It was my first camping trip ever in the desert; it was then that I got acquainted with Sandman. Wait a minute! Let’s not just get carried away now, I will take you on a flashback first.
So you think you can tell?
On October 4, 2014 I travelled to the White Desert in Farafra, Egypt and it was my first desert camping trip ever. It was a whole new and challenging experience for me since it was no ordinary camping trip for it was fore mostly an astronomy camp. From the moment that the bus pulled over and we got on the 4x4 Land cruisers in order to reach the camping site, my eyes were greeted with seas of endless white and pale yellow sands, and the more we delved deep into the desert the more the sand was vivid and the color ranges were now more and differed as two new colors were added to the natural sand palette: cream and snow-white. For a minute you feel lost not knowing whether what you are seeing is sand or snow! Nature there enjoys playing mind games, especially with newbies like myself back then.
By sunset, we reached the camping site in the heart of the White Desert and we were surrounded by massive chalk rock formations which differ in color, size, and shape; and we took photos of the very well known ‘Mushroom rock’ which looks like a giant standing mushroom in the middle of seas of snow-white sands. The funny part here for me was that I couldn’t stop my imagination from comparing rock shapes to animals, people, gadgets and I even gave some of them names and created imaginary conversations between them in my head! Yeah yeah, well, I’ve a vivid and funny imagination, but if you also do, you’ll enjoy camping there big time.
At the evening, we started setting up our tents and the camp leader lit fire to keep us warm and to keep any unfriendly feline guests at a distance. The weather there at that time of the year is known to be the best in terms of temperature and wind speed that’s why it was the perfect timing to observe the stars and to photograph star trails. However, remember when I said earlier that nature enjoys playing mind games? Well, she now decided to play some physical games too, hurray! Suddenly, a sandstorm erupted and it kept on increasing… We were then away from the camp in order to clean up the portable toilet which the camp leader set up before the storm. We were caught! And well, ahem, we all wanted to take a leak. We had to carry on, and after some hilarious situations like peeing close eyed in the dark, we moved on. On our way back to the camp, the wind pushed us with the might of hundreds of titans and we couldn’t open our eyes because sand was slapping our faces really hard and prickling our eyelids. Finally, against all odds, we reached the camp. After the storm calmed down a bit, we started to observe the stars through telescopes and bare-eyed. I felt like stepping into a dream wide awake! I could see the Milky Way that I’ve always heard of, yaaaay! I also observed Jupiter, Venus, Polaris, the Constellation Leo and Orion Nebula. On finishing the star observation, we had our long awaited dinner and then started to prepare our tents to sleep.
Here comes the fun part. Ready? ;) After blankets and sleeping bags were distributed, the camp leader advised us to keep our bags and above all our shoes inside the tent! I thought to myself, there are no shoe thieves in here, are you kidding?! I asked him why and he said because our little cute fennec fox friend likes to collect souvenirs, i.e. our shoes! :DD So, I thought, “wicked! I’ll leave them out then so as to see this little shy cutie and make friends with!” However, my plan failed because the camp leader did not leave until he made sure all of us hid our shoes, and we did (sadly). Then we closed our tents, and I flipped inside my sleeping bag and fought the scary wind sounds to sleep. While I was slipping into soothing sleep, it was then when I first got acquainted with Sandman… I was alerted by a massive shower of sands hitting against the tent’s linoleum and I could smell, taste and see the sand determinedly pushing itself through the tent. All of a sudden, the tent was filled with sand as if it was a portable mini beach! I had to sit to move the sand out of the tent, and I did. On opening the tent, I could see a giant whirl of sand at a distance that looks like an old man gathering his grandchildren for a bedtime story!
Against all odds, I surprisingly slept that night. Ironically, when I woke up early next morning to get ready for visiting new sites, I had a funny feeling while I was lying curled up in my sleeping bag. I opened my eyes, but my eyes felt weird; I touched my face, lips, and ears and they felt weird; I cleared my throat and it also felt weird. The corners of my eyes and my ears were full of sand as if they turned into sand saving pockets and my eyes pricked me really hard; I felt as if my face was covered with lime powder and was dusty; and my throat felt like a freshly paved road while I could feel sand crunching in my mouth! My dear Sandman refused to leave me without some generous tokens to remind me of his mightiness in the morning. Surely, it was a night to remember and Sandman was an unexpected mighty friend, yet he had been a generous one!
