A Big Day

We left our beautiful resort hotel early and headed to the deserted outskirts of the city to visit a Roman temple built in Egyptian style. The carvings and paintings were wonderfully preserved and you could still see the original paint.

El Kasar City was our next stop. As we visited this 1100 AD year old Islamic city we saw houses, a mosque with minaret, the court house and many shops. The city is a ghost town and the walk was quite interesting. Afterwards with legs crossed we visited the local W.C. Before leaving town we made a stop at the local supermarket.

Packed with 50 bags of chips and cookies we met our next security escort for our drive across the desert. His name was...yep, you guessed it-Mohammed. He were "packing" too!

Before reaching the sands we passed through the rest of Dakhla Oasis, some 20+ miles of fertile irrigated land dotted with small villages and one large improved city. And who said the desert was dead? Construction everywhere-apartments, shops, government buildings.

Down the road we stopped at the 15th century town of Balat, still occupied and modernized in places. In the next village we saw the Bashandi Tomb. This is the tomb of a learned man who came to this area to teach the Koran to the local people. This happened on about 600 years ago. The tomb had a whispering arch. Next to this tomb was uncovered an Egyptian tomb from 1000 BC. The carvings were quite unique. We had a small vendor experience with the village people.

At the next checkpoint we picked up an armed police escort that led us thoroughly the desert to our next stop.
We drove another 70 km to the Kharga Oasis where we had lunch before our next two activities. Our escort took us to a restaurant that served soup, salad, tahini, peppers, eggplant, fresh fish, shrimp, calimari, veggies, rice and soft drinks. Enough food for thirty people. Ridiculous and delicious. No dinner tonight!

3:30 PM and we still have two sites to visit. The Alwady Algadid museum housed antiquities dating back 5,000 years including mummies, statues, clothing, jewelry, and a grand collection of glass and pottery from the Coptic and Byzantine period.

The last stop was the Necopolis of El Bahawat. A Christian cemetery dating back to the 2nd century AD with 263 chapels. We viewed the frescos in two. Entirely unique in style and color.

We retired to the Pioneer Hotel for the evening.