Sunday, April 22, 2007

Siwa: 6th-9th April 2007

I'm not sure where to start. Or where to stop. Borrowing Tom Gara's favorite word, Siwa was AWESOME. The people I traveled with, the Bedouins who organized everything for us, just AWESOME.

Firstly, I am officially in love with the desert. Forget beaches. Forget mountains. Forget the ocean. The desert is my favorite get-away at the moment. The enormous size of the dunes, the vastness, the absolute brightness and color of the sand. In some spots, the sand is ever so soft, and on our first evening, I spent a good half-an-hour just sitting on this random patch of soft soft sand just feeling it run through my fingers, and burying my legs in it. But the desert was not made for human habitation. How did people manage to cross it on horse or camel-back back in the day? Sitting in 4x4s I felt like we could never conquer this desert......just riding up and down dunes was complicated enough, with at least one of our trio of jeeps always getting stuck and having to be dug out. We found shells buried in the sand a few times, and the realization that this used to be an ocean once-upon-a-time scares the crap out of you.

Highlights: Huddling around the fire as soon as the Bedouins would light one up for us in the evenings. The simple needs you have being out in the desert, where all you want is the warmth from the fire. Watching the sky explode with stars as nighttime falls. There really is no such thing as light pollution out there. Starving by the end of a day of non-stop exploring, and then eating an incredible barbecued meal cooked by the Bedouins. Feeling the sand crunch between your teeth when taking a bite out of the chicken just enhances the taste to be honest. Sticking your head out of the window of a jeep while it shoots across the desert (well not quite shoots, but the wind in your face and hair certainly made it feel like we were shooting). The 2-second wait where the Jeep is sitting on the edge of an enormous sand dune — and then hollering your lungs out when it rushes down it, thinking you're going to crash at the end, but inevitably don't. Not bringing a camera on a trip with me for the first time ever and being able to just enjoy each and every moment instead of trying to view it through a lens.

No comments: