Egypt's Western Desert: sand, silence and unexpected oases

Sixty-eight percent of Egypt’s territory is the Western Desert, the easternmost part of the Great Sahara. It is an expanse of sand and rock the size of Spain and Portugal combined. Fewer than fifty thousand travellers pass through it each year. The Nile and the temples draw fifteen million. This disproportion makes tourist sense but conceals something worth knowing: one of the most extraordinary landscapes on the planet, with an ecological variety that has nothing to do with the monotonous image of sand desert that most people imagine.

Siwa: the most remote, the most compelling

Siwa is 50 kilometres from the Libyan border and 560 kilometres from Cairo. The overland journey is nine hours of straight road between dunes and rock plateaux. There is no train. There are a couple of weekly flights from Cairo that operate irregularly. The remoteness is part of what makes Siwa what it is.

Siwa’s population is not Arab: it is Berber. Their language, Siwi, belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family but is completely distinct from Egyptian Arabic. Their traditions are different. Their architecture — houses of kershef, compressed salt and earth that softens in moisture and hardens in dry air — is different. The oasis has four freshwater springs, more than 300,000 date palms and olive groves producing an oil considered among Egypt’s finest.

On the outskirts of the village, the Temple of Amun’s Oracle is the building that drew Alexander the Great in the winter of 331 BC. He marched from Alexandria through the desert to consult the oracle, and the oracle told him what he needed to hear: that he was a son of the gods. Alexander’s march to Siwa — eight days across the desert, with his army nearly dead from thirst — is one of the most extraordinary episodes of his life. The temple itself is today a modest ruin, but the context surrounding it makes it memorable.

Bahariya and the White Desert

Bahariya is four hours from Cairo and the usual starting point for the White Desert: the Sahara el-Abyad, an expanse of 300 square kilometres of white limestone formations eroded by wind over millions of years. The resulting shapes — mushrooms, chickens, icebergs, abstract figures several metres tall — have a quality of quiet surrealism that photographs convey poorly.

Spending a night in the White Desert is one of the most complete experiences Egypt offers. There is no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres in any direction. The night sky in the Egyptian desert is dense with stars at an intensity that urban eyes have forgotten exists. Temperatures drop in winter to five or ten degrees at night: warm clothing is essential. In summer the night is pleasant and the white limestone reflects moonlight brightly enough to walk without a torch.

North of Bahariya, the Black Desert contrasts with the white in a dramatic way: dark hills of volcanic basalt and obsidian fragments that make the ground glitter as if scorched. The colours of the two deserts, seen in the same day, are one of the most unexpected juxtapositions that an arid landscape can offer.

Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga

The southernmost oases are less visited and more tranquil. Farafra — the smallest of the four — has a village of a few thousand people, natural hot springs (the Bir Sitta pool, open and free), and the silence that only belongs to places that tourism has not yet quite reached. Dakhla has Roman temples, a medieval Islamic citadel and barley fields that make the entry into the oasis from the desert one of the trip’s best visual contrasts.

Kharga, the largest and most southerly, is connected by paved road to Luxor (300km to the east): you can enter the desert from Cairo and exit through Kharga to the Nile Valley, making a circular route that conventional travel guides rarely suggest.

Logistics

The desert between the oases cannot be crossed in a standard vehicle. You need 4x4 jeeps, local guides with knowledge of the terrain and, for expeditions of more than one day into the interior, a permit from the Egyptian army. Agencies in Bahariya organise one to four-day excursions into the White Desert. Prices run around 60 to 80 dollars per person per day for small groups.

The complete Far Guides Egypt guide includes detailed Nile Valley routes, interactive maps and all the practical information you need to plan your independent trip.