The nights
Camps under the stars
Nights in desert camps, most memorably among the White Desert's chalk formations, with a sky undimmed by any light for a hundred miles. Simple, comfortable, and unforgettable.
The oasis circle
Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla, Kharga.
The classic desert journey is a loop south and west through the four great oases. It begins at Bahariya, the nearest, with its hot springs and its gateway to the Black Desert. From there the road crosses to Farafra and the otherworldly White Desert, where wind-carved chalk formations glow at dawn and dusk and the night camp among them is, for many travellers, the single most memorable night of their whole time in Egypt. The journey continues to Dakhla, the loveliest of the oases with its medieval mud-brick town of Al-Qasr, and on to Kharga, the largest and most southerly, with its ancient temples and its sense of real remoteness. The distances are long and the landscape vast; the journey is as much about the spaces between the oases as the oases themselves.
This is a journey of desert camps and simple oasis lodges rather than hotels, of specialist desert drivers and guides rather than city ones, and of a pace dictated by the land. It can stand alone as a week or more, or be added to a classic Nile journey for travellers who want both the monuments and the emptiness. The wider journeys it joins are on the signature journeys page.
