Oases

I have been out traveling through the desert. As if it wasn’t hot enough here in Luxor, I thought I would go where it’s even hotter, in the middle of the desert lol. I went with my driver and guide to the Dahkla Oasis and the El Karga Oasis. El Karga is a small town with far too much concrete, but some nice deserts around it. We were pretty much just passing through here, and taking a break from the long journey. The cafe in El Karga sucked. The drive from Luxor the El Karga was quite pretty. It mostly consisted of desert, short mountains, tiny villages, and farmland. There of course were also about a dozen road blocks we had to check in at. At least they didn’t make us go in a convoy, it was more of a private convoy with far too many checkpoints. It will be so nice to travel around Egypt once they have finally done away with all of these damn tourist checkpoints and convoys.

Just after Daklah oasis we met the Bedouin guide, who took us to his house. I had opted for the Bedouin lunch instead of going to some restaurant. I have to say Bedouin food is much yummier then restaurant food. We all sat on the floor on cushions with the huge pile of food in front of us, and ate it all with our hands. I’m still wondering how Egyptians pack away so much food. I have been thinking that there is always so much food around for my benefit since I’m a tourist, however everyone that I ask says they regularly eat this much. They must do a lot of exercise to stay thin or something. I told them if I were to stay in Egypt too long eating like this, I wouldn’t be able to fit onto the plane home LOL.

The main Bedouin guide and I poured over the maps for a few hours, and it’s a very good thing I had the English speaking guide which was pretty much a translator for much of this trip, with me. I was shown the locations of a few caves around the area, as well as some overnight camping areas in the desert. I opted for the overnight camping. The Bedouin house was an interesting set of opposites. The toilet was just a hole in the floor (I have seen a few of these now), but in the other room there is a new computer with internet access. Apparently the Bedouins have embraced technology. They all also seem to own cel phones. On a side note, I have yet to find anywhere in Egypt that does not have a cel phone signal! I even asked my guide when we really were in the middle of nowhere and he still had a signal. There are cel towers all over the place with a heap of solar panels attached to them. Even when we were in the middle of the desert, everyone still got cel calls. Egyptians are even worse then us westerners when it comes to answering their cel phones at any point in time, even times when it would be considerably rude.
My guides and I went over to the Dahkla museum and an ancient mud brick town. The town had a couple of mosques, some ancient large tools used for grinding flour, and oil, and other old machinery. The mosques were all mud brick and looked quite awesome. All of the houses, the schoolhouse, the library, the butcher shop and so forth were all made of mud brick. The fact that they are two stories high and still standing to this day is amazing! You could easily get lost in this town as it is all thin alleyways and many twists and turns. However, along the way we picked up yet another guide (So at this point it was me, my driver, my guide, one of the Bedouin guides, and a local guide to the area) all touring about this little town. There were still a few people that live in this town, even though the government kicked them all out. I guess they couldn’t get rid of every single last person living there. They tried to sell me something that I couldn’t quite make out what it was. It looked like a cross between a mojo bag and something you put in your hair...

Next up was the local area artefacts museum. They had it setup like a house, with the ancient chairs and tables in the “dining room”, the cooking supplies in the “kitchen” and so on. There was of course some pretty jewellery and clothing as well. The old pottery was the oddest pottery designs I have ever seen, mostly figures of people going about their work, but with a hollow bit so they were pitchers etc.

The desert in this area was just beautiful and so incredibly quiet! After everyone was settled down to sleep, I could not hear a single noise accept for an owl. Our camping spot was a decent ways out into the desert, and we found a nice alcove which we setup in. The sand was nice and soft on the bear feet to walk around in as well. It was pretty much like being on the beach but without any ocean, and no sun bathers.

During the entire trip the Bedouin folks cooked for us, more food then one could possibly eat, and they kept trying to encourage me to eat more. They also seemed to always have a neverending supply of tea no matter what time of day it was. The most fun part of hanging out with the Bedouin people (the four of them), was when it came to the part of the evening which consisted of singing and music. The pipe player was just awesome, and the drummer was pretty damn good as well. They had us join in on the singing and clapping, and my driver talked me into dancing for everyone. I am definitely out of practice with dancing, and he might have even done a better job at it. So it ended up at the end of the trip, my guide had recorded the Bedouin music and it was now the ring tone on his cel phone.

Sleeping in the desert is a wonderful experience. It is extremely peaceful, and the areas we were in felt very protected. There was a certain stillness about the area, with just a gentle breeze blowing to make sure things didn’t get too hot. I was told that it gets cold at night in the desert, and I think they mean in the winter, since it never did get cold when I was there. It got cold enough that I actually put my cover all the way on just before dawn but that was about it. I didn’t need the long pants for jacket I packed specifically for the desert that I hear gets cold at night.

Waking up in the desert is another wonderful experience. It is so very peaceful and you can see the sunrise across the entire desert. I was the first up, so I went and climbed up and walked along the ride of the mini mountains to watch the sunrise from up above the campsite.
Magic seems to work MUCH more strongly in the desert. I’m not entirely sure why, it could be the lack of people that every pass through any given area, or perhaps the lack of people that live anywhere near that area. It is likely the lack of any electricity, even if there is still things like cel phone reception, there isn’t electricity in that area at all, not even in the few nearest tiny villages. The quietness of the place also seems to lend itself well to magic and evocation in particular. The odd thing is that I didn’t feel any Djinn presence, which surprised me as I thought I would. The area was surprisingly invisible free.... well up until I did my evocations anyways... They did all leave afterwards though, so I’m sure the desert went back to it’s peaceful self.

In the desert one doesn’t get the modern conveniences such as TV, a bathroom, or running water. The bathroom problem was easy to overcome, it’s not like I’ve never been camping before. I found out that to have our morning showers we would all walk over to the local well area where there were pools of hot water running down the waterway. The reason it was hot was all of the sunshine, so it was like hopping into a hot bathtub. I was rather surprised as I was expecting cold water. All around the well were fields of olive trees, accept they weren’t quite olive trees yet, they were these tall flowers with a long green stem and a ball of little white flowers on the top (see photos for more details). They were similar to our garlic flowers.