Friday 15^th March 2002

It’s midnight and I have done little more than achieve my hotel room, but already I have seen so much. Flying into Cairo at night was a dazzling experience. There is nothing constant in the sulphurous orange glow of this city’s million street lights, they twinkle in a mesmerising way as though a million hands are flicking at the switches.

Then that curling band of darkness cutting through it all. The Nile, my first sight of the Nile.

And there are the Pyramids, unmistakably signaturing the city I am about to land in. No more than dark silhouettes, each has a single spotlight lighting it up for the encroaching city. The city is so close to them. It has come irreverently creeping at these ancient tombs over thousands of years. Its citizens light them up as landmarks, but what other thought are they given by the people of Cairo I wonder? What would those ancestral kings make of their city now? What seems so much more relevant is the dark side of those monuments, facing out at the desert, unlit. Sentinels to 4000 years of sandy history. One side looks out at the past in darkness (no need of light), the other faces the merciless, advancing present in a blaze of electricity.

The taxi on the way to the hotel. I think of my assistant, Rachel, and her hatred of being a passenger in cars, and I grin. I can’t believe the terrifying proceedings of travelling by road here, but the driver and I laugh heartily together at the near misses, and he tuts at stupidity I am unable to distinguish from the norm.

Three lanes of major highway heaving with traffic and the only rule appearing to be that you should be straddling the lines between lanes at all times. And of course, no need of headlights, what are street lights for after all?

Out of nowhere a wedding party spills out onto the road bringing all the traffic smoking to a stop. Lights and horns blare, and the guests cavort and wave as they cross, complete with tiny bridesmaids, rubbing their foreheads with sleepy arms and blinking big, dark eyes into the halted headlights.

The driver laughs again and gestures with disbelief, before flooring it again, on into the night, into the city of mosques and minarets.

The Hotel Fondque Cosmopolitan is beautiful. Doormen in burgundy uniforms usher you up the front steps into a perfectly preserved monument to a 1930s community of ex-pats who are no doubt long since extinct. But this place with its chandeliers and marble floors and Persian carpets is, I am sure, the best of what they left. My room is everything I could wish, with great high ceilings and two, floor to ceiling, sets of doors opening onto a balcony that looks out across the town. I am already anticipating with pleasure the early morning calls to prayer, that will drift out to worshippers and heathens alike, and make for a welcome alarm call in the morning.

First impressions. Well, Marc from Belgium I met on the plane yesterday. He is maybe 50 with a grown up son and daughter, and a very kind, fatherly manner about him. He has been to Egypt nine times and is an absolute oracle of wisdom concerning all things Egyptian. Next, at breakfast, Marc and I met Geert who is Dutch, but lives in Germany with his Greek wife Dora, he has two grown up daughters. He is maybe 60. I like him very much, he is a gentle man.

Then comes Claire from South Africa. She is 22 although I first guessed she might be in her late 20s, she has that frail nervous sort of disposition which sometimes goes with being an absolute genius (which I suspect she is), however, at the same time you somehow get the feeling that she is probably capable of anything. She has a lovely smile and our sense of humour has clicked immediately. She is a crazy bird-watcher and seems to be able to spot tiny invisible flutterings from hundreds of yards away (Kingfishers on the Nile for example, very exciting, apparently). She is doing a PHD(?) in experimental biology(?!) and is coming to study at Cambridge for three years after this.

Attila is one of the Hungarians and very quiet, but utterly warm and genuine when you speak to him. He is a vet, and has the gentleness of one who knows animals. He doesn’t laugh a lot yet, but I think he will really come out of himself as we get to know him.

Georg is the most splendid character, he is Austrian and is the real macoy great adventurer among us. He has climbed all the dangerous mountains, crossed great dune fields on foot, braved the deepest darkest rainforests and generally had a fantastic life. Plus, he has a terrific sense of humour and we’ve been making each other guffaw all evening. He is also an artist and has done some very beautiful sketches of Cairo, and some very silly cartoons of the Pyramids. If I were going to go somewhere remote and possibly dangerous, I would definitely want to go with Georg….. Oh! I am.

Mahmoud is the genuine Egyptian among us and he is absolutely beautiful. From Alexandria, I suppose he is about 30, with black hair and eyes and aquiline African features and skin the colour of rich terracotta. He is quiet until spoken to and then reveals the most delightful wit and open charm, and a laugh like a spring in the desert. He is of Arab descent rather than the Pharonic peoples, but he still reminds me of those elegant cap-headed figures in the tombs.

This group, excluding Georg, all took off to Saqqara today, which was my only real chance to catch a glimpse of Egyptian Egypt while I am here.

The tombs where cool and airy. Even the dark sarcophagus chambers, entered at a violent stoop, down long, steep and confined, sloping corridors, give off a sense of space and order. The highlight of what might have become a slightly repetitious succession of tombs and chambers, was the fact that Marc knows just about everything about the incredibly detailed reliefs that covered the walls, and, can read hieroglyphics. With some basic tuition, Claire and I were soon able to spot all sorts of phrases and meanings for ourselves.

The step pyramid at the centre of the complex is stunning and, I am pleased to say, unenterable. I found myself moved all day by a sense of sadness that these quiet places, built with such devotion and fear; care and importance, to preserve the eternal life of their commissioners, should be tramped around with such tourist irreverence. Rather, enter them as a church. If they must be open, and what has been done cannot be undone, respect their function and their dignity and the beliefs of their once inhabitants. At what point in 4000 years do one’s beliefs and dying wishes stop being valid and become a matter of history?

My favourite thing today was watching a military policeman lose his camel behind the pyramid complex. Thinking no one was watching, he repeatedly snuck up, before resorting to lunging wildly at his cantankerous and undoubtedly wry humoured mount. Each time he came within a whisker of catching the creature’s dangling rope, it flicked its head and gambolled tauntingly just a little further on along the skyline.

We all went out to supper in a restaurant called Felfela, and were joined by Giles Stanhope-Wright. Although as British sounding as Prince Charles, Giles is as dark and smoky an Italian as you are ever likely to meet. He is about 50, and hides what is clearly an enormous intellect behind disturbingly anarchic questions such as, ‘Will I be able to sit on the roof of the trucks while we’re going along?’ He is very dry and I think I am going to like him very much.

Andras, who is our leader, is also Hungarian and is a complete desert enthusiast. Matters of official business he sometimes delivers as though he has a prepared a script, and I think the role of ‘tour operator’ sits a little uncomfortably with him, but he is intelligent and calm and instils complete confidence in me. There seems to be nothing he doesn’t know about the Western Desert, and I think we would be hard pushed to find a better guide anywhere.

The surprise delight of the trip is Andras’ wife Magdi, who has managed to join us at the last minute. There is an immediate ‘bond among women’ between us two. She is quite quiet tonight, but we’ve been smiling at each other all evening, and raising the odd knowing and wry eyebrow at the occasional male, intellectual posturing that has been going on as the boys suss out their territory. She and Andras have two daughters of 3 and 5, Vicky and Dora, and she tells me that she will really start to miss them by about day five. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. I think we are about to become the very best of friends.

The only person still to meet is Lajos, the other Hungarian. So, we will see what the morning brings.

Sunday 17^th March 2002

The road to Dahkla. Started the day at 5am, utterly exhausted due to untoward goings on in the night. At 3am my hotel phone rang, but when I picked up it appeared to be dead, then as I was about to hang up, it went through to what seemed to be reception. I confusedly asked why they had called me, and they Sayed they hadn’t, and I Sayed they had, and they Sayed what room number, I replied ‘515’, and the line went dead. Just as I was dropping off to sleep again there was a knock at the door. I wrapped myself in a blanket and answered it, starting to think there must be some problem with someone in the group.

In fact, there was a young Egyptian smiling away saying that I had ordered room service. “No,” I Sayed, “you phoned me.” As I Sayed this I turned and pointed at the phone, and in a flash he had stepped into the room and closed the door. “Get out!” I Sayed in horror. “No, in a minute.” He replied, grinning and stepping towards me. I wrenched the door back open and savagely growled “Get out right now!” in a tone that left no doubt as to my meaning. He scuttled out and I stomped, fuming, back to bed again. Another ten minutes and the phone rang again, and there was a filthy heavy breathing voice at the other end. For the next twenty minutes the phone just rang and rang, I didn’t answer it again. Finally I could take it no more, and shaking with anger I decided to confront him. I woke Marc in the next room for support, and he, sleepy and bewildered, dressed and joined me. I marched into reception spitting blood on the outside and terrified on the inside, and demanded to see him. The quaking receptionist called him, and as he appeared I let rip. He tried to look all innocence, but I was having none of it. “You know and I know, pal, and that’s all that matters.” I bellowed. “ You are out of your league. I am staying here with 10 men, and you have picked on the wrong fucking lady.”

What a scene, suddenly I was surrounded by a crowd of Egyptian men, all looking at me as though the Gorgon herself had pitched up in their reception. I spun round and sailed out with Marc, thank God for Marc, my hero. As soon as I was in the lift I slid down onto the floor and shook like a leaf. Upset and terrified I didn’t sleep a wink for what was left of the night.

I wrote a letter of complaint to the manager next morning and tossed it haughtily at the mortified and apologetic receptionist, but by the end of breakfast I decided that I’d Sayed my piece and that was probably enough to scare the culprit into better future behaviour, and told him to bin it.

But anyway, that was that.

Now, the Road to Dahkla.

Beautiful opaque morning light as we load up the trucks in Cairo.

Palm trees in the mist beside the Nile.

Sayed is our driver, with Magdi and Andras stuffed in beside him, then me and Georg, Mahmoud and Geert, and Lajos and Claire on the bench seats in the back.

The road out of Cairo to the first turning in the desert is hundreds of kilometres of straight featureless asphalt in the dullest flat landscape imaginable. Nothing in sight but the railway running beside the road for hour after hour. At the first junction was an isolated truck stop café, large and echoey like a bus station. The wind rolls in gently and unconcerned from the desert. A bird flies from table to table collecting crumbs. It is the first time that I am aware that the noise of the city has been truly left behind us. This cool shell with its concrete floors, and plastic chairs, seems to know where we are heading. The air drifting through the broken windows seems to say, “Remember here to the wild places, for once it was part of them.”

I feel like I have been laughing all day with Georg, being possessive about our opposite views out of the landcruiser windows. This started at dawn when he had the prime view of the great pyramids of Giza slipping past as we left Cairo, but now as we turn onto the long oases road I gloat over my view across the open sand while he has to watch the railway. But truly, he is to be a fine friend, I am sure. All afternoon we unintentionally sleep in rotation. One gently waking the other so as not to miss a beautiful view, then falling asleep only to be woken in return half an hour later.

Mahmoud says that Nubian is the most beautiful Arabic dialect.

He says you can hear music in it.

