Day 17. Mon 29th September
Into the desert
We must say goodbye to Jo and Lisa who are off home today, as is Irish
Anne, with whom we have been briefly reunited. Martin & Judy, Oisìn
and I are reunited with Dave, Nigel & Anne, Bob & Laura and Sophie,
and are joined by Terry and Sarah & Roger from the cruise, and by John
& Val and Steve & Karen from the feluccas to make our group of
17 for the Desert Extension. Geoff remains the group leader, and we are
also joined by Saleh and Mohammed who will be our "native guides" for the
week.
Oisìn and I are up at six for an early breakfast and to say
our last farewells to those who are off back home. Several of the group
are leaving not for England but for the Red Sea Extension, but they are
still in bed, and we never get to say goodbye to them.
At 7:15 we board the coach that will be our home for the next week
as we travel back to Cairo via the oases of the Western Desert, also known
as the Great Sand Sea. Our first port of call will be El Kharga Oasis.
There is a road due west across the desert that would take us almost straight
to El Kharga, but unfortunately this has been closed to tourists since
1996, so we must join the tourist convoy heading north down the Nile Valley
to Asyut, and then drive all the way back south again to El Kharga. However,
the drive down the valley gives us an interesting vista of Egypt. The road
is lined with little towns separated by fields of maize and sugar cane.
Everywhere there are donkeys pulling carts or piled so high with palm leaves
that only their four legs can be seen sticking out of the bottom. Grubby
children wave cheerfully as we drive past.
We cross the river at Sohag and drive up the east road to Asyut, where
we grab a rather hurried lunch, as we are still under police escort.
We leave Asyut heading south-west into the desert, and once again we
are aware of how suddenly the green valley changes to desert. Somewhere
alomg the way we lose the police escort, but acquire our own tame tourist
policeman. Abdul is a friendly chap who nods and smiles and seems as bemused
by the necessity of his presence as we are, but as he speaks very little
English he is also just as unable to explain it. It turns out he also has
a taste for forbidden fruit (or rather, grain), but that comes later.
At about five we stop at the edge of the Kharga depression. The oases
are situated within naturally formed depressions in the land which allow
the surface to come close enough to the water table for plants to grow
and wells to be dug. There are seven such depressions in the Western Desert,
five of which contain oases - Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra, Bahariyya and Siwa.
(Siwa is further to the North West and not on our itinerary). Each oasis
contains several towns, and they are now all linked by paved roads. The
water table has risen significantly in this area since the construction
of the High Dam at Aswan. In the evening light the view is amazing (although
for some reason I took no photographs at all today).
We arrive in El Kharga Oasis at about seven. The Hamad Allah Sahara
City Hotel is situated a few miles out the other side of the town.
At dinner we toast "absent friends".
After dinner we are given a briefing by Saleh, our local guide, while
yet another Mohammed, who is apparently his trainee, takes copious notes.
Then we sit around and drink beer, and I finally break open the bottle
of Southern Confort that I have been carrying around ever since since Heathrow
Airport.
It turns out that Terry, a cheerful chap in his sixties who has obviously
done
a fair bit of travelling in his time, was here once before, in 1997, and
that Saleh was his guide then too, although they had not recognised each
other. Saleh speaks excellent English, has extremely good local knowledge
and a great sense of humour. He regales us with amusing tales of other
trips that he has guided until it is time for bed.