The White and Black Deserts

The Black and White Deserts are not your typical types of deserts. They are not the vast plains of sand and towering dunes you think of when you think of the Sahara, ones like you can find in Merzouga or Siwa, but they are still fascinating pieces of nature that are well worth the visit.

When it comes to what to see, the deserts themselves are the attractions. Just driving around and taking in the deserts works, but there are certain places that are considered the best places to see the desert that any guide will take you to, places like Pyramid Mountain and Jebel el-Ingliz, but there are also the fascinating "rock mushrooms," and of course the single best highlight is at least one night spent in the desert.

Quick Tips:

When you go to Bahariyya, the best thing to do is hire a guide. Guides not only know the area and can show you the sights, but they will be able to give you one price for your whole stay there that will include all your food, equipment, lodging, as well as the guide fees. I do not recommend going at it alone, as it is just not smart or safe. We found our guide through a recommendation of a friend in Cairo, and made our arrangements beforehand. I recommend you do this as well, that way they can meet you when you arrive, and have everything ready. Your hotel, or any travel agent in Cairo, can make the arrangements for you. Our guide was Badri, unfortunately I have lost all his info, but if you can locate him, everyone in Bahariyya knows him, you will be fine. You can also just show up in Bahariyya, the bus drops you off at the Office of Tourism and you can find a guide no problem.

Best Way To Get Around:

The best way to get to Bahariyya is by Bus from Cairo or Luxor. You can drive yourself, but it is not recommended. Bus is much cheaper and easier. The buses leave Cairo from the Turgoman station downtown, and cost about 75 LE. The ride is around four hours.

Once you are in Bahariyya, your guide will take care of all your transportation. Most of it will be by 4x4. You can also arrange for a camel tour if your wish. It is much less comfortable, and if you do not have a lot of time you will probably not see as much, but if you have always wanted to do a camel trek, this is a good place to do it.

The Black Desert, outside of the Bahariyya oasis, is likely unlike any desert you have seen before. It is a desert that looks like it belongs more on the surface of some far away planet than on earth. In place of sand, there are layers of black rocks, smoothed by years of wind, expand in all directions towards the horizon, and in place of dunes, there are mountains of crumbled black stone hundreds of feet tall that shoot out of the earth unexpectedly at points throughout the desert.

Our tour of the Black Desert started at one such dune of rock, Gebel el-Ingliz, on top of which sits an decrepit former English army outpost. On top of this giant cliff of black basalt and beige sand, amid the ruins of the colonial era, you can see far across the plains of the black desert. From above, Bahariyya looks like a tiny green haven of life being swallowed by an expanse of deathly blacks and browns.

From there we continued on to the Pyramid Mountain, one of the many mountains of rock that shoot up from the ground much like pyramids out of the desert. A narrow footpath winds its way up the mountain, and after about fifteen minutes of climbing and a couple hundred feet, you get what is the best view in the Black Desert. The ground below is a light brown, seemingly dusted in black, with huge crevices running through it like lines on the palm of your hand, and hills jutting out of the randomly dotting its surface. Atop Pyramid mountain, your jeep below is a small speck of white in a dusty field, and you as you sit, resting on a smooth basalt rock looking about you, you will indeed wonder if you haven’t landed on the surface of some distant planet.

After Pyramid Mountain, we continued on, riding in the back of our 4x4, towards the White Desert further south. Along the way, though, we stopped at Crystal Mountain, a small hill that sparkles like crystal under the intense rays of the Egyptian sun due to thousands of bits of crystal-like rock that were embedded into the rocks of the Desert over millions of years. Eventually, after a few ours of speeding along the narrow path through the desert, out guide pulled the jeep over to show us another spectacular sight, the point at which the Black Desert and the White Desert come together. At this point, towering dunes of sand, provoked by the wind, slowly creep out, engulfing the black stones of the Black Desert. It is amazing to gaze upon these enormous piles of fine sand, overtake the Black Desert, covering it with a soft layer of sand. It was here that our excursion into the Black Desert ended, and we gave ourselves over to the calming beauty of the White Desert.

