Just a couple of weeks before the Arab Spring, I had decided to flee the howling blizzards sweeping Europe white, and embarked on a short expedition intending to cross on foot a small part of the Egyptian Sahara called the White Desert. Upon arrival at the Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris, I started to feel buckets of cold sweat flowing down my spine, and my legs took on the consistency of over boiled spaghettis: limpy, shaky, squidgy…
The departure board kept blinking red “Cancelled”s, except for the Swiss International flight to Cairo, via Zurich… We left Paris howling in panic under 10cm of snow and, 4h30 later, slowly started our descent into the heavily polluted labyrinth of the frantic Egyptian capital. The next day, we will be heading South and leave the asphalt to burry our feet into the golden banks of the Great Sand Sea.
One thing about Cairo is to keep your head straight, fixed and focused… Otherwise you’ll rapidly get trapped into a whirlwind by its swarming life, your head flapping from one side to another by incessant slaps of colours and powerful smells. Apoplexy will tighten your chest, and you’ll end up tightening your teeth in response, clenching your jaw around pieces of tyres stuck between your incisors after being run over 10 times by the same buzzing car.
In this dusty anthill of 6.76 million inhabitants, Al-Qahira “The Victorious” shelters spellbinding relics of its grandiose History. They overflow all-night long, spilling their proud and welcoming population into a network of interlacing arteries, make the city breath warm with life.
24 hours later, rucksack on the back, swelteringly hot under the December sun, we are getting out of the madness of Gizeh, heading south.
At a midway point between Cairo and Assouan, a small corner of desert makes us dive into Saharian immensity. Sahara el Beyda, the White Desert, is an otherworldly landscape of creamy waves crowned by sandy foam, a prehistorical seabed that now tans its skin in an endless summer. In the East, mushrooms of limestone arch the ground, while the West wilderness whispers tales of caravan expeditions and bold adventures.
Doomed to complete destruction by the pressure of luxury tourism, the White Desert remains the only place on Earth where exploring the depths of the oceans happens on foot and under a blazing sun.
Link: http://tales-of-a-skytrekker.blogspot.co.uk/
