Location: Middle of the White Desert
Miles travelled: 321 miles (N27 17.225 E28 11.131)
Weather: 30ºC – Sunny
Today we mostly listened to: Elbow
So we finally got out of Cairo!!! We picked up Monty yesterday from the garage and left an hour later (with a significantly lighter wallet!). Special thanks go to the lovely Essam who has been incredibly helpful and generous throughout our stay in Cairo. If you ever get stuck in a Land Rover in Egypt, head to Essam for help (we’ll post his email and the GPS coordinates for the dealership on our ‘points about Egypt blog’.
After a quick trip to Carrefore to stock-up on supplies for the desert we hit the road. Unfortunately the rush hour traffic meant we didn’t get very far. After 3 hours stuck in Cairo traffic we decided that it probably best to camp one last night at the Salma campsite and get up early to leave the big smoke.
The Salma site was much the same as when we left it two weeks ago – apart from 10 Egyptian pounds more expensive and with some new shower curtains in the ladies toilets (which I think constituted a re-furb!).
Up at 6 this morning – porridge and coffee followed before we hit the road to once again try and leave Cairo. Happily we made it out this time and on to the desert road to Bawati. The landscape changed significantly throughout the day going from rocky flat plains to black hilly mounds and finally in to the sand and white rocks of the White Desert. We stopped for a quick drink at Bawati before deciding to push on to find somewhere to camp in the White Desert Park. We turned off the main road around 4.30 after a few stops to look at the amazing white rocks. After driving for about 20 mins we found a nice site and watched the sunset whilst setting up camp Monty. A delicious supper of BBQ prawns and rice followed.
After the sun had gone down we started to see a large light in the distance and wandered whether there was some large dessert party going on over the horizon – it took us about 10 seconds to realise it was the moon rising! Seriously it sounds like a dense comment to make, but it really did look spectacularly bright.
We’re now sat in the absolute middle of nowhere – just us, Monty and the Adam & Joe podcast. Getting up early to watch the sunrise tomorrow so early night is in order.
Some other slightly less interesting facts from the day….. Charlie christened the campa crapper, oh and we broke the anti-roll bar somehow – need to fix that tomorrow if we can!
