Siwa

I've now had my first proper desert experience! Last weekend I went to Siwa with a big group of people from school, I think there was about 20 of us going. Siwa is an oasis in the Western Desert, quite close to the Libyan border. The biggest town in the Siwa Oasis is surprisingly called Siwa, and is home to about 25 000 Siwans. The Siwans have throughout history had to endure many attacks from other desert tribes, so they built their whole city within a citadel in order to better defend themselves. It must have worked quite well, as the Siwans managed to stay independent for quite long, and the area has only been part of Egypt for the last 200 years or so. The citadel, called the Shali, is almost completely abandoned now, but the remains of it still towers over the new town. If I understood correctly, "Shali" means "town" in Siwi, the mother tongue of the Siwans. The Siwans have retained their own Berber language (the Berbers are the indigenous people of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), and only speak Arabic as a second language.

9 hour bus journeys are not my favourite, especially as I get car sick easily, so I can't really do anything productive with my time, like reading or doing homework. Luckily my friend Harriet has the same problem, and 18 hours on the bus in one weekend proved to be quite a good bonding opportunity. It's not fair, though, as she's studying French and Arabic and will be leaving to go on her year abroad in France already in January, which means I will have to find a new bus buddy! Another of the girls I travelled with, Cat, will also be leaving for France soon. I think their going to France is a terribly bad idea. We should rather import some more French people to Egypt - let me know if you know anyone who might be interested!

Aaaaaaanyway, our first day in Siwa was spent recovering from the bus journey and going on a desert trip. Our guides took us on a drive in the Great Sand Sea, as the desert surrounding the oasis very poetically is called. The sand dunes themselves are beautiful - and as I mentioned in a post before, the desert landscape quite reminds me of the winter landscape in the mountains in Norway. It made me really feel like skiing, something which might seem like a strange urge in the middle of the desert. We did try sandboarding, however, but unfortunately I turned out not to be a natural talent. In my defense, I've never been on any kind of board before, be it a skateboard or a snowboard. Our guides also took us to see a petrified forest, which was very cool. The petrified wood really looks like a cross between wood and stone - which I guess is quite logical as that is pretty much what it is: wood which has fossilised and turned into stone.

We set camp around sunset and the evening was spent sitting around the camp fire chatting. At one point our guides started singing Siwi songs for us, which sounded really beautiful there in the middle of the desert. They also served us chicken cooked in an earth oven they made in the sand, so I guess we got to see some of the desert culture.

I can inform you that after dark it gets very dark in the desert - at about 7 I was sure it was nearing to midnight. It was ideal for stargazing, but not quite as ideal when trying to figure out where in the Great Sand Sea you left your belongings. It also gets rather cold this time of year - something I think many of my fellow travellers can confirm, as the romantic idea of sleeping under the stars turned into a night of more sleeplessness than sleep for them, wrapped up in blankets which weren't quite warm enough. I went to bed a bit early in order to secure space in a tent - you know how I hate being cold. And ooooh, how they all  laughed at the Norwegian when I turned up with my big luggage, but if I hadn't been so busy sleeping snuggled up in all my nice, warm clothes, I would definitely have beenthe one laughing by the end of that night! I come prepared!

Cat, Harriet and Aisha enjoying brunch our first morning in Siwa

The Great Sand Sea

Me, Cat and Harriet ready for the desert!

Salman trying to recover from his car sickness

Me in the desert!

Cat sandboarding

Waking up a bit sleepy and disoriented the next morning, I was surprised and stunned by seeing the whole desert in front of me when poking my head out of the tent. It was an amazing sight. On the way back to Siwa town, we stopped for a swim in a hot spring. I have never been to a hot spring before, and was surprised by how hot the water actually was. I guess I have a talent for letting truisms surprise me. The smell from the spring was rather rank, as Cat would say, but we still had a very refreshing morning bath. And if we all emitted a faint smell of rotten eggs for the rest of the day, then we were happily oblivious to it.

The desert in the morning

Ant by the hot spring

Me and Cat enjoying the hot water

We had a few very lazy hours lounging in a restaurant and visiting a few of the local handicraft shops, and then I went with Cat, Harriet and Tom (all from my class at SOAS) to visit the Shali. From the moment we arrived in Siwa, I was fascinated by it. From the distance, the Shali first looks like a weirdly shaped rock, and then you realise that many of these shapes look suspiciously much like houses. This is due to the fact that the houses were built entirely of mudbrick, so they have the exact same colour as the rock, and over the years the rain has made many of them halfway melt, giving it all a distorted look. I think the Shali perched on a hill overlooking the town gives the whole place such a spooky, mysterious atmosphere.Visiting it was great - we could pretty much climb all over the citadel, and Tom had a lot of fun hiding in the weirdest places in order to jump out and scare us when we were walking by.

Shop selling traditional Siwan handicraft

I love this bank!

The Shali looming above the town

Cat on top of the Shali

The last thing we did in Siwa was going to a lake to see the sunset. Driving past palms upon palms upon palms I fully realised for the first time that we were actually in an oasis. It was very beautiful and peaceful, and the perfect ending to our trip. After spending most of the time in the desert, it was nice getting to see a bit of the oasis as well.

Me in a hammock by the lake

Some of my fellow travellers

In other news: we went to a karaoke night yesterday, close to the beach out in Montazah east in the city. It was like being in a completely different world: the atmosphere was so relaxed, people were dancing and singing and having a really good time. It was not the Alexandria we see every day when trying to get through the insane traffic while hurrying to school. I don't think I'd ever imagined that my first karaoke experience would be taking part in singing Spice Girls in Egypt, though. Slightly surreal.

The karaoke crew