Informations about Oasis and Western Desert

Kharga Oasis
Kharga, whose bold name seems to perfectly sum up the character of its environment, is the most populous Oasis of the Western Desert. And though it offers a variety of sites of interest to the visitor, including ancient fortress and villages , in Kharga it is the landscape that most overwhelms the traveler. For it is in Kharga that we encounter the desert as we had always imagined the desert would be.

Kharga is clearly different from the image most people of an oasis out in the desert. It has been the most important town in the development plans for the Western Oases, and has presently a population of more than 100,000 people. And when the architecture is totally dominated by concrete blocks and wide roads, the result is that few tourists use more time than necessary in town. During my oasis circuit of 2004 I met several Western travel guides telling me that they omitted Kharga all together, because there was nothing to see. That is totally wrong, Kharga has sights from 3 millenniums.

Kharga means in Arabic "point of departure", in opposition to Dakhla, "point of entrance", which lies further to the west. The population of Kharga are Berbers with roots back to the time when the oasis was a station on the famous 40 Days Road between Sudan and Egypt — famous because of the merchandise; slaves.

Dakhla Oasis
Where Kharga is the administrative centre of the New Valley, Dakhla is the breadbasket, its field and orchards lush with produce. the beige and brown landscapes of Kharga is replaced with golden sand, red earth, a pastel escarpment and vibrant green fields. Dakhla bathes in spectacular color, with its pre-historic cemeteries, Old Kingdom villages, and Islamic fortress towns, lying east to west near the edge of the escarpment along the Darb El Ghabari.

Dakhla is the oasis that lies furthest off the main settlements of Egypt. Unlike many other oases, it is situated above sea level, as high as 122 meters. Still it is fed by more than 520 springs and ponds. 75,000 people live in 14 different settlements, each strong local identities and customs.
Only Mut and Al-Qasr qualifies as towns. Before the road came here, Dakhla must have felt like a planet of its own, where only few inhabitants ever came as far as to the neighboring oases Kharga and Farafra

The main towns are Mut and Al-Qasr, the latter the main attraction in the entire oasis. If you have time, the old town of Mut is also interesting. Dakhla has been inhabited for millenniums, and of old sights, the Muzawaka tombs and Deir al-Hagar temple are the main attractions. At Balat, not far from Bashendi, tombs from the 3rd millennium BCE have been found, but generally the funerary complex is closed to visitors.

Farafra Oasis
Its isolation created a special world, a world of eternal sunshine and incredible beauty that is just beginning to be penetrated by the outside world. Peaceful and serene, its big skies and rugged landscape contain some of the most spectacular scenery in the Western Desert.
With only 4,000 inhabitants and about 200 km to the first neighbour settlement, Farafra is among the most isolated places in Egypt. It is part of the Western Desert circuit, so it still gets many visitors. And the place has a number of attractions, of which the adjacent White Desert is one of Egypt's most famous nature sights.

The architecture of Farafra is the old and ingenious one, where mud brick houses stand close together, with narrow roads with roofs. Many of the houses have painted exteriors with murals.

Many traditions live on in Farafra- traditions that die when locals in towns like this move into nondescript "modern" box houses. Dresses and shirts have beautiful embroidery, but little is available for visitors with hard cash. Of products for sale, olives and olive oil are of high quality here. In addition, there is a rich output of vegetables and fruits, including bananas, mangos and guavas.
Most visitors to Farafra take at least one swim in the many hot springs in town. Female visitors should respect local traditions, and bathe only in the afternoons.

Baharia Oasis
The closest Oasis to Cairo in Kilometers, but the most distant Oasis in time, and one that has been slow to move into the modern world. For the travelers in search of the past this is a Bahariya Oasis is easy to reach from Cairo (you will pass through much desert) ,Bahariya is in the middle of Egypt’s Western Desert , about 365 kilometres south-west of Cairo and it is the best starting point for the Black and White Desert . Set in a depression covering over 2000 sq. km. , Bahariya Oasis is surrounded by black hills made up of ferruginous quartzite and dolorite. The oasis is provided with water by many springs. The most famous of these, a thermal spring with medicinal and restorative properties, comes out in the Bedouin village of Bawiti. Wildlife is plentiful, especially birds such as wheatears , Bahariya Oasis might also appeal rock hounds . Golden Mummies were discovered - 'Valley of the Mummies' is the biggest of its kind . Estimates are the four-mile strip of desert holds 5,000 - 10,000 mummies. The mummies are covered with a thin layer of gold and wearing gypsum masks. Sumptuous gilded death masks depict lifelike faces of real people, rather than stereotypical images.They were found in four tombs in the town of Bawiti in Bahariya Oasis.

