Camping in the dunes

Believe it or not, this weekend in January was the first time this season we went to the desert. Apparently, we were to busy in the autumn with work, travel to Somalia and offshore and windsurfing at Moon Beach.

We wanted to find a new route from the escarpments north of lake Qarun to the Wadi el Hitan area and to traverse the dune belt south of the Wadi Ryan lakes West to East.

The first leg of the route went fast. We followed tire tracks that we spotted before on the satellite images. When we came at the top of the final escarpment we had a beautiful view. It was pretty windy and cold at the top, and this was midday. We expected a cold night.

A view from the escarpment with the sharp transition from desert to the Fayum oasis.

But finding the way down was not easy. We tried several wadis, but most of them were a dead end. In one wadi, a dune had made the route down easier. We also saw tracks of people that tried before. The tricky part was that you had to decent a steep dune, but you could not drive straight on as you would hit the large rocks on the wadi floor. After a controlled descent you would have to made a sharp right and drive out of the wadi along a narrow passage between the large rocks and the dune. But it looked doable.

At the top of the dune we were deciding if the route was doable.

Ramses was the first to try.

Ramses descents the dune slope.

The drive to the dune crest was easy, just a little slippery at the sharp turns in the sand. We turned down slope a bit too early and we headed straight for some rocks on the slope. Steering on the slope was difficult and we drove straight over the rocks. Fortunately they turned out to be pretty small when we came closer. We still had to make the sharp turn to avoid the big rocks. Once we stopped using the brake technique, we could steer again and we made it through the narrow passage without a problem. But we decided the route was probably better to avoid by the other three cars. We waited at the bottom of the valley for the other three cars that found pretty quickly a much easier route.

All the escarpment business had taken a lot of time and we decided to head straight for the Wadi Ryan road to be in the dunes before dark. We found a nice secluded camping spot in the dunes.

Our campsite

We pitched our tents before dark and got a fire going. The wind had gone completely and it was not as cold as we were expecting. We sat around the campfire till 11 sipping Siwan tea and wine.

The next day we had a relaxing morning with a big breakfast of bacon, eggs and pancakes. Today we were going to do our traverse. We had let pressure of the tires and were ready to go.

The West to East dune traverse we drove plotted on Google Earth

We got several cars stuck at dune crests and soft patches and we made good use of the low gears, towropes, sand plates, shovels, and the air jack. Good fun playing in the sand.

The wind blows sand off the dune crests.

At lunchtime we realized we did only 1/4 of the planned route. It was quite windy and we had sand everywhere. Fortunately, after lunch dunes became easier, or our driving better or both and we finished the traverse to be back on the tarmac road at 3pm. Just in time to make it to Cairo before dark.

Back home we noticed that sand kept coming out of our eyes for 2 days after we returned. But we are sand-free now… I think.

More on this in Ivar & Kim's blog (in Dutch).