Dec 7 - We are all up early today, poking around in the surrounding desert. This area has many different landforms and fossils.
A sand dollar, still partially encased in chalk.
This panorama could be mistaken for the Arctic.
With Khaled and Ayman, before packing up the camp.
Not sure whether to call this one ‘The Bunny’ or ‘The Chicken’.
We saw only a handful of bushes, or plants of any kind, in this area.
This particular formation, of all the thousands we saw, seems to be the most famous, featuring in many publications about the White Desert.
If there were a huge sandstorm, this cave could be a real savior.
Make a stop at another permanent spring, called Ain Khodra. Around it were various structures dating back to Roman times. I felt it went back further, after poking around in the sand and finding some minor artifacts.
There were pottery shards from many time frames here, some looking very much like Roman pots. The blue shard above, however, is classic pharaonic style, in the coloration and weathering. I am not an archaeologist, however, and base my observation on how much of this sort of stuff I used to find at places like Fayoum and Saqqara in high school.
This oasis had a thick cover of date palms, with open spaces to eat lunch and rest.
These structures, carved into the bedrock, appear to be old date presses.
From the spring, we move on to where we will be camping tonight. It is located in the ‘Old White Desert’, with formations not quite as brilliant white.
Some places we passed through had mudstones, now weathered into little bowl and cone shapes.
Odette makes yet another sand angel with her last clean set of clothes.
A gnarled acacia tree, which I am told is 1000 years old. I really can’t speculate on the veracity of that age, but I can say that there is more vegetation in general around here (the underlying water table is not very deep).
We have a few other people tonight, staying in tents pitched nearby. This is the first time we’ve talked to anyone else besides our own travel party since entering the desert. There is a Dutch couple who (oddly for Dutch) seem uninterested in talking to anyone. I spend most of my time talking to a guy from Singapore who is really into the water pipe that Khalid pulls out for the occasion.
