Camping in the White Desert

I just got back yesterday from four days, three nights camping in the White Desert. It is situated southwest of Cairo in between the Bahariya oasis (where the golden mummies were found) and the Farafra oasis. It takes quite a long time to reach Bahariya (nearly five hours) which we got to by a private Badawiya Expedition bus. We met at the British Council in Agouza just across the Nile from Zamalek. Four Fulbrighters including myself plus Jamie, a Brit who works as head honcho for Oxfam here in Cairo and Mona and Sharifa, mother and daughter. Mona is the owner of Nefertari, a natural cosmetics company now in its 10th year with stores in Zamalek and Maadi. I had made an expedition to Nefertari as I had read about it in our Cairo book; Oxfam and I have acquainted for years from my time in England and Oxford.

Once the police had copied our passports at the Bahariya oasis entrance and we looked at various handicrafts - the best of which were the sheep's wool blankets, nearly as soft as mohair or cashmere - Jamie bought a camel hair blanket which he will use as a rug on his rental apartment on a houseboat across the river from me - we changed transport to our 4 x 4 jeep. The desert road grew progressively bumpier with long long stretches of desert as far as the eye could see and beyond. It is said that there is 700,000 miles of desert and we had barely touched the fringes.
From Bahariya, we went on to our campsite, tired and hungry.

After some debate as to whether the five of us would all sleep in a large tent, we finally moved in. Jamie obtained the mattresses - thin pads of fabric covered foam and so the men were on one side of reed covered tent space while Joelle and I occupied the other side. Luckily I had brought a sheet as the blankets were scratchy camel wool. It was cold too as deserts are wont to be, warm in the daytime. We joined around 40 others - Egyptian families with rambunctious children and our Bedouin male hosts in charge of setting up tents, making our meals and driving us around. That night - Thanksgiving - we had grilled chicken on a metal grille directly over a fire, potatoes cooked in a large pot with with a tomato base, rice, chopped up tomatoes and cucumbers and assorted things to drink, nonalcoholic of course.

There was a three sided covered area to eat, again with the reed mats and the Egyptian families were at one side and we on the other. It was pretty much a quiet night and we retired fairly early. There were two porta-potties, one ostensibly for showering but really, that was an impossibility. Thankfully, I had brought facial wet wipes and body wipes and got myself ready for three more days of non-hair washing. There was a bit of snoring but I had brought ear plugs and proceeded to shiver myself to sleep.

Naturally, nature called and as the actual toilets were quite a walk in the dark - there was a 3/4 moon though - I looked around for anyone awake and nearsightedly saw none - walked or rather wobbled on the sand and saw that a 4 x 4 truck was parked conveniently not so far away from our square tent. I didn't really look into the truck but thankfully got behind it, squatted and peed with great relief. Once done, I looked up into the straw strewn night sky with too numerous to count stars, I have no idea what time it was - maybe 2 am. I'm glad I did see the sky because on the next two nights I woke up closer to dawn and couldn't see the abundance of stars as on the first night.

More later - for our second day's adventure.