Rest stop in the middle of the desert [1].
After leaving Cairo at 6:30 a.m. or so and going on a bus ride of six or seven hours, we got dropped off in a tiny town in the middle of the desert [2]. From there, we were driven to the home of one of our Bedouin guides and then loaded into the Jeep - the four of us and three Bedouins. Only one of them really spoke any English, but they were all really fun.
Our first stop: the dunes. Actually, surprisingly little of the area looked this - dunes and pure sand everywhere - even though it's kind of the typical picture of the desert.
Desert meditation. I actually did feel really calm and peaceful for the one second I was posing. [photo by Yasmin]
Volcanic rock.
[photo by Yasmin]
We stopped at a little Bedouin settlement in the middle of the desert [3] for lunch. These are the German brothers, Marcel and Kareem [who has a Muslim name (which I recently learned means "generous") because he converted to Islam a few years ago].
The spread. All the food and drinks were included in the price for the whole trip, which was about $50 for each person. [photo by Yasmin]
The rugs and cushions were just begging us to take a post-lunch siesta on them...
[photo by Yasmin]
...and who are we to deny them? [photo by Yasmin]
Although we were off-roading a lot of the time, there were also real roads - sometimes we'd even see semis driving through.
I hope whoever lost their shoes in the middle of the desert [4] is okay...
Peer pressured into one of the ultimate tourists-in-Egypt photos. [photo by Yasmin]
Partly because our Jeep was having problems and partly because it was a stop anyway, we stopped at a ridge overlooking a big valley with these formations in it. You don't really get the idea here, but it was beautiful. We took our shoes off and just ran in the sand all the way into the valley, and I felt fantastic and carefree and overcome with happiness. One of the absolute highlights of the trip.
So we had a dance party.
Our footprints into the valley from the ridge, where you can see two other Jeeps that stopped to help ours out. It was kind of funny - even though we were in the middle of the desert [5], there were so many groups out and about that we never had to wait long before someone happened upon us and came to our aid.
Camel! There was a Bedouin just chilling with his camels in the middle of the desert [6] - we hopped out of the Jeep, took pictures with the camels, and hopped back in. Our guides knew him - I guess he just sits around all day waiting for the tourists to show up. Nice work if you can get it? And we didn't give him any money, so I guess he just gets a cut from the guides.
Some of the rock formations. A lot of them have names. I don't remember the official name of this one, but I call it the UFO.
The Desert Gang.
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