Ninety seconds on White Desert National Park
Stay the night rather than turning back at sunset. You sleep among chalk towers the wind has shaped into mushrooms and animals. At sunrise the low sun turns them orange and pink.
Your guide will walk you through the formations and ask you to name them. The best known look like a mushroom, a chicken and a sphinx, and with a little patience you will find dogs and camels too.
Camp is a fire, a barbecue dinner and Bedouin tea under a sky with almost no artificial light. Phone signal goes once you leave Bahariya, so download what you need and pack a power bank.
Even on a warm day the temperature falls hard after dark, so bring warm layers for the night. Fennec and Ruppell's foxes live in the park, along with Dorcas gazelles, so keep food packed away at camp.
Farafra, and further afield
Remote even by Western Desert standards, this oasis village of mud-brick lanes and walled palm gardens sits about 180 km south of Bahariya.…
Khufu's tomb, raised around 2560 BC from some 2.3 million blocks, stood as the tallest structure on earth for close to four thousand years.…
Giza is a city of several million on the west bank of the Nile, continuous with Cairo, and its last apartment blocks stop at the foot of a…