Fayoum Oasis
The triangular depression of the Fayoum looks like a delta. Near Cairo, and easily accessible along a well-paved highway, the Fayoum can be explored in a series of pleasant day trips and offers a wide variety of activities from boating, swimming and fishing, to visiting antiquities, bird watching, and searching for fossils.

Siwa Oasis
Siwa is different. It is not Egyptian, but not African. Most of the Siwans are descendants of the Bedouin that roamed the North Africa coast from Tunisia to Morocco. In appearance , dress and language the Siwans are unique. In Siwa , Alexander the Great, founder of the city of Alexandria left his marks, while he was on a long journey into the Libyan Desert. He died in Siwa and was pronounced a God.

Siwa appears at first as a sweet and innocent place deep in the desert which has just opened its eyes to the modern world and still let's itself be amazed. Which is not wrong, the asphalted road opened first in 1984

But the history goes deep beyond the earliest civilizations, to Paleolithic times. In the 1st millennium BCE, Siwa was famous with the ancient Egyptians, thanks to its oracle. The oracle was though to be so true and powerful that generals feared its predictions. Both when the Persian king Cambyses invaded in 525 and with Alexander the Great before his expeditions into Asia in 331 BCE, was the oracle consulted.
During these times, Siwa was a wealthy place, well illustrated by the Gebel al-Mawta and its rich tombs. In early Islamic times, Siwa went into decline and sometime in the 13th century was down as little as 200. Today the population is on the rise, and has since long passed 20,000. Most live in the town Siwa, the rest are spread across over 10 smaller villages.

Paris Oasis
Although Paris, or Baris as it is called in most foreign traveller's guides, is neglected by almost all travel companies bringing tourists around the oases of the Western desert, it is still the place with the most prosperous future.

Gilf El- Kebir
Egypt's Western Desert is full of wondrous natural phenomenon and surprises. Sometimes one wanders over a ridge or through a pass and discovers alien worlds, such as in the White Desert. Less known perhaps, but growing in popularity is the ancient plateau known as Gilf Kebir (Great Barrier), its sides now heavily eroded and penetrated by huge sand wadis and incredible dune systems which, at one point, rise 300 meters to meet the level of the plateau, an irresistible force meeting an immovable object! Amid this most awesome of natural settings, is located unquestionably one of the richest storehouses of prehistoric rock art in the world. The Cave of the Swimmers is the most famous, but recent discoveries have evealed many other incredible sites dating back more than 7000 years, and there is certainly much more to be explored.

New discoveries continue to be made, with arguably the single finest rock art site in the Sahara, the Foggini-Mestekawi Cave, being discovered only in 2002. It is now thought that the original inhabitants who created these stunning images influenced early Pharaonic cultures, and trade items have been discovered that demonstrate the links shared by these early peoples. In certain locations one can still find Mesolithic arrowheads littering the sands, huge natural amphitheatres and, some claim, the lost oasis of Zerzura.

In recent years, Gilf Kebir has become a fairly popular Egyptian tourist destination for the more adventurous travelers, not just for the rock art and perhaps a chance to make an amateur discovery, but also for the sheer grandness of the landscape. It also shows how varied are the Egyptian antiquity sites.

The Gilf Kebir is a flat-topped limestone plateau located about 150 kilometers north of Gevel Uwaynat, covering over 7,770 square kilometers. It is situated in the southwestern corner of Egypt about 720 kilometers from the Nile and 960 kilometers from the Mediterranean. Like a huge shelf the size of Switzerland, it is nearly dissected in two by a large cap.

