Egypt, Part II

My Sudan visa issues have continued unabated and my temporary good feelings towards Cairo dissipated quickly enough. This meant breaking camp again from Cairo while waiting for permission to head across the border.

I decided that because I had already been west and south - and would eventually travel south again - that it was time to go westward. There is a limited destination choice in west Egypt, because you immediately run into the Sahara Desert and the only real population centers lie on the Mediterranean coast and in any oases that may pop up before the Libyan border.

The most entertaining place seemed to be the far-away oasis of Siwa. It was so far away, in fact, that it was a mere 30 miles from and the last oasis before the Libyan border. Of the two paths to get there, only one is practical for real travel, so I jumped on a bus that went through Alexandria and dropped me off at what I found to be a quaint town whose main mode of transportation was the donkey cart, with the motor bike following as a distant second.

The town itself is nothing outstanding, but spending time in an actual oasis in the middle of the Great Desert was a thrill in itself. Siwa is famous for its olives and dates, neither of which I'm particularly fond of, but I was content to live on fresh fruit and falafels while I was there. I spent my time exploring the various hot springs within the oasis and the giant salt lakes that surround it. The lakes themselves were formed as the Dead Sea was - a constant flow of water comes into the lakes and has nowhere to go. So while the incoming water is potable and palatable, the minerals within it have over time have accumulated as the water evaporates. This is what created the salt lakes.

I rented a bike for two days and set out to the lakes to explore and spent some truly serene time alone. A wonderful experience, with only the occasional gust of wind to keep me company among the salt flats and sand dunes. Other than that, there was pure silence and pure stillness for me to enjoy. For anyone heading to Egypt, I would recomend spending time here.

After a few days I decided to join a small group that was trekking across the desert to the oasis of Bahariyya, which lies to the east of Siwa. I was particularly excited about this because the trek was via the only other route to Siwa, one that virtually nobody took and was, I had heard, a hell of an experience to have.

It turned out to be just that. In small convoy of three 4X4's we set out on what can only charitably be described as a road. Paved at one point in the distant past, it now was a wreck and filled with cracks and giant holes, covered in some parts by the desert, and largely an irrelevant feature to the landscape. The majority of the road was so broken up, in fact, that we drove through the virgin desert in order to save our tires and shocks. Over the great dunes and mountains, occasionally stopping to dig out a stuck vehicle, we slowly struggled from checkpoint to checkpoint.

Under normal circumstances, these military checkpoints would be something for me to ridicule or hate for being a waste of time. Save for ourselves, no others were on that road as we traveled, and the frequent checkpoints we had to stop for could for all intents and purposes be considered stupid - there were no other paths for hundreds of kilometers and nothing at all threatening to the Egyptians. Jesus, if the Libyans wanted to invade, the Egyptians would have months before the Libyans made it through the desert to any respectable city. And that's fine if you want to make sure that travelers like us all have our passes, but with no joining roads, why the multiple checkpoints when one should suffice? Not to mention that these poor guys had the Siberian outposts of Egypt, what with their tiny and depressing one room building, the rubble-strewn yards, and their seemingly obligatory mangy stray dogs that would inevitably trot up to our approaching vehicles.

But it turned out that I was thankful for these checkpoints, if only because they would be our saviors if anything went wrong. A vehicle stuck in the sand was a common occurrence, sometimes as much as a two to three feet down. Likewise, spare tires could be used up alarmingly fast on the broken road and rocky desert. Really, there is an endless list of things that could potentially go wrong out there and these guys could potentially be life savers.

Baharriya itself wasn't that special, though the dinners and music we had every night were very pleasant. We camped one night in the desert and enjoyed some great food with the Bedouins (including some lamb that had been slaughtered for Eid Al-Adha) and in general I had an extremely pleasant time.

Soon enough I was back in Cairo, which had once again become something of a nemesis to me. It was the 4th time I had entered the city, and I was growing tired of the smog and the constant hustle. But incredibly, after once again going to the Sudanese embassy - I could go there now backwards with my eyes closed - they told me that it would be at least another two weeks. I muttered some curse words as I walked out and stalked back to my hostel, determined to do SOMETHING if I wasn't able to get to Sudan right away. Staying in Cairo was out of the question, and I had pretty much visited all of Egypt I cared to visit. Geographically limited because of visa issues for Libya to the west, I decided to go back on my earlier promise to myself and head north, into the Middle East.

Many countries within the Middle East have visa issues as complicated as Sudan's, so I made up my mind to travel to Israel and Jordan. Both were friendly, relatively hassle-free to get in and out of for Americans (I thought), and in general close enough to Sinai that I could come back to Cairo in a relatively short amount of time.

As I'm hoping to keep this country-by-country, I'm going to leave this post there and continue soon with a Jordan post. I hope everyone is well and nobody is snowed in right now.