The western desert way

It was pretty dark when we arrived at the first campsite after a full day of riding in 44'C heat. Things did seem a bit dodgy at first, but then with a warm welcome from our hosts, we soon settled in. This was a bit short lived though, seeing a spider about 100mm in length creep up the trouser of our host while he was trying to catch it.

The camp is actually quite nice and well recommended. The owner also runs desert tours in season so fell free to check out his website http://www.edengardentours.com. The net morning after a rather restfull sleep, we awoke to a lovely breakfast of omelette, cheese and bread, with fruits on the side, hoping to get our feet a bit wet in the hotsprings which we let slip the night before, but with skimming spiders and water you cannot see through, motivation is very difficult. This coupled with finding a second spider, about the same size next to my bed when packing up, edged us along to move on.

As we left the campsite, Delilah, riding really slowly in the sand, came off her bike getting her foot stuck under the pannier, but a helpful local quickly picked the bike up for her, even before I could get off my bike. Luckily she was ok and we were soon on our way.

We headed to the next “oasis”, Farafra on the Western Desert Road, where we stayed at the Badawiya hotel, and again, some of the hottest days I have ever experienced, 44'C with no shade, no vegetation, just desert. When we do decide to stop a little, even little birds would come and sit in the shadow of our bikes just to get some shade. Finally a hotel with a pool, what else can you do when in the desert I guess.

I think the biggest problem faced in the desert is water getting hot, which is inevitable with the sun beating down on you.

Oh yeah, a few days ago, at Alexandria, we lost contact with Peter and Matt in the Land Rover, so we don’t know how to contact them as stupidly enough, we didn’t even get a contact number from him. We knew that Peters’ wife flew into Alexandria to meet up with them, so we were hoping to catch up with them on the road 


We decided to wake up and hit the road at 5am the next morning to miss the desert heat and get some miles out of the way. The problem is that Andre and I stayed up a little late, so only got about 4 hours sleep. As we left, riding through the little town, there was a very oily patch in the road, very slippery and Andre, riding in front, didn’t have enough time to warn Delilah who was riding behind him …there was a little screech coming from her as she came off, but luckily all that was damaged was her pannier and her confidence! Thank God…

Not having rested the night before, we soon stopped to have some breakfast next to the road and soon some kids joined us, we gave them sweets and biscuits, but they probably already had a breakfast of their own, so it seemed like they rather wanted some money.

Later, when stopping for a rest along the road at an abandoned building, for shade, due to our lack of rest the previous night, we managed to fall asleep for about 1 hour and on getting ready to leave, noticed a vehicle in the distance, which was quite strange as this road was not very well travelled. To our surprise, it was the Land Rover with Peter, his wife and Matt, what luck.

We carried on to Dakhla as planned, stopped for some lunch, then made our way to El Karkha for a hotel which turned out to be way overpriced, what a joke, so we decided to fill our camelpacs with fresh water and ice and to push on to the next town, Paris, which was actually a real dive, but decided to make our peace with it and settle down to a great nights camping before another long days riding in the desert once again.

In the morning we packed up and headed for Luxor, but realised that the fuel we had on the bikes would not get us there, and there was no further stations on route. This meant that all the extra miles we had completed the night before was actually in vein as we had to do a 181km detour to get fuel in the bikes and for ourselves as we decided to pay that hotel a visit again for a beer and fresh water and ice cubes in an attempt to keep the water in our camelbacs as cold for as long as possible.

After another gruelling 300km in the dry desert sun, we arrived in Luxor, a reduced temperature but increased humidity, I think I really enjoyed the hot dry desert better. Saying this, there was a KFC we could visit, which meant airconditioned room with cold drinks and familiar foods, you really do not know what you have till you miss it.
After searching for a bit we managed to find a great campsite with a pool were we met 2 guys from Belgium, a father and his son, doing the same overlanding, over a longer period of time (http://www.beyondthehorizon.be). They mentioned that they spoke to Pete along the way, so I guess he would have known that we were not going to catch up with him again till later in Aswan