The Shifting Desert Sands

Cairo towards the end of December really is a disaster. With a collision of Christmas and a bunch of Islamic feasts where the slaughtering of goats occurs, transport to the South of the country is near impossible without at least a week’s booking for buses and trains. Milena & I met the rest of the family in Cairo, and soon enough realised it would be near impossible for the five of us to travel together. Although the thieving scumbag of a hostel owner in Cairo lied and tried to steal our money, he did manage to get 4 plane tickets down to Aswan. Incidentally, there are 5 members to the family! Because I’d seen the Egyptian Nile two years earlier, I volunteered (quite enthusiastically, mind you) to part from the group and visit somewhere new and exciting. This is where my story begins – I’ll be finding mum, dad & the gang at a later stage.

The Western border of Egypt joins with Libya, and just before the crossing, seemingly lost in the sea of sands, is the Oasis of Siwa. Siwa has a mystical property about it which probably stems from the fact of desolation and an abundance of water. Yes, in the desert, there is an abundance of water. Hundreds of hot and cold, fresh and salty springs converge in this one spot to create a puddle of water. Well, more like series of lakes surrounded by thousands of palm trees bearing the sweetest and finest dates in the world. The local Bedouin people are brazen from hard toil in the scorching sun, yet genuine and smile with a generosity and inquisitiveness of young children; “Hello! Welcome to Siwa!” is constantly being whispered – without the irritating nag for one to enter the shop of a tout.

It amazes me that with so many tourists in Egypt, not many make the 20-hour, decrepit bus ride journey to a place which people over thousands of years have been immersed in. Even Alexander the Great visited Siwa in 331 BC to consult the great Oracle of Amun, and ask if he truly was the son of Zeus (how egotistical!). In 525 BC, the Persians lost an entire army of 50,000 men to when they got lost in the desert en route to destroy that same Oracle.

I spent a couple of days wondering how this could be possible, until I ventured out into the desert to see for myself. With a 4×4 Land Rover, a turban clad driver and two hilarious Koreans, we got lost in the Great Sand Sea. At some points, we would reach the top of a 60m high sand dune and not be able to see below us as the nose of the vehicle loomed over the drop. It was great! We found some cool springs, and bathed in some warm ones, before watching a desert sunset and sleeping in a Bedouin camp. In the desert, the night is lit by the moon and the stars, which are so impossibly numbered that I got dizzy trying to count them (and I’m a great counter!). Then our driver left: “I go to town to sleep, I come back in the morning.” Then, Australia looked at Korea and started making a fire.

The following morning, I had scorpions in my shoes, sand filling my lungs and my hair was as electrified as ever. To try and blend in with the local culture, I made a point of not showering and eating foul with my fingers before hopping on a series of buses to the complete other side of the country, Dahab in the Sinai peninsula. As any person who is cultured and worth their salt knows, the only thing more exciting than an argument in Russian, is an argument in Arabic! Some punk Egyptian stole my seat at an interchange 8 hours through my journey, and the driver gave him a mouthful, nearly a fistful, and a get-the-hell-off-my-busful, further enforcing my view that the foreign traveler is the law.

Happy new year!