sahinfe

Perhaps the most important aspect of desert travel in the Sahara is to have the feeling that even today, the epoch of
great discoveries is not yet over.

One drives for hours through deserted country only to arrive at an oasis, deserted for millennia, where clay ovens and
pottery shards still bear witness to the fact that this served as a stopping point for caravans in Roman times. Whether
Roman forts, pharaonic graves, Persian conquerors or more, the desert offers as just as much culture as nature.

There are places in the Western Desert of Egypt where already during the Stone Age jewellery and flints were
produced. The fate of the Persian army of Kambyses, which with 50'000 troops marched from Dahkla through Farafra
all the way to Siwa and then was swallowed by a powerful sandstorm (as the legend tells), remains to this day a secret
well kept by the Great Sand Sea - as do the Stone Age rock sketches and paintings in the Gilf Kebir and Gebel
Uweinat.

Perhaps you remember the desert film The English Patient, which was filmed in Tunisia. The story of the Hungarian
desert researcher, explorer and spy of the German army, Graf Edouard Almasy actually happened exactly in the area
where the borders of Libya, Egypt and Sudan meet - the Gilf Kebir.

The list of discoverers and researchers continues almost endlessly.

Even in our civilised times, the Sahara's landscapes, people and naturalness have lost none of their unique character.
To drive or wander through the desert, by foot or by camel, to listen to the silence, to feel the sandy wind on one's skin,
to watch the incredibly clear stars twinkle - these are moments which can hardly be expressed in words. Desert fever
grabs some of us and never lets go.

The desert has a mystique which has always had a strong effect on mankind. Often this was - and is - equated with
forces of evil. So thought the ancient Egyptians, and the Greeks and Romans after them.

Still today, the desert ecosystem is considered a secretive and dangerous No Man's Land with a hostile climate,
especially in Egypt. Hence the problems of the Egyptian government, whose resettlement plans aimed at solving the
problems of overpopulation along the Nile Valley and in the delta region are continually defeated. People can hardly
imagine a life so far so called civilisation and associate this with a life of privation.

I was always surprise how little knowledge urban Egyptian had about there nearest environment. Telling them to drive
next weekend to Farafra, they asked me to bring back some fish for them (Farafra, yeah, sounds like the newest resort
at the coastlines of the Sinai).

I beg to differ with these views. Much has already been written about the radiating beauty of the desert. I can only
agree with that and

I MISS THE DESERT !