At lunchtime the landscape changes, quite suddenly, from constant yellow to bright white limestone. It is like a plain of snow, featured by fabulous wind-blown sculptures of rock. “This is The White Desert,” says Andras, “We will stop here to eat.” After five hours in the cars we spill out into the great space like children. Scattering in all directions, each released the part of his or her particular character that had been most hampered by the cramped conditions and consequently felt suddenly free. Some climbed to the top of columns of snowy rock. Some walked out into the most open flats of sand. Some stretched out blissfully in the cool shade of those fantastical formations. My own preference is to walk out into the space. Here the surface of the land is so dry, and the crust so hollow that when I drop small stones onto it sounds like a remote drum, different size stones producing different notes and tones. Desert music.

Bahariya is the first great oasis, and being closest to the Nile valley is consequently the most civilised. We stop in the bustling, dusty main street beside a market. And while Andras gets permits for the next stage of the journey, we stand in the shade of eucalyptus trees and watch the weaving traffic, joyfully, chaotically, making its way. Donkeys, bicycles, cars, farm trucks, three girls walking to school with white covered heads, all seem to have equal rights of way.

Farafa by contrast is an ugly and spiritless oasis of mud houses and workshops and sombre children sitting in the dust by the road. The place was gone as soon as it came. We didn’t stop.

When you come over the edge of the first ridge which joins eventually into the Dahkla basin, the world opens up at your feet. A perfect sand sheet stretching away to dunes in the far, far distance, then dunes stretching away to the sky. By early evening we reach the first dune and are released from our long confinement once more. I run across the gravel and onto the dune and up and up, feet pounding on the packed sand, lungs bursting in my chest. Off to the side of me I can see Magdi running too, and I become aware of wild whoops of joy, and realise that it’s me. A tiny dune really, but falling silent and looking back from the top, this feels like the first freedom I have ever known.

Night falls as we reach Dahkla. A town made cheerful by its own efforts, comfortable with its own remoteness. All day as we’ve driven. For fifteen hours we’ve been shedding the feeling of Cairo, the people, the smells, the noise, the pace. Now, here in Dahkla, in a shabby and friendly hotel, tired and smelling of diesel (after an hour of helping to fill and secure the heavy jerry cans), I feel lighter, and the air and my head are clearer. We are on our way.

Monday 18^th March 2002

I can honestly say I have never been happier than I am at this moment. I am sitting at the edge of the Abu Hussein dunes in the middle of the Selima Sand Sheet, and it is quite simply the most beautiful place I have ever seen. We met our military escort in Dahkla this morning. He is a serious faced young Captain called Wael, and I am aware of a feeling of very mild apprehension. He is suddenly an unknown commodity. Andras goes off to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and final provisions, and there is altogether a lot of sitting around in the morning sun waiting for everything to be ready. Giles and Lajos play with their Psion computers. Magdi reads Harry Potter in Hungarian. Georg makes me climb up a pile of builders sand, as the only thing in sight resembling a dune.

The road from Dahkla, thousands of kilometres, straight and pretty much featureless, down to Eastern Uweinat, is by no means boring like the road from Cairo to Bahariya. The sense of open country grows with every hour you drive south, and it is not long before there is no doubt that you are heading into pure, clear, nothing. The wind has picked up all day today. It is an unseasonal wind, the hot ‘Ghibli’, the South wind. This relentless swirling wind usually doesn’t come until late April and brings with it the big sandstorms. Today has not resulted in that, but it has whipped the sand up from the ground, and the tiny grains sting mercilessly as they hit you. We stop very briefly by the side of the road for a hurried lunch of cheese, salami and Ryvita.

“Hana! Hana!” Calls out our driver Sayed, delighted by his knowledge of my name. “Sayed! Sayed!” I call out in return. He has little English, and I, no Arabic, so we communicate in this way with much grinning all the time.

As each situation arises, we each respond with eight examples of the things we have been instructed to bring to deal with them. With this wind, this Ghibli, comes the need to employ our headscarves. Georg and Claire are our resident Western Bedouins in this respect, with proper desert acquired attire, shesh, which make them both look like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. Another group, including me, although less professional, have given our scarves and their application some serious thought and are consequently well protected, and then there are Marc and Geert who have borrowed headscarves from their daughters and are now quite stumped as to what to do with them. They have been holding them to their heads like flapping tea towels all day, and if they haven’t found a solution tomorrow, they may need some friendly thought and help tomorrow.

Three hours after lunch the sand to the west has grown flatter and flatter, and the GPS tells Andras it is finally time to turn out into the open desert, and away from the road and all it signifies. After two tough days of solid driving, it is finally time to do what we came for.

How can I describe the Selima Sand Sheet? I knew what it was, but no amount of knowledge could prepare me for the sensation of being in this perfect and neutral landscape. The Greeks defined the marathon as 26 miles because that is how far you can see to the horizon in a flat landscape, and surely Selima is the only place to truly understand that fact. The sand is packed hard and smooth, pale yellow against a neutral sky. For hours we drive, and see nothing more than this. 26 miles in every direction. A study in simplicity.

Mahmoud says ‘hana’ means happiness in Arabic, and that ‘Sabahal hana’ is a common greeting. I can’t stop smiling, it is all so extraordinary. “Happy Hannah!” says Georg.

As the sun starts to go down the Abu Hussein Dunes appear on the horizon like a miracle, and with the Ghibli still blowing hard we have made our camp in their sheltering arms. Hussein means ‘fox’ in Arabic, so Abu Hussein is honoured fox. I think heaven must be a dune field.

My heaven would be.

Walking to the top of this creature of sand in the wind, you can see the land flowing and rolling about you like a living thing. It is like being in an open space for the first time in your whole life, because everything you’ve considered open until this moment, pales into insignificance.

The sky is full of dust and there is no sunset, only a dim disk melting into the land like Mercury rejoining itself.

Becoming whole.

Our first ‘sundowner’ is possibly the most delicious gin and tonic I have ever tasted. “God bless the English, for giving us the tradition of the sundowner.” Toasts Andras. “God bless the Hungarians, for maintaining that tradition.” Say I. Supper is Chilli Con Carne, and miraculously the Ghibli does us the kindness of resting a while, while we eat. A very welcome respite.

“What is the most famous thing from Salzburg?” Georg asks after dinner. “Mozart?” I guess. “No!” He says, “He comes second. First is Mozart’s Kugels. Mozart’s Balls. How much would people pay for this famous chocolates right now?” He demands, and with such a twinkle in his eye.

How he managed it I can’t tell you, but tonight we ate Salzburg’s finest chocolates, smuggled into the hottest desert in the world in the rucksack of a remarkable Austrian. And they were delicious!

By eight we were all in our tents, all except Georg, who decided to sleep in the open on the dunes, and then, oh, then the Ghibli blew its head off. All night the only thing keeping our tents on the ground was the weight of our bodies inside them, and I think at times we each in turn wondered if even this would be enough. The canvas flaps deafeningly as though an army of djinns are attacking us for our gall at braving this desert. Sand pours in through every gauze and air vent.

I feel a pang of fear and longing at being so far from home and friends.

It is a wild, wild night.

Tuesday 19^th March 2002

Waking in the pale light, and crawling out into a world where the sky and sand are one, is like crawling into the afterlife. But if death is like this, then it is a quiet thought, for here, looking out into the dunes, the heart is calm and there is no fear. By seven we’d struck camp and were heading back out across the open plain. Simple things become so good here. A cup of coffee in my enamel mug this morning, left me wanting for nothing else in the world. Georg says he had two cups of coffee this morning, each with three lumps of sugar in. He seems to think that this might be of interest for my diary. But it’s not. Why am I writing this? This place!

Geert says his shoes fit perfectly because they are full of sand. He suggests we all fill our shoes accordingly. From a teapot.

Lajos and Claire have spotted many birds (they say) and would like it documented that they have successfully identified them all despite being in a car moving quickly across sand, and the birds being very small, and usually about 300m away.

We have observed a new symbiotic relationship between bird watchers and bird spotters. Mahmoud and Georg find themselves helplessly spotting birds left, right and centre without any interest whatsoever. Then Lajos and Claire excitedly take over, and watch the unsuspecting creatures. Usually crying out for the cars to be stopped, and, usually being ignored.

Geert has had us in stitches all morning due to his remarkable collection of splendid spectacles and goggles. One pair of round, leather-bound, old-fashioned, aviator goggles, combined with his green jacket – the hood pulled close round his face – made us laugh so much this morning that Claire and Marc took his picture staring into the middle distance. He looked every bit the image of Scott of the Antarctic, and indeed in this pale and featureless setting, if a team of sled dogs had appeared round the corner to sweep him away, it really would not have seemed out of place.

It is 11am and we have been driving on and on across the Selima Sand Sheet for three hours now, and depending on our progress, which currently is good, we may catch our first sight of the Gilf Kebir plateau in perhaps another three.

Georg is opposite me, his head leaning back on the window, his scarf a makeshift pillow. He is softly humming a tune from Carmen.

Mahmoud is staring intently at his GPS, though I think that the numbers it displays give less meaning to this spot as we pass, than our own extraordinary presence.

Lajos and Claire are sleeping, and Geert, that splendid, funny and kind-hearted old man, looks out motionlessly at the endless unchanging horizon, in yet another pair of marvellous glasses.

This morning one of the cars wouldn’t start and refused to be jump started from one of its friends. Undeterred Salama and Sayed bumped it into life by towing it onto the plain.

Wael was the last to wake up and pack his tent, which prompted lots of mirth about the Egyptian army. He has abandoned his, suddenly quite inappropriate, khaki fatigues in favour of a red track suit. He seems immediately more relaxed and approachable, we nodded and smiled a greeting this morning.

We had our first experience of getting stuck no more than 20 minutes after leaving the big dunes behind us this morning. The terrain is hard to judge, being featureless. Distance and undulation are almost undetectable, and poor Sayed fired us thirty feet into a soft bank of impenetrable sand before he knew what had hit him. Our freedom was achieved only by twenty minutes of digging and pushing and carefully placed sand sheets under the wheels.

Thirty feet would be a hundred miles if you were alone out here.

10.56am – Much excitement! We have just passed a single tyre standing lone sentinel in the plain. It is the first thing we have seen for hours. Georg says it is exciting because now we can surely look forward to seeing a three-wheeled truck at some point soon.

Selima is the biggest, flattest place on earth. Our drivers are Sayed, which means the one who brings goodness, Salama, which means safety and Ayed which means the one who returns. Here, the meanings, not the names, seem everything.

Still we drive.

In silence now.

If ever you are someone reading this, years from now, then set down this old book a while, stretch your legs and stroll from room to room, pour yourself a coffee and look out of your windows at nothing in particular.

Take an hour.

Take two.

And all the while, think of us driving in this place, this day.

Driving between sand and sky, towards a horizon that never moves.

Georg found a ladybird crawling in the sand at camp last night. It crawled amiably about on our unexpected fingers. How it came to be there was anyone’s guess, and its doom was surely assured, but it made me sad to watch Claire (a biologist after all) gently put it in a tiny sample bottle of preservation fluid for later identification. Georg and I thought, better to die on the wind in that fine and lonely spot, but Claire Sayed what greater way to die than in the furtherment of knowledge and understanding. She has a point I suppose, it’s the difference between the philosopher and the scientist. Nevertheless it was quietly agreed that all other ladybirds found in the Libyan Desert would definitely be secretly concealed from Claire and left to their natural fates.

