27 Oct Egypt: The White Desert

I am back. I never really left. I was always there, in Africa, body or soul, fulfilling my dreams or dreaming that I was fulfilling them. And now that I've finally made it and have returned to work in an African country, it's time for me to attend to the many requests (which there are...) and revive the blog.

In this new stage I want to undress before you (metaphorically speaking of course...) leaving behind that alpha male image and show my most sensitive side, combining it with the scientific rigour that characterises me, to take you by the hand to the remote places to which a voice inside me orders me to go relentlessly.

I also wanted to present a new project that I am developing together with three other friends (the best of each house). We are thinking about the creation of a non-profit company, and if someone has to make a profit, at least we should not be too many to distribute...

The idea of the society is to promote the knowledge of the different cultures and ways of life of the deserts, and for this someone is going to have to travel all over the deserts of the world (volunteers are sought...), (although in reality, what is really sought are patrons, sponsors, donors, contributors... in short, people willing to pick their pockets for such a noble ideal, which is sad to ask for, but sadder to steal...).

Don't think that this is going to be an easy undertaking. I have calculated that there are more than 70 deserts in the world and in Africa alone I have come up with more than 30 between the great Erg and deserts. In them there are areas of historical interest such as the petroglyphs of Tassili N'ajer or Ahhagar, millenary cultures such as the Nubian pyramids of Meroe, cultural centres such as Tamegroute or Djenne, holy cities such as Chinguetti, Adrar or Oualata, kingdoms such as Songhai or Ghana, salt caravan routes such as Bilma or Agadez, tribes as diverse as the Tuareg, Tubus, Dinkas, Nuer, Turkana, Afar, Songay, Hausa, Daza, Ouaddani, etc., or landscapes that vary from the volcanic peaks of Tibesti to the depressions of Danakil or Lake Assal, the miraculous lakes of Ubari, the labyrinths of Awayké, etc. etc. etc. As you can see, not all deserts are the same.

The area I am presenting to you today, for example, includes the Black Desert, the White Desert of Bahariya and the red dunes of Wadi Hamra in the Gilf Kebir.

We plan to organise a couple of annual trips to a desert selected from among the different proposals. Later on we will organise conferences, seminars, African music concerts, zumba classes, projection of auteur films and short films with a message (no violence, we want to give a trendy image), poetry readings (attendance at these activities will be compulsory for the initiated), gin and tonic tastings (attendance at these will be recommended) etc. etc., etc., all in all, a great plan to attract members.

The society will be called "Desertando" (we wanted to name it in English to give it a more international character, taking advantage of the fact that we are practically bilingual, one thing..., nobody should think that this is an allusion to the fact that I have temporarily left the military life, that will always be inside).

The statutes of the society are in the process of being drafted, we will finish them as soon as we can get together without being distracted by the gin and tonics and the waitress's ass, because there is no one to focus on with all the fuss.

That's why I thought that the best way to publicise this project is to accompany it by presenting a very special desert.

Legend has it that back in 1835, a camel herder who had a beautiful daughter named Zoraida, but that is beside the point as cute as she was, told Egyptologist John Wilkinson about the existence of a mysterious oasis called Zerzura located at the confluence of three valleys on the Gilf Kebir plateau.

This revelation, together with the mention of the oasis in the book "The Hidden Pearls", led a group of adventurers to meet 100 years later in the Sudanese town of Wadi Haffa to create the Zerzura Club, with the intention of finding the last oasis, the lost oasis of Zerzura.

So, from the oases of Kharga, dakhla, farafra and Bahariya, they started to travel through the white desert that I show you in this post.
The outbreak of World War II caused the group to split up and fight in the same area on different sides, leaving the search for the oasis for better times. So the British Ralph Bagnold and Patrick Clayton created the Long Range Desert Group and Count Almasy (the English patient) became a spy for the Third Reich. Another day I will tell you his true story.

But the location of the oasis remains a mystery and like Timbuktu, they symbolise the romantic spirit of adventure.
If we can find it, we'll find it ....

But getting there is not easy. A few days ago, an Islamist terrorist group had attacked a military detachment near the Farafra oasis, killing 22 soldiers, and since then the police have made it very difficult to enter the area. I don't know what's going on, but for some years now the bad guys and I like to frequent the same places.

Back in Cairo, after three failed attempts and about to throw in the towel, I went to a MacDonald's to taste the specialities of Egyptian cuisine and met some Germans who had got a permit from the police, so after playing nice and telling them about when I lived in Chad, which always works, I got them to accept me as a pet and I went with them (you know, A sorte protege a os audaces).

The rest you can imagine. In the evening, after arriving in the Black Desert, I went to bed early, as my hands were aching from speaking so much German, and I wanted to enjoy the incredible starry sky. These intense nights I get especially tender, I am never alone, my parents and my whole family are with me, as they always appear on the dune next to me. It's horrible how emotional I get, anything moves me, I start thanking God for the luck I have and I end up crying with Paquirrin's song, the one from Cuento de Hadas, a great song, by the way...

On the way home, those voices that only I can hear, insisting that I visit the white desert, faded away. It seemed that I was cured, but this morning I started to hear the same voices getting louder and louder, demanding that I visit the Gilf Kebir Desert, it's horrible, they won't give me a break. ....

By the way, when I returned home I was told that in Cairo there was some kind of pyramids, I have no idea, I'll see if next time I go back I'll take a good look.

As you can see I am back, and this time to stay, because the truth is that I have never, ever stopped looking for the lost oasis of Zerzura.