At first glance, the White Desert seems much more like the type of desert we imagine the Sahara to be. It's full of dunes made of fine sun-bleached sand that spread deep into the horizon. It is the perfect contrast to the Black Desert. Where the Black Desert has a certain darkness and sense of oppressiveness, the White Desert is soothing and calm, the perfect place to spend a night under the pure desert sky.

The White Desert is a ways outside of Bahariyya, far south on the road to the oasis of Farafara. After a good hour and half of driving through the rough terrain of the Black Desert, we watched as the land around us turned from a dusty mix of brown and black to the light brown, almost white, of the fine sand of the White Desert. Eventually, our driver leaned back to tell us to hold on as we veered off the narrow jeep path, and on to the sand. We watched as our driver adeptly lead the jeep across the sand, following a path invisible to us, but that was burned into his mind after years of excursions into the desert. The jeep floated across the desert for a good while until it came to a halt atop of a small precipice. Following our guide we got out of the vehicle and looked around in amazement at the new landscape that lay before us. At the foot of the white stone and sand cliff, a sea of sand, spotted with small lumps of rock extended as far as we could see. This was the Plain of Tents, our guide told us, and indeed that small rock bumps that poked out of the sand looked like little tents, a whole field of them. These formations, were most likely much larger, but had been worn down after millennia of wind and sand erosion. It is from these soft, white, limestone rocks that spread themselves out over the sand, that the White Desert gets its name.

After a few minutes of gazing at the rock tents before us, we headed on to what proved to be an even more spectacular sight. The jeep continued on across the expanse below, weaving around the rock formations. As we moved along, the rocks slowly became larger, and soon we were stopped at the foot of at least ten good sized rock mushrooms, as our guide called them. These mushrooms were rock formations, ten to fifteen feet tall, whose limestone bases had been worn away by the mixture of wind and sand that had blown by them at high speeds for thousands of years. Seemingly defying the laws of gravity, these huge rocks stood high atop narrow bases that looked like they could crack at any moment. Our guide waited as we took climbed atop the rocks and took our photos, but soon it was time to head on, for the sun was about to set, and we needed to set up camp.

The jeep seemed to float across the sand as our driver weaved it around dowering hills of white limestone. The sun was getting close to the horizon, and we needed to set up camp. The four of us sitting in the back of the jeep, bubbled with excitement, for this is what we had traveled nearly six hours from the comfort of our homes in Cairo for, a night under the stars and the desert moon.

As the Egyptian writer Bahaa Taher said, the desert is the "garden of the soul," a place people have traveled to for centuries looking for answers to the problems of life. Alexander the Great had came deep into the Western Desert of Egypt searching for answers from a sacred oracle, numerous British adventurers came in the early 20th century searching for the secrets of the great Egyptian civilization, and we were coming then, looking to escape the pressures of our lives back at home, even if just for a night, and the White Desert on the edge of the Sahara was the perfect place to do it.

It had been about an hour since we left the main road and entered the sands of the desert when our driver stopped, turned to us, and said, "this is where we’ll camp." There, at the foot of mound of limestone, on the bleached sands of the White Desert, we immediately went to work setting up our camp, which only required lying a few large pieces of cloth to the jeep to protect us from the wind, and then laying down a few layers of camel hair blankets to shield us from the piercing cold of the desert night.

By the time the sun had set, we had gotten everything set up and our guide had started preparing dinner. While dinner was being prepared, we took the time to wander about our surroundings, gaze up at the stars, and sit and chat with the other Egyptian who had come along with us for the night. One of the most surprising things about the desert is the silence. There are no trees or animals, nothing but the wind, and the soft crackle of the fire. There are no lights, but the light of the stars and the nearly full moon sufficed.

Before we knew it, our dinner was ready, a tasty tomato based stew of chicken and vegetables, served with bread. The desert at night could seemingly be a lonely place, but there eating dinner with a couple of friends, our guide, and another traveler, we had all the company we needed. After dinner we sipped mint tea, and then entertained ourselves with games. The Egyptian taught us a game involving stones, and we in turn taught him tic-tac-toe. As it got deeper into the night, we retreated into the warmth of our blankets. With the soft sand below providing the perfect mattress, we were all soon asleep under the desert night sky.