Very quickly the landscape starts to change. Off in the distance to the West and North of us misty mountain shapes start to loom on the horizon. The Gilf Kebir. We had been going to look for Bagnold’s camp from his last trip to the Eastern Gilf in 1938. Andras found a photo of it in Cambridge last summer. There were four distinctive small hills in the background and a large dune in the foreground. However, the exercise seems pointless in this white-out weather, so he decides to take us straight into Wadi Bahkt, where we will make our second camp.

Just as we were setting our sights on the looming mass in the distance, Sayed swerved south and we all saw what had caught their eye. Buried in the sand up past its chassis was a Second World War truck, its doors flung open as though the occupants might return any second. In every direction, the lone sands roll away.

What business did that war ever have here? Really, one wonders. All day we have periodically crossed the tracks of those two armies. Sixty years later the marks are still quite fresh.

Some scars take a very long time to heal.

“I think we should always think very carefully before crossing this place. Our tracks will be here for the next 200 years.” I say. Andras nods seriously.

Wadi Bahkt. The GPS leads us truly to the entrance of a huge valley where once a magnificent river must have run. For another hour we drive up between gradually narrowing towering sandstone cliffs. This quiet magnificence is the Egyptian equivalent of the Grand Canyon, and a reverent silence falls on the inhabitants of the cars.

Leaving that endless plain of sand is like glimpsing a new world.

Two thirds of the way up its length the wadi narrows to maybe half a kilometre, and the way is barred completely by a huge whale back dune.

We arrived at about 2.30 and Georg invited me to join him on an exploration of the area. We flung up our tents, wolfed down some tuna lunch, told Andras not to expect us before 6pm and set off up the valley. Georg took control immediately, and rather than heading up the middle as I had expected, we struck off up the side of the steep valley, up the edge of the dune.

When we reach the top the view is superb. The splendid dune’s whale back soars out across the valley like a bridge, and we walk the vertiginous razor ridge out into the very air before sliding down its far side into the secret valley beyond. Once on the valley floor, we walk slowly, our eyes on the ground. We confess that we are actually both helpless rock-watchers, a fact we feel bound to try and conceal from the bird-watchers who we delight in teasing. I simply can’t shake the beach-comber in me, picked up over a sea-fevered childhood, anything pretty or unusual is treasure to me. Georg has a more specific and genuine Palaeolithic interest in finding stone-age tools and weapons. We turn up a narrow gully, and Georg’s eyes start scanning the steep sides around us. “Lets climb onto the plateau,” he says. He pretty much ignores my serious objections that… just because he is a fantastic climber, I most certainly am not, and I have no intention of breaking my neck or even scaring myself for him or anyone else… and sets off with me in bemused pursuit. Clever Georg picks a route that although not completely free of fear is more than within my abilities, and within half an hour we were scrambling up the last 50 feet.

How can I describe that feeling? We were on top of the world. The vast valley suddenly clear in its entirety at our feet, the marks of the ancient river suddenly bold and unmistakable. I was so delighted at making it to the top that I bounced about and hugged my friend, and we took each other’s picture as though we had just reached the summit of K2. Georg built a cairn of rocks, and on a page from this diary I wrote

Tuesday 19^th March 2002

Georg Zenz (Austria)

Hannah McKeand (UK)

Celebrating Hannah’s happiest day and the 1^st

time she has climbed anything higher than a ladder.

Health and happiness to all travellers in this place.

We put the message in a film canister and buried it in the cairn, and I thought that one day I would bring my children here and show them the place marked by us.

Then I calmed down and we sat, and looked, and looked. And after a long time, or a short time, I can’t say, we set off along the edge of the plateau, back above the dune and the tiny camp far, far below. We waved at the others, tiny dots on the valley floor, then turned into the interior of the plateau and walked across the flat, black gravel due north. We talked about how beautiful it must have been here 10,000 years ago, so green, so much water. Everywhere we walk dry streams and river-beds criss-cross our path and we find many flinty tools and weapons. Such a flourishing community this must have been.

We came to the edge of a small ravine north of the main wadi, and found a spot Georg felt confident I would be able to descend. And gently, slowly he guided me down through a maze of giant boulders and ancient rock-falls. All the way down we scoured the rocks for signs of paintings or engravings, and after a while began to come to the conclusion that the artists in this area must have had motivation issues. Which is a nice way of saying that they were  lazy knackers who probably spent most of their time lying around pissed and stoned (funny gag at the time due to the large numbers of stones around us! Guess you had to be there.), and talking about painting a lot, but not actually doing any.

We found the head of a bird, dried and preserved, complete with feathers, and continuing in his official role as bird-spotter on behalf of the bird-watchers, he dutifully carried the prize back to Claire at camp. She was satisfyingly delighted with the gift and proceeded to show everyone. The elegant feathered creature had once been a Glossy Ibis. According to Herodotus this revered bird was held in high regard by the ancient Egyptians after they flew in great numbers to the defence of Egypt against a plague of flying snakes from Arabia. Now this ibis joins us on a new piece of history, our journey into the unknown sandy places in our hearts.

Tonight with the wind dropped and a good fire, everyone is content and relaxed. Tonight, unlike last night, I feel no waves of fear. Tonight I feel at peace.

After a hearty supper of tinned turkey stew and mash, Georg and I walked away quietly and climbed once more to the top of the great dune. Its steep sides were very soft and difficult in the dark, but once at the ridge we could see its razor back arching up ahead of us in the moonlight. We reached the highest point and lay back, resting our heads on the crest and looking up at the stars. We saw two shooting stars and wished on them, hoping that it still counts if you don’t wish immediately because you’ve paused to whoop and point excitedly.

I think it does.

We sit and talk until we are cold through, knowing that we will never again sit together on this point looking out at this great secret valley in the moonlight. A valley that was once a great river, a lake in Neolithic times. The wind coming off the Gilf on the far southern side of the wadi, sounds for all the world like flowing water, and we were sure that if we just watched long enough, we would see the ghost of that fine river wend its silvery way down to the plains below once more. But the moon was low and we turned for home, spilling down the dune’s steep soft sides.

Laughter in the darkness.

Wednesday 20^th March 2002

I watched the sun rise over my feet through the flap of my tent in Wadi Bahkt this morning. By 6.30am we were driving back down the wadi to the plain. After an hour or so of picking our way through the islands of rock that make up the broken edge of the South-West Gilf. We turned up the enormous Wadi Wassa (Wassa meaning wide). Then after a further hour we climbed up through a shallow pass at the end of the valley into the equally vast Wadi el-Faruk. This wadi cuts right through the point of the southern Gilf and leads to the rock art site at Shaw’s Cave.

After another hour we turned onto a great sweeping pass of sand that lead up to the, here quite shallow, surface of the plateau. Here it is not completely flat as elsewhere, but broken up by fabulous formations of red and black sandstone. It is near the top of one of these that Shaw’s Cave is situated, with its elegant cattle painted on the underside of its shallow roof, and magnificent views back across the plain.

After an hour of clambering about, feeling the wind at the

top of each of the many rock castles around us, we climbed back into the trucks and made our way back down to the floor of the desert.

Then South. On our way out of the Gilf Kebir we pass 8 Bells airstrip, another remnant of the war. In giant black letters, precisely mosaiced out of oil cans, it simply reads ‘8 BELLS’ and a huge arrow beside point north at the hazy horizon. There is nothing else.

From 8 Bells we head down to the most southerly point of the Gilf. The terrain is rough and covered in rocky outcrops, and takes some time to get through. Below the southern-most tip of this huge and extraordinary feature of rock, famously described once as being the size of Switzerland, there is, with the desert on one side and the great wall on the other, a cairn built by Almásy in 1932. Inscribed in Arabic on a piece of marble, it is Sayed he carried with him here from Cairo, reads the following:

To the memory of Prince Kemal el Din,

may god forgive him.

In memory of his great role in the discovery

and exploration of the Libyan Desert.

This was made by someone who appreciated his efforts.

I climb a big, steep, conical hill near the site, and sit at its high precarious point eating a pocketful of dried apricots. It is a fine spot, the top being a flat rock perfect for sitting on, and commanding a magnificent view of the Gilf towering away behind, the great desert rolling away South towards Libya and Sudan and that humble but warm monument to the great man. I fancy that Almásy might have climbed and sat where I now sit, to consider his work. I think he must have been well satisfied.

In the footsteps of giants, go I.

Driving out into the desert towards the mountain of Uweinat, and the landscape changes again. The sand is flat and level and great rocky castles rise at intervals neatly and exactly from the plain like Mont St Michel in France. The contrast is breath-taking.

On and on we drive for hours, not knowing quite what to expect of that mountain that has been a name on our lips for so long.

Then, in the hazy grey of the horizon ahead of us we start to become aware of subtleties and variations in those greys of the sky. And closer. Closer. The mountain reveals itself like a city of cloud.

So big.

Another hour and its shapes and features become clearer, and then no more than a mile out from its rocky edge, like a miracle, we see our first tree in four days. A single acacia standing alone in the open sand plain like a sentinel, beckons us, as true as any GPS, towards the entrance of the valley of Karkur Tahl where we will make our home for the next two days. Never in my dreams had I expected anything like this. As we reached the crest of the last rise of sand across the opening, paradise came into view for the first time. We stopped the cars and got out to stare in awe. Bending gently down into the perfect valley is a deep, soft, floor of pure virgin sand, scattered with tall, green, shady acacias. Of course. Karkur means valley, Talh means tree.

As we drive down into its heart the sun starts to drop colouring the scene with rich gold and turning the shadows to a deep orange. Claire and I climb to a rocky outcrop above the elegant dune we have camped beneath.

No mistake. There is a god. And he lives here, in Karkur Talh.

Georg and I have pitched our tents at the foot of one of the acacias, a little way from the main camp, the openings facing up into the main wadi. As we settle ourselves the drivers already have a homely fire burning brightly, and the sky is filling with the brightest sea of stars I have ever seen. Joining them by the fire, and happy in the knowledge that we are stopping here for two whole nights, the group visibly relaxes. Tonight these stars belong to us alone, and this extraordinary valley is more home than anywhere I can think of. At this moment I would change absolutely nothing, I am absolutely content.

The drivers are all true desert Bedouin, and with their gentle laughing and chatter, they are making bread. The dough of flour, salt and water is patted down into a large flat disk. Then the fire is pushed back and the dough is flopped onto the red hot sand beneath. Then more hot sand and the embers are gently pushed over it, and there it is left to bake. While we are waiting they make the strong sweet tea they so love, and pass the tiny glasses hospitably between us. The bread is finally dug up and intently beaten with a cloth to free it of sand and ash. With its crunchy crust and sticky heart, it is salty and completely delicious.

