Western Desert Expedition (16 Days)
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Destination |
Accommodation |
Program Itinerary |
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Cairo |
Hotel in Cairo |
On arrival at Cairo Airport, you will
be met by Minamar 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. |
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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
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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
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Day 4 |
Dakhla-
Abu Hussein Dunes |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day 5 |
Abu Hussein-
Eight Bells |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day 6 |
Gilf Kebir-
Karkur Talh |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day7 |
Karkur Talh |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day 8 |
Wadi Sora |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day 9 |
Wadi Sora-
Wadi Kopa |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day 1o |
Libyan
Desert Glass |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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Day 11-13 |
Great Sand Sea |
Desert Safari
Camping
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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
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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
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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 |
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Day 16 |
Cairo |
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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.
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