Egypt
The National (Jack Shenker)
- Threat Of Ancient Palm Extinction
Green Prophet In the remote regions of Sudan and Egypt the argun palm tree- a rare desert tree whose fruit was discovered by archaeologists in Pharaoh tombs- grows under a harsh sun. Less than 400 trees is all that remains of the species which environmentalists...
- Travel: Dakhla Oasis
New Stuff We will be starting our journey in the footsteps of Rohlfs this December 2009 from Dakhla Oasis. Below is some information about the place. Dakhla is among the most remote oases being far from both Cairo and Luxor. To get there from Cairo you...
- Travel: The Colonel's Caravan (gilf Kebir)
The National (John Zada) “Hit the gas hard and stay on my tracks,” our driver orders into the radio before stepping on the accelerator and catapulting us up a long and narrow wadi of red sand rising between two rocky plateaus. Tension grips the passengers...
- Travel: Alexandra To Siwa
analysis-online.cn A peculiar piece of travel writing - I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It is an absolute monologue of thoughts and feelings, about both Siwa and the people the author was traveling with. In general he is more intersted in...
- Book Review: Lost Oasis - In Search Of Paradise
Guardian Unlimited (review by Toby Lichtig) Robert Twigger's latest travel odyssey is a search for a fabled oasis in the Egyptian Sahara. As in Voyageur, which mirrored the 18th-century Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie on his journey across North...
Egypt
Travel: Following in the footsteps of Harding-King
The National (Jack Shenker)
One hundred years ago, the British explorer WJ Harding King tried and failed to cross Egypt’s forbidding Western Desert. Jack Shenker follows his footsteps into a once-isolated world on the cusp of transformation.
There is a tree in the middle of Dakhla oasis that is said by some locals to possess a soul. They call it the tree of Sheikh Adam, and it has stood for centuries at the heart of one million square miles of vast, almost waterless isolation, a space once considered to be among the most inhospitable places on the planet. It lies hundreds of miles from Egypt’s Nile Valley to the east, and hundreds of miles from the Libyan border to the west. If you climb the small hill on which the tree is perched and peer out in either direction there’s nothing to see but sand dunes, some up to 150 metres high, marching unceasingly across the void. A British explorer who reached this spot in 1910 declared the tree to be a symbol of everything magical about the desert, “a land where afrits, ghuls, genii and all the other creatures of native superstitions are matters of everyday occurrence; where lost oases and enchanted cities lie in the desert sands.”
- Threat Of Ancient Palm Extinction
Green Prophet In the remote regions of Sudan and Egypt the argun palm tree- a rare desert tree whose fruit was discovered by archaeologists in Pharaoh tombs- grows under a harsh sun. Less than 400 trees is all that remains of the species which environmentalists...
- Travel: Dakhla Oasis
New Stuff We will be starting our journey in the footsteps of Rohlfs this December 2009 from Dakhla Oasis. Below is some information about the place. Dakhla is among the most remote oases being far from both Cairo and Luxor. To get there from Cairo you...
- Travel: The Colonel's Caravan (gilf Kebir)
The National (John Zada) “Hit the gas hard and stay on my tracks,” our driver orders into the radio before stepping on the accelerator and catapulting us up a long and narrow wadi of red sand rising between two rocky plateaus. Tension grips the passengers...
- Travel: Alexandra To Siwa
analysis-online.cn A peculiar piece of travel writing - I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It is an absolute monologue of thoughts and feelings, about both Siwa and the people the author was traveling with. In general he is more intersted in...
- Book Review: Lost Oasis - In Search Of Paradise
Guardian Unlimited (review by Toby Lichtig) Robert Twigger's latest travel odyssey is a search for a fabled oasis in the Egyptian Sahara. As in Voyageur, which mirrored the 18th-century Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie on his journey across North...