After eating we sit round the fire and talk, and tell stories, and plan our days here. There is nothing to desire.

Thursday 21^st March 2002

This morning I woke after the best night’s sleep yet. The silence was so dense last night, it almost felt heavy as I lay down snug to sleep. And this morning, when I woke, Paradise was still there, just outside my tent. We gathered our essentials and set out all together up the valley. The further we went, the thicker the acacias came. For five hours we walked along the ancient water course, how great and splendid this river must once have been. After a couple of hours the valley opened out temporarily, and Andras drew a line in the sand across our path and wrote in big, footprint letters, ‘SUDAN’.

There was no need for passports. Four kilometres further on into Sudan and the rock paintings began. From this point on up towards the heart of the mountain, the rocks along the base of the cliffs were scratched and painted and marked with figures and cattle and giraffes and ostriches and deer.

The temperature in the heart of Karkur Talh has been greater than we have experienced anywhere else, and the air in the ravine is quite still. Dry and merciless, we are cooking under the indiscriminate sun.

Salama finds a snake, which on release, slithers away in alarm at our extraordinary presence.

From painting to painting we are followed by a lone swallow, swooping at terrific speed, again and again, within feet of us. Each time the sunlight flashes out of the deep dark blue in it’s back, before it flings its milky white throat up again into the sky over our heads. Life is simply life here, and one species is happy to greet another and spend some time before moving on. As we eat our simple lunch, we are closely watched by a striking black and white Zarzor bird, hopping, without fear, from rock to rock between us. The swallow has gone on its way.

By 2pm, I have to admit I had seen enough of paintings. The close still air and the intense heat makes this valley’s heart a startling contrast to its glorious entrance. We found a dead watan which Andras says has been here, perfectly preserved for years. We encourage Attila to do what he can for it, but he seems pessimistic about its chances of a full recovery.  Claire and Lajos were fascinated and photographed it from every angle. I am glad when Sayed appears in one of the cars and takes us back along the long route to camp.

For an hour or so, in the last of the blistering heat, Georg and I lie in the shade of our tents. He draws the view from his tent (our acacia), and I fix the two torches we somehow managed to simultaneously break last night.

As soon as the ferocity has gone from the sun, the two of us gather our things and set out across the soft sand towards a promising looking rocky hollow on the far side of the valley. All across the sand are tracks of the shy and elusive desert fox, clearly very busy in the apparent emptiness of the desert night. “Fox-trotting?” I suggest.

The hollow turns out to be a perfectly sheltered circular arena, with sheer grey cliffs all around it and great rock-fall boulders littering its floor. In the very centre is a lone acacia. If you were going to live anywhere in this fearsome land, then this would be a place to call home. We come back out and start to climb along the cliff leading up along the side of the hollow’s entrance. When we reached the first plateau above the most spectacular landscape I have yet seen opens up before us. A deep amphitheatre of wind-blown sandstone, surrounded by giant columns, a giant stone audience looking intently out across a vast and spectacular stage. We spent an hour clambering around the beautiful rocks, and honestly, if we spent the rest of the trip just here, then I would be quite happy.

We headed home as the sun started to set, and I began to feel that this really was another happiest day. I have stood in the ‘palace of winds’.

Night falls on camp once more, and tonight, our customary ‘sundowner’ is a highly eccentric Bloody Mary made with powdered tomato and bags of Tabasco. I carry mine to the top of the dune. From astride the top I can see the silhouettes of the mountain foothills against the sky to the west, and below me, at the eastern foot of the dune, already in darkness, I can see our cheerful camp fire and the fourteen figures who are, for now, my society, my community, my friends and my family. I could wish for none better, there is not a single one of them I would change.

The mood round the fire at supper is boisterous. All day Giles has been learning as many swear words and insults as possible from the three Bedouins, and now tries to put them to use. The result is five helpless forms (Mahmoud and Wael, also can’t contain themselves) rolling around hysterically in the sand. Giles looks put out, he takes rudeness very seriously.

There is a brief kafuffle when Andras glimpses a light on top of the hill. The boys and the solider plunge off into the darkness to investigate, and the few of us left huddle closer to the fire, in silence looking blindly after them. The idea of someone else appearing in our lives is the most alarming thought I’ve had for days, and quite as alien as the isolation might have seemed a week ago. Our men return a little anxious but having found nothing. Someone suggests it was probably just a watan with a torch, and we start to relax, and the talk strikes up again.

There are smugglers who might be trying to use this route into Egypt from Libya or Sudan, but, whoever he is, if he exists at all, I can only feel compassion at the thought of another traveller in this wild place. Let’s hope he has Safety, Goodness and The One Who Returns with him too.

Friday 22^nd March 2002

I am woken at 6am this morning by Georg shaking my tent. “Wake up McKeand!” He shouts gleefully, “It’s a beautiful day!” “Go away, Zenz!” I retort, but nevertheless stick my head tortoise style out of my tent. Once more , it is a glorious morning in Paradise. The sun has not yet hit the camp, but Jebel Uweinat is already blazing glorious red above us in the light. This morning we drive up Karkur Talh, back into Sudan, to furthest extreme we can reach by car.

From this point on the valley is an increasingly steep river ravine, and the only way to proceed is by clambering over the great rocks and boulders on foot. The scenery is spectacular. The ravine here was explored in detail in 1968 by a Belgian expedition. Our destination today is four fantastic rock art sites about 2.5 kilometres from where we were forced to abandon the car. Andras and Magdi have visited Karkur Talh four times before and have seen three of the four main sites, plus dozens of other little examples of paintings and engravings all along the valley, but had yet to find the fourth main Belgian site. The paintings today are much more spectacular than yesterday, and when Andras tells us he considers them to be the best examples in the Sahara, better even than Tassili, I suspect he is right. What makes the sites so good as far as I am concerned is their location. They are all well up from the ravine floor, where, presumably, the rushing torrent once was. The caves are like windswept letter-boxes, and you really can imagine stone age man sitting here looking across at his neighbours. I can almost even imagine a cold, rainy day, when he was pleased of his cosy shelter, and lay back to doodle on it’s roof above him. We spent hours, all morning, clambering about, and quite by chance I came across the fourth Belgian site, which pleased Andras very much. He is someone it is nice to please, I love to see his sometimes serious face, creasing into a grin.

On the way back to the camp at lunchtime, we made a final stop back at the little arena valley, there were a few last paintings in a tiny cave there. I couldn’t bear not to see the place again when we were so close, so, although we were short of time, I belted up the rocks beside the hollow, and climbed and climbed until I found myself back in that desert Gormanghast above. I looked down on the others far below and breathed the air coming in from the open desert beyond. Then one last look at that rocky interior, and back down at speed to the car. As I climb back into the car grinning, Georg says “Happy Hannah?” I nod firmly and turn to watch the place pull away from us. I will come back here. I will. I will. I will.

Back at camp we wolfed down a well earned lunch and dismantled our short lived but much loved home. There was brief tension when the car with the dead battery, which we have had to bump start on every use, finally decided to give up the ghost completely. No amount of towing through the sand would persuade it.  But Safety, Goodness and The One Who Returns calmly undertake a complex battery swapping operation and succeed in getting us all under way.

The day is crystal clear and the view of beautiful Jebel Uweinat growing smaller on the horizon is stunning and very sad. When will I see that distinctive outline again I wonder?

An hour into the open desert and we have our first flat tyre, but no sooner had Magdi and I settled ourselves into the shade of one of the other vehicles and started chatting comfortably , than our Bedouin angels had changed the wheel and we were off again.

Another hour across the island studded sea of sand and we reached the foot of Clayton’s Crater. A vast volcanic looking, mountainous crater. A brief stop was necessary so we all leapt out and scrambled up the heart-stoppingly steep and towering sides. The view from the top in magnificent. Suddenly we have a perspective on the beautiful world we have until now only seen from the desert floor.

Way off in the distance to the south the imposing form of Uweinat, already returned to cloud grey shapes in the sky. Then further off in the west, we see for the first time Uweinat’s misty sister peak, Jebel Arkenu, marking unmistakably our close proximity to forbidden Libya.

We were all edging and slithering our way back down the treacherous slope with extreme caution, when Salama suddenly whooped and took off from the top, running down the whole way like a goat in about 40 seconds, it was the most terrifying and extraordinary sight. He then perched on a rock at the bottom with a cigarette, and chuckled good-humouredly at the halting descent of us ungainly westerners.

Our haven tonight is to be the Unnamed Plateau between Uweinat and the Western Gilf Kebir. It has been unexplored for many years and the wadi we have chosen to be home, Andras has selected from a satellite photo.

With the light rapidly going we reach the wadi and follow it up into the plateau.

This place could not possibly be further from our beautiful Karkur Talh.

There is nothing here whatsoever.

Putting up our tents is like camping in a huge and high-ranging gravel pit

No wonder the place is unnamed.

Georg and I climb to the top of the highest gravel hill beside the wadi and look out, in the last orange light of day, at what might as well be Mars.

The only things that are thriving merrily here are two absolutely huge bushes of what seems to be acacia, but neither Andras, Claire or Lajos have ever seen it growing in this way before. Magdi has already set our nerves jittering by jumping practically right into Andras’ arms and letting out the most blood-curdling scream when something bit her on the leg behind the bush. For an awful moment I think we all thought she must have been bitten by a snake, but upon inspection she was fine and with hearts still fluttering we all descended into nervous laughter and relieved hugging of Magdi.

Georg and I have camped as far away from the nearest bush as possible, now certain that whatever unpleasant bug/snake/dragon type characters are in the area, are of course living in it. We set up home with the doors facing each other, and there is much banter concerning territory. Eventually a line is clearly drawn down the middle, and we sit one on either side, firing wry quips at one another.

Today’s sundowner is care of Georg, who produces a bottle of Martini as his contribution. Andras delighted produces a jar of olives to complete the drinks, and Georg with a triumphant and joyous flourish, brings out a bundle of tooth-picks to go in them. Crazy Austrian man!

Oh yes, I almost forgot, Georg specially asked me this morning to note that this camp is to be known for ever more as the camp of the last Austrian cigarettes -  Casablanca.

Saturday 23^rd March 2002

Day 8. The unnamed plateau. At least it was unnamed up until last night when we drunkenly christened it Simon. Quite frankly, after extensive exploration this morning, the general consensus is that Simon is a bit boring. I mean, he’s nice and all, has a heart of gold, but you definitely wouldn’t want to get stuck with him at a party. We drove far up the dry gravel wadi, then climbed a nearby peak for a view out over the terrain.

Nothing.

The tiny treasures of Plateau Simon (previously unnamed) have been five very small, rough hut circles on top of the plateau nearest camp, probably the ancient remains of a hunting camp; and three tiny, tiny purple flowers on a tiny bit of scrubby plant – Zilla Spinosa, Claire tells me, I suspect that there is almost nothing that she and Lajos don’t know between them. Then, driving back down the wadi Magdi with the eagle eyes spots the two roughest engravings of cow-like creatures on a near by rock, but further investigation proved desolately disappointing.

