small pool at 45° of temperature!!! It is a spring that gushes right there: you have to immerse yourself slowly and come out quickly, before your head starts spinning too fast.

SATURDAY Early in the morning we go to visit the museum of the golden mummies: more than a museum it is a garage that is opened just for us, in which about a hundred sarcophagi and mummies of inestimable value are arranged haphazardly: 15 years ago, nearby, a donkey fell into a deep hole: its owner, to pull it out, had to go down to the bottom: when he was at the base of the well he saw something glinting and, digging with his hands, he saw golden funerary masks emerge. Once the authorities in Cairo were alerted, 100,000 mummies from the Ptolemaic period were discovered, representing the most sensational discovery of recent decades: not knowing where to put them, for now they have put them back in crates, keeping only about a hundred in this garage, to the good fortune of us tourists.

But the surprises of Bahariya are not over: in the centre of the town, going down a wooden staircase that leads to the bottom of a 10 m well, we enter the tomb of Bannentiu: we feel like Carter when he entered the tomb of Tutankhamun: frescoes with colours so vivid they look as if they were painted yesterday, and instead they have been there for 1500 years! Absolutely unforgettable, a place that alone is worth the trip! Bannentiu was the pharaoh's representative, a kind of mayor, and he had this wonderful tomb built for himself, which we now have the fortune to see. Today we feel like Indiana Jones!! It is time to leave this oasis of incredible secrets to cross another part of the desert and reach the Black Desert, where we camp: we are surrounded by extinct volcanoes that in distant times erupted a blanket of lapilli and lava that coloured all the sand black: incredible.

We set up camp and go to sleep. SUNDAY Another stretch of Black Desert and then here we arrive at the entrance of the White Desert: towers, rocks of fantastic shapes surround us, amid a terrain that becomes whiter with every kilometre: in remote times the Mediterranean Sea, retreating, left a thick layer of sodium bicarbonate on the sand, covering the whole desert with a white mantle, like snow. We find ourselves in a lunar and fantastic world, among very white rock formations that recall the shapes of birds, faces, animals, etc.

We visit the area called "Isadora's tears": legend says that this girl came here to shed tears for a disappointed love and every tear became a rock formation: it is impossible to describe this landscape: the ground seems strewn with white domes, large and small: absolutely unique! In the evening, sheltered by a tower of rock, we set up camp and spend an unforgettable night around the fire, while some fennecs, the little desert foxes, come to visit us. MONDAY another day in this magical world and then towards evening it is unfortunately time to leave the White Desert and return to the Bahariya oasis and from there continue north towards Cairo, but that is another story.