Most foreign visitors to Egypt stick to the Nile Valley or the Red Sea coast, but that's to miss the bulk of this huge country – the deserts that stretch westwards from the river to the Libyan border.
Amid these "unfathomable distances" lie ancient Christian monasteries, oasis temples and thrillingly "surreal" landscapes, said Stanley Stewart in the Financial Times – and most are relatively free of tourist crowds. On a private trip with Original Travel, I visited Cairo and Alexandria before heading into the desert in a 4x4 with a local guide. Our ultimate destination was Siwa, where in 331BC Alexander the Great consulted the oracle at the Temple of Amun, a striking ruin today. But there were many other "wonders" to see on the way.
Christian monasticism began in the Egyptian desert: in the 4th century, St Anthony – later known as the "father of all monks" – went there to live in an empty tomb, and was tempted by the devil. In Wadi El Natrun, we visited the monastery of Deir al-Suryani, founded two centuries later, and gazed into the "startled" faces of the holy men depicted in "exquisite" murals in its 10th-century church. From there, we drove to Qasr el Sagha, a Pharaonic temple perched on a lonely ridge. Its caretaker served us tea and told of the desert djinns he heard "howling to one another" at night. Then came Wadi al-Hitan, where the fossilised skeletons of ancient whales (creatures whose limbs were still more leg-like than fin-like) lie half-covered in the sand – a sight as "astonishing" as any in Egypt. We drove over dunes, and passed through the Black Desert (where the hills are "charred" with basalt) and the White Desert, with its "bizarre" pinnacles of limestone and chalk.
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And we stayed in some beautiful hotels – two belonging to the Tzila company, and the "splendid" Adrère Amellal in Siwa, the lush oasis town where Alexander, setting out to conquer the known world, spoke with the oracle, and divulged afterwards only that "he had heard what pleased him".
A nine-night trip costs from £4,000pp, including flights (originaltravel.co.uk).
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