Our first afternoon in Bahariyya, we were far to exhausted by the four and a half hour bus ride from Cairo, to do anything that involved much physical activity. That is why when our guide, Badri, whom we had just met, asked if we wanted to take a dip in one of the local hot springs, we agreed. Despite the oppressive heat of that April day, the hot springs sounded like just the thing we needed after the hot and dusty bus ride.

We hopped into our jeep and headed through the palm tree-lined streets of Bahariyya, and then into the date forests until we pulled up to a small concrete pool. Admittedly we all looked at the concrete pool, with a giant pipe pouring water into it, and then looked at each other wondering if this was the hot spring we had been promised. Sure, in all our ignorance, when we heard "hot spring," we had imagined a small lake bubbling out of the desert, clan, hot and inviting. We didn’t really imagine that it would be a concrete pool in the middle of a date forest. Nonetheless we decided to give it a shot. As we approached the pool, our guide ripped off his shirt and jumped in. His head peeking out of the water, he urged us to follow. Hesitantly we looked at the water flowing through the pool, and then looked at each other. It did look warm and inviting, so why not. We hoped in and soon the soothing warmth of the pool melted away the initial shock of feeling the layer of slime on the bottom of the pool. Floating around the hot spring, the layers of dirt gathered from our voyage seemed to wash away. It was the perfect welcome to Bahariyya, calming and soothing, after we were finished we felt ready to conquer the desert, but that was for the next day.

For the rest of that day we continued our drive around the oasis, admiring this bastion of green in the middle of the desert. Eventually we ended up just outside of town, on the edge of a vast lake. The sun was starting to set as we exited the jeep, painting the sky beautiful hues of red and purple. Despite the late hour, the heat was still overwhelming, so encouraged by our guide we waded into the refreshing cool of the lake and watched as the sun set behind the hills. It was just how we needed to start our first day in the oasis. Immediately all the pressures and worries of our lives back in Cairo were washed away, and we were ready to head into the desert with clear minds.

When in Bahariyya, it is good to try and get a feel for the local culture, because life out in Baharaiyya, and the other Western oases, is much different than that back in Cairo. Life in Bahariyya has been revolved around the desert for centuries, and the people today, still hold a strong attachment with the desert that surrounds them. The people of Bahariyya are claim to descent from both the Arabs, as well as the Berbers that lived in the region for centuries long before the arrival of the Arabs, and for that region, the culture that exists today in Bahariyya is a curious mixture of Arab traditions, and those of the Berbers. One of the most important parts of the culture is music, and thus one of the best ways to get a glimpse into this culture is through music. Thus when on our first night in Bahariyya, our guide, Badri, suggested that after we finished up our dinner of grilled chicken, that we head of to go visit some of his friends and hear some traditional music, we naturally agreed.

According to Badri, a group of locals get together every night in a large just outside the oasis and play music together, and whoever wants to can come. When we arrived, night had fallen, and inside the tent there was no light but the light from the fire burning in the center. We took our place on some pillows. Across from us an older man sat, with a small string instrument in his had, surrounded by some younger boys holding drums. They welcomed us, and another man came up offering us some mint tea. Soon the tent started to fill up with more locals and by the time the music started to play, the tent was full, and we were the only foreigners in the place. The boys beat there drums, while the man strummed at his instrument, and squeezed the words out of his mouth, in a sort of rhythmic chant. As the music continued, Badri explained that these were traditional songs, many of them about the desert and about God. After a song finished, the locals would applaud, and often would often shout out praises or a request as the musicians before the next song started. While the music played, everyone just sat, in silence, sipping tea, feeling the warmth of the fire, and taking in every note and every word. Even if you couldn’t understand the words, you could tell that he was singing about something beautiful and the whole thing was extremely powerful.

After the music ended, we sat around and chatted with the musician and the other locals for a while, drinking more and more tea, and exchanging with them our impressions of Egypt and of Bahariyya. All of it was a great experience, and a side of Egypt that I hadn’t seen before. It was a great way to spend our first night in Bahariyya.