Desert Travels: Encounters With Dali’s Dreams, “Shamanic Consciousness!” & Berber Libertarianism

I spent almost 5 days in the Western Desert in Egypt and discovered some amazing landscapes, proud people and interesting fellow travelers.

FYI – (a) The Western Desert covers two thirds of Egypt and extends for 310 miles west of the river Nile. (b) Sahara in Arabic means desert - so Western Desert in Egypt is a sahara but not the Sahara!

Black & White: A Natural Expression in Surrealism

My first stop was an overnight camping trip about 300 miles south west of Cairo where one discovers the wonders of two distinctly contrasting landscapes - Black Desert and White Desert. In the Black Desert, landscape changes color from sandy beige to a smattering of dark black along the desert floor and mountain tops. (The scenes here reminded me of the burnt out mountain sides one notices after forest fires in California.) The thin layer of black in the desert apparently is from the debris and lava spewed out by volcanoes active here many millions of years ago!

I found the White Desert to be much more stunning. It is the soft limestone of this desert sculpted by desert winds into bizarre and fantastic shapes that takes your breath away. When you spend a long night with utter silence and a black sky with gazillion stars, you start thinking of mother Nature as the most scintillating craftswoman (or craftsperson)... Here are some pictures of these beautiful desert deviants!

Faces of The Desert – Indigenous & Outsiders

During this part of the trip I ran into many interesting people including an Italian geologist who was kind enough to explain a lot about the rocks and sand in the desert. Only a geologists can say – “Oh! these fossils are pretty young, say about 30 million years”. (My idea of pretty young things is obviously “pretty” different!)

And then I ran into this group of German and Swiss people who had just come back from a 5-day camping trip in the desert as part of a “Shamanic Consciousness” seminar. They talked about experiences of ecstasy and love and used phrases like “Natural Language Processing” to train the mind. Finally a guy said I should check out the energy in that room in the ruins of the Temple of Oracle in Siwa (an oasis – see below) where the Sybil (the black priestess) used to make her pronouncements. Finally something I could experiment with – I stood in that room looking for energy - flowing or static. To me it all sounded like a bunch of hooey – I didn't feel no energy – but then may be I haven't yet met a real Shaman.

Check out another weird story below -

Life in the Oases

My idea of an oasis was a little watering hole in the middle of the desert surrounded by palm groves and few, if any, dwellings around. It turns out all the five major oases in the Western Desert are full-fledged towns (with populations in tens of thousands) set in geological depressions many miles long & wide and sometimes below sea-level, with the surrounding desert floor acting as an escarpment around the oasis. These oases have multiple springs feeding them with water. These springs can be natural or man-made; cold or hot water; fresh or salt water. I spent a few nights in two oasis - Bahariya and Siwa.

The Siwa oasis, close to the Libyan border is much more interesting for many reasons -

1. It has a long and interesting history – among other things, Alexander the Great visited here to be declared son of Zeus by the famous Oracle in Siwa; a few centuries later Cleopatra visited as well and bathed in one of the natural springs (I swam there as well – the bubbles do tingle!); the British and the Italians bombed each other around Siwa during WWII...

2. Siwa's indigenous population is Berber who are fiercely independent and nearly ignore the diktats of regional and federal government. In my conversations with the locals, I learnt that there are 11 tribes, each headed by a Sheik. These 11 Sheiks basically run the affairs of the village. E.g. (a) Locals buy and sell land and the transactions are not recorded by the government but blessed by the Sheiks; (b) To settle disputes (like water theft for irrigation purposes or other infractions) among Siwans, the Sheik of the plaintiff and the Sheik defendant discuss over a cup of tea and hammer out solutions including monetary compenation and 80 beatings by stick publicly! The local police and judiciary is involved for matters related to non-Siwans.

The economy of the oases mainly revolves around growing palms and olives and to a lesser extent figs, apricots etc. Tourism is another major source of income for the locals who in addition to selling regular lodging-related services also sell desert safaris (including sand surfing, dune buggies, etc.) and handicrafts.

Here are some of my encounters with people, landscapes and life generally around these oases -