March 24, Wednesday

From Siwa to

Our Second Campsite, Again Near Sutra

The idea this morning was to catch the sunrise over the edge of the Great Sand Sea and visit a small well a few km east of Siwa. But the car was acting up again, and we missed the sunrise -- scrambled up a rocky hill rising out of the sand to see a molten red ball floating just over the horizon -- not a bad substitute for the rising sun itself.

We walked from the hill down to Bir Wahid -- "Well One" -- a hot spring with a small hotel whose welcome sign was signed "Mr. Governor." At the center of the hotel is the well, which discharges into a pool. It was cool early morning, but Jimmy plunged in, joining the Germans who had trooped out of their rooms soon after our arrival. I hesitated over my coffee but finally succumbed to his blandishments -- and glad I did, for despite the scum floating around, and the faint odor of rotten eggs, the water was warm and refreshing. Zoe, who had plunked herself in a lounge chair, finally gave in too, and we enjoyed a quarter hour or so of floating in the water, as the sun rose in the sky and stripped the chill from the morning air.

Back to the hotel after our swim, we packed, picked up Eph (who'd elected sleep over sunrise), and headed back into the desert for our next night of camping. We paused at a few sights on the way.

Abu Sharouf is a spring just 10-12 km outside Siwa now owned by a bottled water company. The spring discharges into a large pool with absolutely crystalline water; you can see all the way to the bottom. Fish dart and glitter in the depths. Below water level are a set of stairs and ashlar blocks forming an arc. I suspect the lower parts of the structure are Roman, and the arc perhaps part of a dam designed to pool the water of the spring. There were quite a few other folks around the spring too, including two Egyptians who insisted I take their picture.

Another long drive through the desert followed, back along the same, single road that runs between Siwa and Bahariya. We passed through the same checkpoints as two days before, this time delivering a box of tomatoes, cucumbers, and cigarettes that had been requested on our trip in the other direction. For our kindness we were repaid with an invitation to tea and a viewing of the art one soldier produced during the long, empty hours of duty. His plaque to Allah, in mosaic, hung proudly on the wall among pictures of Hosni Mubarak (president of Egypt) and other luminaries, graces the top of this page. The tea, by the way, was some of the best we'd had, an usual mixture of green Libyan and red Egyptian teas -- drunk seated in the shade of the duty hut, the white desert frying in front of us.

Our chief stop, however, was the Al-Agar Oasis. Another deserted oasis inhabited in Roman times, with, again, rock-cut tombs full of mummies and grave goods. (A few days out, and already we were becoming blasé, as if finding mummies were so common an experience that it no longer summoned wonder and a sense of privilege.) The tombs are cut into two rock faces that face each other across a narrow valley; when you walk along the low cliff past the tombs, suddenly the oasis opens up in front of you, in a classic display of the topography that makes an oasis -- escarpments, sharp and well-defined, in which the layers of Eocene deposits can be clearly seen; aprons of sand spreading out below in golden sheets; scraggly art on the depression floor, testimony to water reachable by their roots; and a vista rolling away under an endless sky, bounded only by the washed-out pastels of the far horizon.

The tombs did have some pretty amazing features, including some brilliantly painted plaster, both with geometric designs and one showing a man cutting a palm tree with a cow (?) standing next to it.

After exploring the tombs we had lunch in the shadow of the great escapment (part of which you can see on the left in the panorama shot above). For me, one of the great things about these lunches was the utter sense of isolation -- there was, literally, no one else around, no one knew precisely where we were, our cell phones did not work (Zoe has a great photo, taken at Abu Sharouf, of a guy standing on top of our truck trying to get a signal on his cell phone).  Had we not shown up within a few days, someone would have come looking for us, as we reported our itinerary at the checkpoints; but for the moment, in that place, we were as much out of the world and on our own as it is possible to be, short of a serious wilderness experience (that will come, for me!), without more planning. It felt wonderful.

We left Al-Agar late -- which meant a lot of long, hard driving, without stops, to try to get to our campsite before the sun set. Our goal was Sutra, again, not the same precise spot, but the same general area; and we almost didn't make it -- we reached our campsite as the sun was going down, and hastened to erect our tents in the gathering darkness, all of us but Zoe this time choosing spots away from the truck, Jimmy and Eph on the tops of dunes, their tents almost directly under Sirius as viewed from the truck. That evening Amgad, whose fonts of knowledge seem as deep as the pool at Abu Sharouf, gave a lesson on reading the stars; as I write I look at my sketch of the Milky Way, Betelgeuse, Sirius, Al-Dubrain, Procynus, and the other objects that filled the sky above our heads with a light that cannot be seen anywhere the pollution of mercury-vapor illumination blinds the night eye.

For the previous day, click March 23; for the next day, March 25;

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