The final joy of the Plateau recently know as Simon was a small surprised lizard caught by Salama in camp. For what must have been the most baffling twenty minutes of its entire life it was passed gently from alien hand to alien hand, and photographed enthusiastically on a scale, as far as the lizard might be concerned, comparable to the Oscar ceremonies. We are still laughing now at the thought of it sitting on its rock still, blinking its eyes and looking around in dazed disbelief, thinking to itself, “What the hell happened there?” Before running home to try and tell his mum, who would of course tell him not to be ridiculous, and hasn’t she warned him before about telling tall stories.

“But mum!” Our lizard will cry out at her injustice.

“Don’t you ‘but’ me young man,” she’ll reply, “now not another word! Or you’ll be straight off to bed. Giants in cars indeed. Whatever next!” And normality will return to the uneventful world of Plateau Simon, who sooner, or later, its not important, will once more become unnamed, with our passing.

Out again into the open plains. On and on. Stopping briefly to photograph another World War II truck, and nearby in the sand the peacefully mummified body of a camel, perfectly preserved for the next few hundred years by the wind and the sun and the sand that claimed it.

A desert death.

There is a quality, undisturbing, in it.

Far out on the plain there are three great cones of granite, marked on the map simply as ‘Three Castles’, the flat, oval pebbles on the ground around their feet are white and polished perfectly smooth by the wind. The largest ‘castle’, the map once more assures us, is 900 feet high. We stop in this striking and beautiful place for lunch, and, rather than waste the precious time on eating, Georg, Claire and I make for the top. It is a very steep climb and more precarious than anything I have tackled this week. I have spent the last five days climbing everything with a top, but this is definitely the next league. At the top I find myself engaged in some actual climbing, with dizzying heights below us, but Georg is always there calm in my ear, “Your foot to the right. A good hold here.”

The top is a point no more than six foot square, but the view is absolutely worth risking life and limb for. This really very tiny peak feels like the top of the world, and in a sense it is. With the imposing form of the Gilf Kebir in the East, and the open plains in every other direction as far as the eye can see, this is the top of the only world that matters right now.

Although the air on the ground was quite still, up here there is wind. I accuse Georg of having a tent with him. We have been frustrated all week by the fact that however still the day seems, the moment you try to put up or take down a tent, a gale blows up out of nowhere. We’ve been blaming the desert djinns.

Again we set off once more in the cars, and as the heat begins to leave the merciless sun once more we draw close to the Western wall of the Gilf and stop. “Wadi Sura.” Says Andras. And indeed, on closer inspection, almost completely hidden by a huge rock island, was the mouth of the famous wadi. Georg and Claire, Lajos and Geert, Magdi and I walked in from the flats, and as the towering arms of the plateau reached out to embrace us, the most beautiful enclosed valley came into view.

Now I can’t choose between our beloved Karkur Talh and this magnificent fortress of stone, as the most stunning place I have ever seen. The two valleys are ao different in character. Karkhur Tahl is soft and green and elegant, with the mountain rising far off. Wadi Sura is like being in the very heart of stone. The floor of the circle is sand with low dunes, and then straight up out of this rise fabulous, imposing cliffs, sculpted with fascinating erosion shapes and wind-blown detail.

In the red light of sunset, we walk the short distance to the main wadi, and the most famous cave paintings in the world. The Cave Of Swimmers.

The cave is low in the wall above what must have been the fastest flowing and deepest stretch of this mountain river. The spot is full of benign ghosts, you have only to close your eyes for a while to feel the spirit of the place, to hear the water tumbling down from the mountain once more, to hear the laughter and the splashing of ancient figures in the pools. Everywhere here there was life and contentment. Tools, weapons, implements. The flinty past is all over the ground.

Then sit a little longer and the others come, those more recent ghosts, Bagnold, Clayton and the rest. And that figure in the sun up there, the father of this place, Almásy, shading his eyes to examine those paintings he found, those startling, miraculous shapes flowing and gliding over the walls. Such joy, such exuberance. I never knew a more happy and peaceful place than this.

The peace is reflected in the camp this night. The stars are bright and numberless, the moon half full, you can feel its light washing over us. We talk in small, comfortable groups. The Bedouin are relaxed and playful, they try to fox us with games with string.

Tonight feels like home, like family. I can hardly remember life before this endless desert.

Sunday 24^th March 2002

Georg and I wake at 6am and meet up with Claire over a cup of coffee and our daily breakfast of crisp bread, meat paste and jam. The three of us have set our sights on reaching the plateau today. Although the great Aquaba Pass is only 20K to the South of us, there is no record of anyone achieving the top from Wadi Sura. So, of course, there is only one thing we intend to do while we are here. By climbing up through a steep pass at the back of the wadi behind our camp you can drop down into a bigger valley beyond.

From here we turned East into the labyrinth of climbing ravines that once fed the great river below. Steeper and steeper we went until we reached the substantial and undeniably  mountainous shoulders of the upper reaches. Slower and slower we went as Georg led us an increasingly dizzying route, marking the way back carefully with little stone cairns at every terrace and level.

At first we climbed in the shadow of the Gilf, but soon the sun rose over the tops and fixed us in its gaze. Thankfully the breeze picked up the higher we went, and went at least a little way to keeping us bearably cool. Up and up, on and on, never for a minute questioning the judgement of our little Austrian guide. Step. Step. Steadily upwards.

At 1006 metres we gained a high and sheltered terrace and really could go no further. Claire and I had stretched our climbing skills to the absolute limits, and we were not too disappointed to admit defeat and except that seeing the top of the plateau again would have to wait for another day.

Indeed, how could we be disappointed? For what a ledge of heaven we have reached. From our eyrie perch the myriad maze of foothills that we have just ascended are scattered all around far below us, then, out beyond, the lonely sand plain stretches away as far as the eye can see. The only features to break it are the very distant cone shapes of Three Castles, the largest of which now seems quite miniature compared to what we have climbed today.

But the only thing that seems of any importance today is the sky. Infinite and perfect and blue, it is patterned all over with high white cirrus cloud. Its wind-made mackerel skin patterns perfectly echo the ripples you find across all of the sand. The clouds are moving briskly in from the West, and from as far away as it is possible to see, their shadows are billowing over the plain. All around the Gilf, the desert has become a shifting and flowing ocean.

The reflections of nature.

How wild it is that the one thing that reflects this dry and barren wilderness better than any other, is the sea that will never come here.

For an hour, the three of us sit in perfect silence, staring out at the wonder.

Despite the wind, the air on our ledge is utterly silent. I can almost hear my heart beating. All I can think of is how we are inadvertently being graced with a taste of what every moment has consisted of on this ledge for the last 30 or 40 thousand years.

No one has ever been here.

Nothing has ever happened here.

Only the cliff behind us looking out to the West in mountainous contemplation.

For an hour it is as though we have been absorbed into the very stone, and made a part of that great mystery.

The descent was made with great caution, and although there was the odd quite hairy moment, at no point did I feel afraid. I have grazed the underside of one arm rather spectacularly from armpit to elbow, but by doing nothing more dangerous than reaching up to balance myself and then slipping.

We are back in camp by 3.30pm, and stretch out on the flat white rocks in the shadow of the great sentinel stone at the entrance to the wadi. After an eight hour trek up and back down, we are exhausted.

The officer and the drivers climb to a ledge high above our heads, they are still in great high spirits. They scratch their names into the rock, and laugh over each other’s nerves at the height.

The others have all gone in one of the cars to find Almasy’s ‘Chianti Camp’ somewhere North of here. Only Geert remains. The dear man has been ill with a throat infection for some days now, and despite Attila’s best healing efforts with a course of dog penicillin, he is not feeling better. He has spent the day relaxing in camp, and smiles quietly at the tales of our ascent.

Everyone returns tired and contented, and the evening is once more starry and peaceful.

We are cradled in a cathedral of moonlit stone, and the soft sand is our pillow.

Monday 25^th March 2002

It’s been a tough day. We packed up camp and pulled out of Wadi Sura at first light, and headed back south down the great wall. After a couple of hours we turned again towards its shelter and felt our way carefully to the foot of the Aqaba Pass. The pass rises over about fifteen kilometres up a series of three steep slopes of almost liquid sand.

However, despite the alarming possibilities, and horror stories of ascents consisting of up to four hours of digging trucks out of the pitiless sand, we reached the top in an hour, with only two digging/pushing episodes being necessary.

We stopped briefly at the top and enjoyed lunch with a view, before setting off across the plateau.

Dear old Plateau Simon has nothing on this place.

For three hours we drive across perfectly flat and featureless gravel.

Nothing.

We sleep and stare blankly at the motionless horizon in turn, and really the afternoon is the low point of the journey so far.

However, by 4 o’ clock we reach the top of Wadi Abd el Malik, and make a heart stopping descent down a very steep, boulder-strewn, sandy ravine. The Lama Pass.

We end up getting out and sliding down the worst of it on foot, while Goodness, Safety and The One Who Returns bring the landcruisers down alone.

Wadi Abd el Malik is a valley much like any other. It is dotted with a few scrubby acacias which make me think longingly back to dear Karkur Talh, but this place is quite barren compared to that sweet haven.

The djinns conjure up another terrific wind out of nowhere for us to pitch our tents in, and afterwards I fall asleep for an hour, exhausted for no reason at all.

I dream of home and the people I love. I wonder what is happening, and if those people are thinking of me. I wonder if anyone would notice if I simply never came home. The terrors of an independent soul. Then I feel warm, and I fancy it is the warmth of my dear ones’ love, and that I can feel it even from here, and for the first time, I miss them. Magdi and I have talked long and comfortably today about families and partners. The desert clarifies the important things in life. The detritus, the unnecessary, is neatly cleared away.

I can see my loved ones clearly now, and doubt nothing about them.

I see my career and my life, and suddenly there is measure in it.

I dream of children who are mine. Children who until now I have denied any acknowledgement in my thoughts. Children I look forward to meeting.

And I dream of those children’s father. He is just out of focus, but he is my heart, and my soul, and my love, and in his protection, the deep sleep finally takes me.

Somehow the bleakest places make the best evening camps. In the desolation that is all around us we make a very happy group, gathered closely round a big flat rock with our camp fire on it, and supper is sweet and sour turkey. The cause of much excitement.

Georg goes walking in the moonlight for half the night, but by 9pm, I am tucked up once more in my sleeping bag. Still exhausted from yesterday’s climb.

Tuesday 26^th March 2002

In fact, what I have been thinking was exhaustion, this morning is now unmistakably illness. I feel nauseous, and freezing cold in the morning sun. While most of the others take one of the cars up the wadi to see three more engraved cows (“Fuck the cows!” Says Giles), I stay huddled, and dazed beside the fire. Giles plays with his Psion which rather impressively holds The Complete Works Of Shakespeare and The Oxford Book Of English Verse. He makes me read Ode To A Nightingale to him.

Georg paints.

