With 20/20 foresight Heide called it right. We, well I, had to stand on the bus ride from Bahariyya to Dakhla, but only for a few hours.
Heide, making a better figure head than I would was promoted to the crew jump seat at the front of the bus, while I practiced my surfing technique while swaying in the aisle. After a few hours of this a couple of people got of the bus (in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere) the other standees and I all looked longingly at the two juicy spaces for plonking ourselves down. By this point we'd been through a few armed checkpoints and I think the bus crew were getting a touch nervous about having a western lass up front. So, in no uncertain terms, it was made very clear that these seats were just for me and Heide. I shudder to think what the consequences of someone else having the audacity to rest their weary backsides would have been!
Some hours later we were dropped at our hotel door, you've got to love great service! Where, to our delight, we found the holy grail of luxuries, piping hot water and a shower! It's amazing how sandy a few days in the desert will leave you. I'm guess that Lawrence of Arabia would have been about as golden as the mask of Tutankhamen we saw back in Cairo (how come that hasn't found it's way to the British Museum along with all the other good stuff?) We were stopping in another oasis, this time at Dakhla. The geographic characteristics here really are very different from thos in Bahariyya. The colour of the sand, coarseness of the grains, the nature of the dunes were all remarkably different from that which we'd seen earlier.
We visited the ancient settlement of Al Qusa, a mud brick labyrinth of a place, which has been inhabited since who knows when , but as best as I could figure the old town Mosque and Madrassa (church school) had been standing about 800 odd years judging by the inscriptions on the lintels which gave the foundations an Islamic date. It was a marvelous place and the shade of its narrow, winding lanes a welcome delight against the harsh heat of the day.
We also got the chance to trot up some huge sand dunes, bloody hard work and rolling back down them, bloody easy but horribly dizzying!
In the evening we feasted Bedouin style, well almost, if you exclude the fact that we were in a hotel, sitting in chairs at a table and be waited upon. I suppose what I'm saying is that the cuisine was of a Bedouin nature and really rather good. After which another glorious shower.... what price luxury???