It rises 300 meters from the desert floor (1075 meters above sea level), forming one of the most formidable barriers in Africa. Dozens of wadis extend into the desert around its perimeter. these wadis were formed by water erosion in a wetter phase thousands of years ago in the late Tertiary age. Then it was a great divide, draining water in all directions, north, south, east and west.

The cliffs in the south and the southwest are the highest. The cliffs in the northeast have been broken down into small islands of land. Wind and water have combined to work away at the Gilf Kebir for over 100,000 years. Although it probably took its present form in the late Tertiary, or early Quaternary time, the only reason it is still standing is its tough cap of solidified sandstone.

The northern portion of the Gilf Kebir is drowning in sand from the Great Sand Sea. It is helping the wind break down the Gilf into small islands and cones. That sand is whitish. The sand at the middle of the plateau is reddish. Wadi Hamra, as its name states, if filled with red sand. The southern portion of the Gilf is 5.800 square kilometers.

Around 9500 BC, the monsoonal system shifted northward and lakes formed around the Gilf. Then, by 4500 BC the conditions were once again arid.

Penderel, in a paper presented to the Royal Geographical Society in June of 1934, says that John Ball was the first westerner to see the Gilf, while on patrol in 1917. However, credit for the discovery is given to Prince Kamal al-Din, who actually reached it, skirted its southern cliffs, fixed it on the maps and named in in 1926.

In 1932, an expedition was mounted to explore the Gilf by air. It included Sir Robert Clayton-East-Clayton, Count Laszlo Almasy, P. A. Clayton and Penderel.

As a bit of trivia, one may note that the fictional story, the "English Patient", was based on the life of Almasy. He came from an untitled Hungarian family, but claimed to have driven the car of the last Hapsburg king, Karl IV. In return, the king made him a count.

They discovered several valleys rich with vegetation, including what would later be known as Wadi Hamra, Wadi Talh and the Wadi Abd al-Malik. These valleys were used by tribesmen for grazing and some explorers believed that they were the lost oasis of Zerzura.

Archaeological work was begun in 1933 by Fronbenius, focusing on rock art. Prehistory work began with Bagnold's expedition of 1938, done by O. H. Myers and H. A. Winkler. This expedition was a joint effort of the Egypt Exploration Society, which supported Myers, Gray and Winkler, and the Royal Geographical Society, which provided grant money to Bagnold. During World War II the Italians had a base in the region, while the British set up at Uwaynat. The Long Range Desert Group of the British Army were active in the area.

The Bagnold-Mond 1938 expedition spent a month working around the Gilf Kebir. They did a huge amount of survey work, archaeology and geophysical and geological investigation. An additional month was spent at Uwaynat where Hans Winkler joined them. While Winkler was at Uwaynat, Bagnold and Peeol went north along the western side of the Gilf and found two more rock art sites, one of which was a totally new discovery.

Recent exploration began with Misonne, the Belgian who crossed 600 kilometers of the high plateau in 1969. He found that sheep, foxes and lizards lived on top of the Gilf. Issawi in 1971 and 1972 did a geological survey, followed by Wendorf in 1974 and al-Baz in 1978. Between 1976 and 1977, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Academy of Sciences of Egypt launched an ongoing geological program under the leadership of Lkitzch and supported by the Continental Oil Company (CONOCO).

In 1978, a new type of explorer came to the Gilf Kebir and Gebel Uwaynat, looking for answers to questions that were from out of this world. The two week expedition of seven Americans and nine Egyptians led by Farouk al-Baz was to "verify in the field interpretations of tonal variations and surface patterns observed on Earth-orbital photographs." They wanted to compare the Libyan Desert, particularly around the Gilf and Uwaynat, to photos they had of Mars.

The Northern Side of the Gilf Kebir can be a bit disappointing to some, as it has broken down considerably over the years and one does not have the sense of approaching a huge plateau with many high cliffs and wadis as one does on the southern and western sides. However, there is a spectacular event taking place here. The southern edges of the Great Sand Sea have now reached the Gilf Kebir, and one can observe two great natural forces at war with each other.