The Bedouin make tea. They really are great these three Egyptian nomads. They have the best possible sense of fun, and laugh heartily at my attempts at Arabic. The tea they feed me is made by boiling the leaves with sugar in the pot. It is violently sweet and strong, but in these surroundings I admit I really like it. I love the solemnity with which it is prepared and poured into their odd collection of tiny glasses and jam jars.

Later when I am dozing as best I can, they start gambolling around, and Captain Wael, in one of his unexpected burst of mischief, starts to encourage everyone to engrave pre-historic cows onto rocks. Georg is bored of prehistoric cows now, so he does a cow on a motorbike, and I do a horse.

The others return and I join a brief trip off into another fork of the wadi.

There is nothing.

No. Here there is worse than nothing.

Here, there was something. Here there were once acacias and vegetation as abundant as Karkur Talh. Now it is all dead

The landscape is scattered with skeletons.

I think we are all happy to be leaving after lunch, but the afternoon is endless. It takes hours to be free of Wadi Abd el Malik. It is 150 kilometres long, and in all that length there is nothing more endearing in its nature. At it’s end, even the Gilf seems uncertain of itself. It peters out into a series of hills and tributaries. I’m sad that my last sight of the plateau for a while won’t be those magnificent, towering cliffs that gave the place its name. Gilf Kebir. Great Wall.

Out into the open desert we head once more, but now it is a grey gravel plain, and the car is mostly silent all afternoon.

There is one terrific high point at about 4 o’clock when Andras suddenly says, “Does anyone want to go to Libya?”

“Yes!” We all cry in unison.

“Well,” he says, “you four on the left hand side of the car already are.”

We all tumbled out into the middle of a small and pretty, sandy plain and skipped about like lambs. We ran about, 50 feet inside Libya. I wrote ‘LIBYA’ in big letters in the sand, and played hop-scotch, and we took each other’s photos and talked about how nice it was.

Then we went back to Egypt and got back in the cars and back on our way.

We were hoping to get to Silica Glass Field in the Southern edge of the Great Sand Sea before sunset, in time to camp, but as the shadows grew longer there was still no sign of the dunes.

Then, as the sky turned pink with candy-floss clouds against the deepest pale blue background, the great, silky, perfect outlines of the first dune belts of the Great Sand Sea come into view. I have waxed so lyrical about the other extraordinary sights I have seen on this journey, that now, I am afraid there are no more words to describe this wonder.

The dunes grow out of the horizon until they tower over our heads as big as churches. They are such an unlikely sight to be rising out of the gravel plain, they look more like a painted backdrop. They are improbable, intangible.

As we put up our tents, the combination of the moon and the deep pinks and blues of sunset and the giant creamy white folds of sand is the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

I walk out alone into the night. Among them. I find myself frightened by their immense size and their form. They resemble exactly great motionless stormy waves. I love those parallels in nature, those reflections. I fight down the ocean panic and walk on.

Walking along the top of a steep whale back, I hear a sound in the distance coming towards me at speed. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. Like a wave breaking along a shale beach. I freeze in horror, have my inner fears come to haunt me in a new form? Nothing moves in the moonlight. The sound blasts past me and back down the ridge at my back. Heart still pounding with terror, comprehension releases helpless laughter of relief. My footsteps vibrating through the great, sandy creature had dislodged the layer of sand all along its top windward edge and sent it sliding down the slope.

The dunes feel hollow under foot.

If you pound your feet when you walk, they speak with the rich voice of a deep and distant drum.

Enough frights for tonight! I return to camp, still chuckling to myself.

Wednesday 27^th March 2002

The night was bitterly cold. In the early hours I pulled out all my clothes and piled them on top of me. This morning I am stirred by the light of the sun lifting over the skyline but the air is still sharp with the chill. Dawn finds the whole group out on the plain prospecting for Silica Glass. I walk slowly, nursing a rather thick head. Last night’s celebratory sundowner at being in the sand sea, was Bagnold’s Special Cocktail, whiskey, rum and lime juice.

We polished off two litres of spirits, and at the request of Marc and Attila I, rather drunkenly I fear, read everyone a fairy tale. Then, foiling my attempts at passing out in my tent, Claire and Georg hauled me, staggering, to the top of the huge dune behind camp and demanded that I sing.

There astride the ridge, under a rich canopy of stars, I sang arias I had forgotten I once knew.

The world rolled away from us for thousands of miles in every direction.

And I suspect rolling was also the method used to get me to bed, although I can’t recall clearly.

So now I walk. Step. Step. My eyes focused on the ground, my head bent into the wind. I don’t have the faintest idea what I am looking for. Silica Glass is one of the rarest mineral substances on earth. Found only here, and possibly caused by a huge meteoric impact millions of years ago, it is one of the great mysteries of the Sand Sea. In the 20s it was coveted as jewellery in fashionable London Society, but worn only by the envied explorers wives.

Far earlier than this though, it was prized and treasured by the ancients. A beautiful scarab carved of Silica Glass was placed over the heart of the highly adorned and magnificently mourned body of the young Tutenkamun. 

Then, in the midst of my thoughts, I see something shining clear and green among the sand and stone. Glass, just lying there, smooth and bright and totally unlikely in its surroundings.

Half way through the morning Mahmoud of the golden smile remarks that it is like a game. The party organisers must have been out early placing the green treasure on the plain like Easter eggs for an egg hunt. It is as simple as that. Spend some time looking, and it’s just lying there waiting to be found. Completely addictive. By lunchtime we all returned to camp with pockets bulging and big grins.

The wind picks up with the ferocity of 50 djinns for us to take down our tents - no surprise there – and soon we are on our way once more.

I am very sorry to be leaving this place. The Bedouin, always a good gauge of the whole group’s mood, have been bombing about like children, chasing each other up and down the dunes laughing, and even burying Salama up to his neck in the sand.

But now, back on the road, the desert is a desert once more. We mostly sleep, with a brief mid-afternoon spate of singing Dire Straights and Pink Floyd songs. For some reason.

We had been going to attempt at least half crossing the great dune belt that comes down from the Sand Sea and cuts the route across the Northern Gilf in half, but with the light starting to go, and being well up on fuel and water, Andras decided to head back down to the Gilf and to camp in Wadi Hamra for the night.

Wadi Hamra runs parallel and to the East of Wadi Abd el Malik, and my heart sank a little at the thought of another night in such bleakness. However, Wadi Hamra, has yet another character, all of its own. As we drive down the wadi, back inside the Gilf Kebir, the sand starts to turn red, by the time we reach the spot of our camp the ground is deep and rich like blood. This, coupled with the light of the setting sun on the cliffs, lights the place up like the brightest fire. It is spectacular. Like Ayres Rock.

I climb to the top of a cone shaped rock formation in the centre of the valley. As the sun drops the shadows creep up its sides, the rich orange light withdrawing to my feet. There is a brief moment when the hill is in complete shadow and only I am left in the last blazing rays. A thing of fire, before being snuffed out into dusk.

After supper Georg went off for another moonlight walk and everyone else drifted off to bed leaving me beside the warm fire with the drivers. I’ve grown so fond of these three bright imps. They smile easily and insist on feeding me cigarettes as I have run out, and they make their strong, sweet tea to warm us.

Salama is the natural calm leader of their group. He really has the desert way, making the fires and the bread, he knows the stars and the sand, and has a way of taking control without making any kind of issue of it. The other two adore him.

Sayed, although the oldest of them at 28, at first seems like the baby of the group. He seems less worldly than the other two, and sometimes looks a bit bemused by life, in fact all this is a smoke screen for his wicked sense of humour and a no nonsense practicality. He just trots about and gets on with stuff.

Ayed is the funniest and the funkiest of them. His smile lights up the dullest moment, and his wry sense of humour makes me chuckle all the time.

The three of them are true Arab Bedouin and consequently love the desert in a way I understand Egyptian drivers in the past really have not. I know that Andras is delighted to have found them and is intending to make them a regular part of his team.

Ayed tells me how, after their typical tourist packed day, pick ups from hotels, runs to the Red Sea – they laugh at the traits of different nationalities the Germans, the Italians, the French, the British – and then when they have dropped off the last of their charges, the three of them meet and head for the desert. And they build a fire, and Salama makes bread and they sit under the stars sipping their tea as we do now.

“The Germans and the British are the most annoying.” He says, smirking at me.

“Not me!” I cry in protest.

“No.” He says, suddenly serious and smiling kindly. “You are like us. The desert is in here.” He taps his heart. “It is very good.”

Thursday 28^th March 2002

Up early in the red valley and on the road as soon as camp is dismantled. Of course, road is a word without meaning now. I’ve been here so long now that I can feel a deep change. Of course, I can picture a road, I know what it’s for, but something has been deeply shaken in my understanding of its purpose. I think my next sight of a road will be more disturbing than my first experience of the true wilderness. A road will be an affront, a scorning of the freedom wee currently enjoy. The thought makes me shudder. Home will be a foreign country with my heart so full of sand.

The dunes come back into sight mid-morning. They fill us with pleasure and eagerness, but we approach them with caution. This shifting landscape will not be crossed lightly. The shortest crossing that Andras has made of this dune belt is seven hours. He made the first crossing since Bagnold in 1935, only a couple of years ago. It is very much unknown territory.

Andras walks ahead up onto the backs of the dunes, and the cars follow in bursts and starts like fearful colts unwilling to follow their mother into the unknown, then dashing after her, more fearful, after all, of being left behind.

Andras walks steadily, quickly. He doesn’t look at the ground around him, but scans the near horizon as he moves. His feet give him the information he needs direct.

Before long, after the first couple of digging episodes, we are all on our feet walking too. The sun is bright but the breeze keeps us cool. Silky sand between my toes. This surreal world of creamy waves is heaven on earth.

At the highest point of the barrier we stopped and took a team photo, and by lunchtime we were across the worst of it and feeling quite pleased with ourselves. We headed back out onto the firm gravel and were stopped only a few time more by occasional strips of smaller dunes. Once again we all fell to dozing, talking, singing and reading.

By sundown we reached the place marked on Bagnold’s maps as ‘Hill with stone circle on top’. This perked me up no end. Not only is the spot in a very beautiful bit of desert with lovely rocks and perfect sand dunes, but there is also no doubt in my mind that Bagnold’s circle is the biggest laugh of the Western Desert, surely not prehistoric and probably still making his chums chuckle in their graves.

It is indeed a very pretty ring of stones, none bigger than a foot high, none matching, and clearly shoved into the sand (I think) for a bit of fun. While everyone photographed the spot, I held forth on my own theory about the place to Magdi and Lajos, Magdi trying to stifle her giggles and Lajos failing with his.

“Basically,” I Sayed, “old Bagnold was kicking about the desert in 1935, hadn’t discovered anything for a week or two, and was getting desperate with frustration, so his pals decided to cheer him up. They snuck out in the night and whispered to each other that they should make a stone circle for him to find in the morning, it would cheer him up no end, give him something to write on his map, and it would be something nice to camp next to in future. Or something like that anyway.”

