Black and White Deserts, Bahariya Oasis

Black and White Deserts

It was hard to pin down Talat Abdel Mulah, the owner of Eden Camp about the price of a safari through the Black and White deserts. At first he said it was depended on the number of people and the tone of the conversation quickly slipped into jokes about the color of my underwear. The price would be depended on how bright they were. Talat is a charismatic person who runs the camp well but a bit much to take. I set my boundaries with him very clearly when I arrived but he still could not help putting his arm around me and making jokes every time he had a chance. In the end, everything worked out well. He arranged for me to join a very nice Egyptian group from Cairo and the price was the standard price he said all foreigners paid. Not completely true as I found out later, but I am happy with what I paid.

We were in a caravan of two 4X4 Jeeps. We started our safari with our drivers zooming through vast expanses of black and beige sand, with the occasional conic shaped mountains, typical of volcanic areas. We stopped at some them for a hike, and saw charcoal broiled pieces of stone all over the place. This must have been a fiery volcano, burning everything around for hundreds of miles. The Black desert, to my surprise, is a lot larger than the Western and White deserts.

The Western desert is right next to the Black and it is not less dramatic. We stopped for lunch at a protected area where the drivers set up carpets on the sand where we ate. While they prepared our lunch, me and the Egyptian group took pictures in a glacial white cave-like rock formation, in high contrast with the expanses of caramel colored sand all around us. At times, I could not find any reference, nothing that could be compared to this scenery. For all I knew, this could be the moon, or the bottom of a waterless sea.

When we got to the White desert, 125 miles away from Bahariya Oasis, heading towards the Al-Farafra Oasis in the south, the scenery got even more eerie and less familiar. The white sculptures we saw of animals, birds and mushrooms almost looked like art pieces; some burning man type artist playing with glacial arctic figurines in the moon! Yes, it was almost a pshychodelic experience.

More pictures, more wowed exclamations. This is just an amazing place.
The snow-white desert is made of chalk that has been exposed for years. Geologists call it "differential weathering," which is the erosion of soft particles, resulting in eerie protrusions of hard rock.

It reminded me of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia and Chile, a salt desert, probably also the bottom of the sea eons of time in the past. What a beautiful planet! I am so lucky I get to see it.

On our way back we stopped at a crystal mountain where I sat for a few minutes to get their pure and clear energy. Pieces of crystals were coming out of mountain and I got a few small ones that were laying on the ground. I can use all the clear energy I can get. When we got back to the jeep the drivers had tea ready for us. I love Egyptian hospitality!

By the time the sun was setting, we were driving past the Black desert again and stopped to admire another good day on earth. At least nature seemed content, just being in the moment, waiting for the next cosmic episode that would shake them out of their current blissful slumber, mutating into the next eerie, beautiful scenery for us to admire.