In two huge valleys before Lama Point they clash in an incredible phenomenon. The sand is filling up these wadis. The individual dunes climb over each other on the far side of the wadi, forming a moving ladder that eventually reaches the top in the far left corner. Here the sand spills onto Lama Point. There must be trillions of tons of sand banked up against the far wadi wall, climbing up and over and up and over, fighting its way to the top.

Lima Point sits at the southwestern side of the first valley. After it, at Almasy Mountain comes the second dune filled valley. Here, too, the dunes are climbing. They look like they are eating the Gilf and they have reached the top of it here as well. During the coming decades we shall see if they succeed in breaking down the Gilf. What happens once they all reach the top is anyone's guess.

The plateau of the Gilf Kebir itself is gravelly and mostly featureless, with big slabs of basalt in some places and at least one old riverbed. The edges of the plateau are another matter. Like a voyeur, one peers into amazing worlds filled with exotic scenes.

As one travels north-northwest along the western edge of the scarp, valley after valley can be seen from the top. Where the northeastern scarp has few true cliffs, just eroded hills and dune filled valleys, the northwestern side is all cliffs and spectacular views onto the Libyan plain below. Along here, there is a Black Valley, a Red Sand Dune Valley and a valley where one can walk down to the desert floor. All of these are to the south of one of the most famous valleys called the Wadi Sura, the Picture Valley of Almasy.

At the extreme northern section o the Gilf Kebir stand the entrances of three wadis known as Wadi Hamra on the northeast, Wadi Abd al-Malik in the center and Wadi Talh on the northwest. These are the tree valleys that Almasy claimed were the lost oasis of Zerzura.

After the explorers saw the valleys from the air, they felt compelled to visit them on the ground. In 1933, Almasy, Dr. Dadar, a geographer and geologist from Budapest, Mr. Casparius, a photographer and cinephotographer, Dr. Bermann and Penderel journeyed to the Gilf once again.

Leaving Kharga on March 22, 1933, they headed to Abu Ballas, visited Regenfeld and headed for the east side of the Gilf. They climbed to the top of the Gif and found a camel route to the plain below. Almasy went looking for another wadi, the third, to round out Wilkinson's claim that Zerzula had three valleys. What they discovered was that the Gilf has two parts, a northern one and a southern half with a gap between them that Almasy named al-Aqaba.

Upon reaching the end of the Wadi Hamra, they climbed to the top of the Gilf. They found it flat, gravelly and absolutely silent. There was no wind. They continued their journey from east to west across the top of the Gilf. By the third day they were close to the southern end, and by the fourth day they found their way down and began moving north along the eastern side. We do not know exactly where they descended, but there they found another (unnamed) wadi and followed it for an easy ascent to the top of the Gilf once more. In one of several caves in the wadi they found rock art. The cave was large and the drawing were on the roof and consisted of longhorn cattle, men and a cave or hut with bales and bundles hanging from the roof.

In 1933, on the next trip into the desert by car, Almasy talked with an old Tebu called Ibrahim Abd al-Malik, a caravan guide from Kufra who had been one of the Kufra refugees. It was Ibrahim who called the wadi Abd al-Malik, Servant of the King. He also spoke of Wadi Talh, the Valley of Acacia.

They entered the Wadi Abd al-Malik on May 3rd. It is a long valley with lots of acacia trees. There were sites of Tebu camps with grass huts and baskets. On May 5th, Almasy found a second wadi, perhaps the Wadi Talh. Then the group left for Uwaynat, where they met up with Ibrahim again. Now, the old Tebu gave up the final bit of information. There was a third valley in the group and it was called Wadi Hamra, the Red Valley (It had already been found by P. A. Clayton). Here were the three wadis of Zerzura mentioned by Wilkinson in 1830.

At the lecture given by Bermann at the Royal Geographical Society, one more piece of the puzzle was finally revealed, "As to the name 'Zerzura', our Tebu friend Ibrahim, asked where Zerzura lay, said, 'Oh, those silly Arab people, they do not know anything; they call these three wadis in the Gif, Zerzura, but we local people know their real names.'"

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