Camp is beautiful this night. Like the weights on a great set of scales, as the sun dips down into the West, the perfect full moon rises into the East. After supper and tea with the drivers, Georg, Claire, Mahmoud and I walk up into the last pale and silver dunes and sit.

All is right with the world

Friday 29^th March 2002

I was up earl this morning and quickly dismantled my tent and bits before walking alone back into the low dunes, and looked about in the morning light at this homely wilderness. When I got back everyone was up and about packing, so I sat down on the top edge of the dune above camp and watched the activity. Salama strolled to the foot of the dune, 15 feet below me, and with a spade, started digging. I watched him idly, wondering what he was up to.

As the sand started quietly sliding away  directly in front of my crossed legs, the clown’s intentions became clear. We both started giggling as he dug faster and faster and I tried to sit with as much composure as possible, the sand gradually disappearing from under me. Suddenly there was nothing left, and I tumbled head over heels, spectacularly down the dune into the delighted Salama.

By eight we were back on our way. We are definitely on our way home now, and the group is quieter. There are a couple of diversions; crossing the occasional dune, a flat tyre, and unlikely ‘way’ marker left over from a years old cross-desert motor race.

Lunchtime finds us next to a steep cone-shaped hill, another of Bagnold’s  ‘Hill with stone circle on top’. We climb up and this time it undoubtedly is a prehistoric ring, and I fancy less entertaining than yesterday’s for all its thousand’s of years.

Despite our general sadness at heading North-East, the afternoon car was full of high spirits. Boys versus girls (Hannah & Claire V Georg & Lajos) each developed our own theories of evolution. Ours was extremely sensible, much influenced by Claire’s scientific influence, and theirs was some bonkers nonsense about garbage and bins being the source of all energy.

Bits of this journal were read out, particularly the first impressions of everyone, which made us all laugh a lot. Lajos is very upset because there was no first impression of him due to the fact that he didn’t appear until five minutes before we left, and then I had other things to write about. So to make up for it, I have promised to write about him now. 

Hmm… here goes…

Lajos was a bit of a wild card in the group, having sent two ridiculous photos of himself dressed up as a granny and Osama Bin Laden by way of e-mail introduction (he assures us that he was very drunk, and it seemed like a good idea at the time). To meet him was at first a bit scary. He’s quite hard to read, being quite quiet and having an extremely  dry and straight-faced sense of humour. However, what comes out after a while is; a huge intelligence, care and concern for his environment, passion for his chosen field of study – insects and butterflies, and a warmth that is made warmer by its unexpectedness. He has it in him to be joyously silly and brightly enthusiastic. My lasting memory of him will be sitting in the open back door of one of the landcruisers, and his eyes lighting up as a big grasshopper landed on the roof above m head. As though I suddenly wasn’t there, he scrambled right over me and up onto the bumper to try and reach the little creature, which bounced away, nimbly avoiding ‘collection’. I have to admit I was relieved. I have never before been on a trip which involved travelling with so many dead things. Claire and Lajos have been studiously collecting dead birds and insects wherever we’ve been, and the sight of this grasshopper skipping away is a joy to me. So, that’s Lajos. He is firmly part of my desert family and I love him to bits, as I do them all. This really is a very special group of people.

By four we reached Abu Ballas – Pottery Hill. This once magnificent archaeological site is now a little sad. It suffers, despite still being remote, from really being just a bit too close to civilisation. It is within reach. The photos of the early explorers show magnificent piles of prehistoric pottery storage jars piled up the sides of the steep and spectacular little hill. Now, collectors and thoughtless travellers have reduced the vessels to a sad pile of no more than maybe thirty broken pots at its foot.

Half way up there is a small cave and two beautiful and detailed engravings, one of a cow and the other of an archer with a gazelle. After a slightly hair-raising scramble the view from the top is, of course, spectacular, but for all this you can’t help feeling that this place would have been best served if left undiscovered.

Salama caught a small, beautiful, brown snake at the top, which he brought down to show everyone. The nervous creature firmly locked its jaws onto the fabric of his shesh, and showed no intention of letting go for some time. I suspect that as it finally slithered quietly back off into the rocks, it had much the same feeling of bewilderment as our lizard on Plateau Simon.

Here there were also beautiful Painted Lady butterflies, such an English sight, that came and settled on the English girl like home, attracted I think, by her lilac t-shirt.

We camped not far from Abu Ballas in the shelter of a steep rocky outcrop, which Claire, Georg and I of course climbed up. The view was beautiful, and as it was to be our last peak together, long we sat and watched the perfect bronze disk of the sun dip slowly under the distant hills on the horizon.

This is a peaceful camp with no wind, and we sat late with the drivers and the quiet captain, drinking tea and watching the fire under the starry night sky.

When I went to bed, I sat in the opening of my tent brushing my teeth, and watched anxiously as two tiny lights began an ascent of the cliff ahead of me. Georg and Salama, climbing in the light of the full moon. I can hear their low voices across the desert stillness, Salama’s cautious, enquiring, Georg’s calm, reassuring. And then at the top the lights go out and they fall silent again, drinking in the desert’s moonlit creed.

Saturday 30^th March 2002

The group is subdued as we drive east the next morning. The next sight we expect to see will be the long line of asphalt, improbably  stretching North/South up to the approaching turmoil of the oasis towns. By 11am, there it was. We stopped to examine it, to walk about on it, almost like some kind of rehabilitation exercise. And then North. The landscape which seemed so open and refreshing on our journey South fourteen days ago, now seems bland and hopeless, paling beside the wonders we have seen.

By lunchtime we reached the first military checkpoint and shortly after, the town of Dahkla. The sight of so much commotion and bustle was startling and uncomfortable. I am starting to understand the nature of ‘oasis’ now. This is a complete world with lives and businesses and relationships weaving their web of existence round water. All eyes here must surely only look in at one another. Denial. I can’t imagine a symbiosis between all this human fuss and the creeping lonely places all around, waiting patiently at the crisp, palm-edged boundaries. The desert has all the time in the world.

When we pull up at our original hotel, we are beckoned into its cool dark interior. I am overwhelmed by a feeling of drowning. The cream tiled floors, the television, the comfortable chairs. I head back outside, and sit in the dust beside the road. Trucks rumble by and scooters and donkeys laden with baskets. I want to cry.

However, my spirits soon lift. Magdi comes and smiles sweetly at me, “Don’t be sad,” she says, “we’ll take you back again someday.”

A cool shower in a spare hotel room is bliss, and the feeling of my damp, clean hair swinging about my head when I come down to lunch is enough to completely put the spring back into my step.

Lunch itself is also fairly miraculous. No turkey! Bread and tahini and fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, followed by vegetable soup and then fried rice with noodles and bean stew and thick slices of roast beef, and oranges to finish off the feast. Never has anything tasted so good. We were stuffed.

While we eating, the oil was changed in the cars, and the tanks filled with fuel, and when we were ready to set off once more on our way, we faced the first of our goodbyes. This is where Wael, the quiet Egyptian Captain leaves our desert family fold. On returning to the oasis, he changed back into his smart uniform and cool sunglasses, and the relaxed friendship we have developed with him suddenly seemed out of place. He came late into lunch and the Egyptian waiter gave him a seat apart from us, away from the western tourists in his care, and he looked really self-conscious and awkward. “What are you doing over there?” I demanded “You’re still one of us you know, even if you have put your uniform back on. Come and sit here, and don’t be so weird.” He grinned, gratefully I think, and hurriedly came to join us.

Over the last few days I have taken to flinging small stones at him when he’s not looking, in mock declaration of war against our resident army, then, smirking, as I’d turn my own back, I’d feel the puck, puck, puck, of pebbles hitting me. It has amused us no end.

Now, as we pile back into the cars to go, he stands sadly watching us then slowly turns away. I lean out of the window and catch him square in the middle of the back with a pre-prepared pebble. He spins round grinning, and as we pull off down the road we wave and we wave, until he disappears from sight.

We are planning to make our final camp somewhere South of Farafa. However, as we drive, the wind starts to whip up around us, and the air grows thick with sand. We stop for a quick conference, and although a few of us die-hards are desperate to camp one last night, it is decided we should press on to Farafa and find the shelter of a hotel. Farafa is a god-forsaken dump and Magdi and I are not at all happy. We spend the next hour fabricating fantastic horror stories concerning the possible scenarios relating to staying in a hotel in Farafa.

However, luck was on our side (or perhaps, with hindsight, it wasn’t), for when we came to the one hotel in Farafa (cockroach-ridden I am sure), a coach load of tourists had just arrived, also seeking shelter from the storm, and the place was full.

Some grinned happily and some smiled resignedly, but nevertheless we hit the road again, aiming as darkness fell, for the White Desert.

As we pulled off the road into the surreal, Dali-esque landscape, the air was thick with dust like an English fog, but the wind had dropped to a murmur.

For two hours it looked as though conditions might be going to improve. The tents went up and the fire was lit and Andras produced two ‘end of trip’ bottles of Champagne as our final sundowners.

Then, as an exciting meal of fresh meat and salad was serve up for supper, the wind whipped up out of the East, and hit us like a wild-animal. We wrapped our scarves around our heads, covered our bowls with our hands and, bending our bodies into the millions of stinging grains of sand, battled our way into one of the cars, which was the only possible protection against the dark storm.

We sat and ate, feeling the wind slamming into the car with ferocious blasts. We can see nothing the windows are full of night and swirling sand, only the dim, strange shapes of white rock ghosts appearing and disappearing as each veil of sand draws past.

Eventually only Lajos and I are left, talking to Salama, Sayed and Ayed by the light of a torch. They tell us about their wives and their children. Sayed has two sons and Salama a 4 year old daughter called Amira, he shows us a picture of a beautiful little girl with big dark eyes. Ayed has no children although he has been married four years, he is very sad and tells us that his wife is sick with sorrow about it.

Suddenly there is a pounding on the door. “Help! Help! My tent is flying away!” It was Marc. We all wrapped our scarves around our heads once more and jumped out to help him. We lashed the tent to the ground with big rocks and although it still billowed out like a spinnaker, he managed to get inside and we bundled back into our makeshift shelter.

With home on our minds we all swapped mobile phone numbers (Bedouin with mobiles! Whatever next?) and the three of them seemed really sad. We are all to part so soon. With solemn faces they ask if we are real friends now? If we will stay in touch? “Absolutely.” I reply. “Absolutely yes. My Bedouin friends.”

Sunday 31^st March 2002

None of us slept much last night. What a night! All the djinns and dervishes of the entire Western Desert seemed to fling themselves collectively at our tiny, helpless camp. Perhaps they are sad we are leaving, I muse. This morning we emerge in dribs and drabs like people in a dream, but are soon grinning at the adventure of it all. We have spent the night with the Khamaseen, the fearsome East wind of the desert, and we have the survivors t-shirts! The morning is thick with a fog of dust, but the wind is gone, so we pack up and make our way back to the road.

I had not yet sat in the front passenger seat of any of the cars, so this morning I persuade Mahmoud to swap, and go in Salama’s car with Giles and Marc.

As we got back onto the road, Salama grinned sideways at me and Sayed, “Want to drive?” Well I wasn’t going to wait to be asked twice, that’s for sure. He pulled over and we ran round the front, and I climbed into the drivers seat of the huge landcruiser. Left-hand drive too, which was pretty odd, and off we went along the 200 kilometres to Bahariya.

There was much jollity as Marc and Giles, reclining in luxury in the back, bickered away at each other like an old married couple, and Salama put on all his favourite tapes of Bedouin and Egyptian music.

We were the third car at first, but Ayed soon noticed in his mirror who was driving and pulled over to let us past and behind the first car with everyone else in it. Soon everyone was laughing and waving at me, it was really nice. The front car by this time was also full of Claire’s collection of mummified birds, and before long, everyone had one and were staging a huge bird fight in the back window for my  entertainment.

Driving through Bahariya was an experience I won’t forget in a hurry. I’ve never seen so many donkeys and bicycles and children appearing out of nowhere and weaving in and out of he traffic over the road. I cautiously manoeuvred the huge car through it all with mixed feelings of utmost trepidation and total disbelief. We were looking for diesel but all the main petrol stations were empty. Eventually one of the attendants joined us to take us out into the oasis to somewhere he Sayed we would be able to fill up from jerry cans.

Down tiny, narrow, palm-lined roads we go, the dense and shadowy forest, close on either side, is inviting in the thick mid-day heat. We come to a village of mud-made houses made bright by bougainvillea, bunches of bananas, baskets of oranges, bright washing blowing from windows, donkeys with big bundles of green, wavering precariously over their backs, happy brown children playing in the street, old Bedouin men sitting in the sun and women chatting easily to each other with chubby-faced babies on their hips. Such an oasis tapestry, I would not have missed for the world.

The cars are fuelled by cheerful men with a big funnel and a length of hose. Ayed leans on the door of my car by the window and says we should all go into business driving together. “Ayed, Sayed, Salama and Hannah!” I cheerfully inform him that I can take him on a special trip. “Very cheap!” I say. “We go to desert, I show you real Bedouin village. We make bread, drink tea, show you dancing. Very cheap price!” He curls up with giggles and delight at my impersonation of the Cairo touts.

Before setting off on the long final leg of our journey back to Cairo, we stopped back in the main town of Bahariya for tea, and I bought everyone a chocolate bar to assist in our re-acclimatisation.

The air was clearing now and we stopped for lunch on a windy but sunny plain of nothing in particular, and feeling alone again, we were happy. We made a collection for the drivers and Marc made a speech of thanks to Andras and Magdi, but even his excellent words, barely hint at the gratitude I believe we all feel at being taken on this extraordinary journey.

I found a stem of grass this morning with a long, thick, mares-tail seed head and gave it to Salama who proudly stuck it into the sun-visor of his car. As the day has gone on, it has dried and fluffed up into a beautiful silver squirrel tail. “It’s my desert flower, my present of thanks to you.” I say. He grins. Then, from the eccentric array of decorative ornaments that all Egyptian dashboards seem to be dressed with, he plucks a pretty, butterfly hairclip, its metal wings on tiny springs so that they flutter when you move. “And this is my present to you.” He says. I was delighted.

I drove until we were 100 kilometres outside Cairo, then Salama took over to pick our way through the shouting people and the weaving cars and the blaring horns, into the madness of the city.

Our route, once more brings us in beside the two momentous pyramids at Giza, very much silent sentinels in the wild world at their feet.

Soon we are back at the Hotel Fondque Cosmopolitan, its ex-patriot splendour welcoming us back into its cool and faded grandeur. The bags and our clothes, which didn’t get a second look this morning, being quite normal in our eyes, suddenly seem to be coated in all the sand and dust of the Western Desert.

We get a friendly welcome of recognition from the gracious, uniformed doorman. “You have a nice trip to the oasis?” He asks. “Where you been?” I find I have absolutely no way of even beginning to answer his friendly enquiry. I just look at him and smile. How will we ever begin to explain to people who have not been there, places which no words can begin to describe?

At eight, after a couple of hours which I think we all spent in the bath. We regrouped and went for dinner. The Bedouin boys bounced up to meet us outside the hotel with smart new haircuts and clean western jeans and t-shirts. They melt into their Cairo surroundings with no hint of their desert souls. Perhaps that is their gift to be a part of their surrounding wherever they are, be it the busy streets of Cairo, of the silence of the desert night, perhaps they always find the heart. What remarkable young men they are.

Our favourite haunt Felfela is full to bursting, so we wander for a while and end up in and amazingly posh restaurant, hosting the opening of a French photographer’s new exhibition of photographs of Egypt. The place with eye-linered and  bejewelled women smoking cigarettes with long, painted, nails, is like stepping into the Alexandria Quartet.

The drivers, admittedly, don’t look so at home here, they giggle about napkins and red wine, which they sip with suspicion. We all together round a big long table, and in the candlelight our close knit desert fellowship is by far the happiest and rowdiest group in the place.

As intense Cairo intellectuals look critically at arty black and white photographs of Bedouin sitting round camp fires, little do they suspect that the three little Arabs laughing at the large multi-national table of friends behind them are the real thing.

At 10 o’clock the three of them rise to leave and we hug them and kiss them, and we promise them that we’ll stay in touch, and that we’ll visit them when we return to Cairo. And then they go, strolling off together into the warm evening, towards the next desert night.

At the hotel we say the next of our goodbyes, and these ones make my heart ache. Magdi, Andras and Marc are leaving in the early hours of the morning. How sad I am to see them go, Marc who championed me, a stranger, so gallantly, in this very hotel foyer where now we stand friends. And my good friend Magdi, I hug her tightly. How sad I am to see this wise and beautiful Hungarian lady leave with her kind and intelligent husband who has guided us so unfailingly, but I know that this warm couple will be friends always now and that I will see them again soon.

Giles, Lajos, Attila, Claire and I retire to the bar with Georg to drink the health of his close friend Lisa. Georg had returned this evening to a phone call from his wife to say that this Lisa had gone missing three weeks ago on a climbing expedition to Patagonia. A week ago, her Italian companions had given her up for dead and returned to Milan. Georg was devastated, but a few phone calls later he got the news that this remarkable lady, having fallen down a deep crevasse, had managed to crawl back to the deserted base camp, where luckily there was still food and water. She then spent a week crawling with frozen hands and feet, 70 kilometres, across icy waste and three treacherous glacial rivers, back to safety.

Georg finally managed to actually speak to her in hospital, and afterwards we all helped him celebrate her extraordinary courage and survival.

Monday 1^st April 2002

Having all agreed to lie in this morning, I was, not surprisingly, wide awake at our customary 6am. And when I went down to breakfast at 7.30am it was to find everyone else there too. At 10am I got a phone call from an Egyptian driver who Sayed that Mr Georg had asked him to collect me and Claire, and take us to meet him at Café Fishawy at 11am, in the deepest part of the old market. At 11 we walked down the narrow passageways of the Khan el-Khalili and turned a corner to find Georg puffing on a sheesha and sipping mint tea. Café Fishawy, at over a hundred years old, is the oldest café in Cairo, and absolutely everything the grand old Cairo of the Khedive should be. High ceilings with intricate wooden screens let the light filter in dust floating beams down into the cool interior. Once beautiful, now dirty, grand chandeliers, wink secretly from their shadowy cobweb roosts in the high clay ceilings.

The air is thick with the scent of burning sugar and apple blossoms, and the sounds of the busy tradesmen, plying their wares in the narrow streets outside, drift in through wooden casements and curl across the worn tiled floors.

We are joined in dribs and drabs by Lajos and Attila, then Mahmoud and a friend of his, and we sit thoughtfully in the morning’s warmth sucking in the apple sweet smoke, to the sound of the water bubbling in the sheesha’s glass base.

This is the time of my saddest goodbyes yet. To angel-like Mahmoud with that laugh of his like a spring in the desert, and my dear friend Georg who has been my companion through these pages and for whom no more words are necessary. But again, these friends will be with me always. Mahmoud promises to visit me in England, and Georg and I are already musing over a trip next January, to go walking in Algeria perhaps… So, this is not goodbye, only farewell for a while. Still, I hug them tightly and don’t ever want to let go, the most precious of us sandy souls.

Claire and I and the Hungarian boys walk through the market for a couple of hours, taking in the sounds of the touts and the smells of the spice sellers, until lunch at Felfela unites us once more with Geert. Lunch is a cheery business, but afterwards I wander the busy Cairo streets for hours alone before returning to the Cosmopolitan exhausted. I want home now, my travelling bug worn out for now. Vince and Jonathan and Tracey and Rachel have been texting me all day between them and I long to see them all again. I so want my friends and my dog and my horse and the familiarity of England. I am so very tired.

Supper at Felfela with what is left of my dear new friends is a lively affair. Talk and news from all over the world; the nature of Cairo as a city, 2 million people demonstrating in Rome against the President, silica glass, and the journey, always back to the journey, detail by detail, place by place.

Eventually Claire, Lajos, Attila and I hugging Giles and Geert make the next of our sad goodbyes, before heading of into the hot and busy Cairo night back to Café Fishawy.

We smoked sheesha and drank tea surrounded by a dense mass of Bedouin and Egyptian men and women all crammed in shoulder to shoulder. Touts and salesmen, many of them children, push their way through the crowds trying their luck on whoever will listen, but you get the feeling that most of all, they just like being out chatting to people in the buzz of it all. Their selection of wares became more and more entertaining as the night went on. Quite early on Claire managed to resist a pair of comedy glasses with huge false nose and eyebrows attached, only to get her shoes whisked off into the balmy evening for polishing. A little later I succumbed and bought four strings of heavily scented white and pink jasmine flowers, and finally, Attila, barely able to contain his enthusiasm bought a ridiculous squeaky, furry, yellow duck (for his veterinary colleagues back at the surgery, he Sayed).

Tired and contented, happy and sad, we eventually head back to the Cosmopolitan. On our arrival there I am summoned to see the manager, like a schoolgirl summoned to a head teacher. It transpires that he has finally heard, Via Georg who told his taxi driver, who told the assistant manager, who told him, about my unwanted night time visitor when we first arrived here. The man was extremely gracious and apologetic, and hoped that I would be his guest back at Cosmopolitan some time in the future. When I walked back out into the foyer the sight of my three friends made me chuckle out loud, they looked like kids waiting to hear the fate of their naughty friend.

The next goodbye for them is to me, I am the next to be leaving. They walk me up to my room, and I get the best hugs of all before watching them walk reluctantly down the hall, looking back often and waving sadly.

This is my journey’s end. The taxi will come for me in the early hours of the morning and take me back through the minarets and the dusty streets of this ancient city. I shall climb on a plane and land in the cold and the green of home, where my friends will greet me with laughter and wine and their own tales of two weeks when I was in the heart of nothing and in the heart of everything.

But all of that, is quite another story.

© Hannah McKeand

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