White Desert and Djara Caves Expedition!

Better late then never is going to be one of my themes of this blog, at least for the pictures!

Here is a trip we did with a few friends back in August 2011.. The trip consisted of leaving Cairo and heading south to the Baharia Oasis and then crossing the White Desert until we reached the Abu Mohariq sand dune which is the longest dune in the world, over 500km long! From there we went looking for the Djara cave!

All in all it was 5 men, 5 Jeeps, 3 days, 800km/500miles, 100L of water, 800L/210Gal of fuel....


Throughout the White Desert there are a lot of very interesting rock formations.... That with a little imagination can look like a lot of things!

Here is a video I had posted on here the week after the trip... For those who have not seen it...

The Mushroom!

Balance!

The bunny!

The Ain El Serw Oasis.... Think of sand in every direction and this...

Great place for lunch!

...and a nap during the noon sun!

The Mole Hole!

The melons....

Night 1 camp... After a long day all of us got together and started taking shots of Polish vodka and the stories started to flow.... My story was that I was tired and had to use the bathroom. I got my toilet paper and walked to the other side of the dune.... Dug a hole, sat down... Fell asleep with my pants around my ankles! The guys figured I had quietly gone to bed b\c I could not take any more shots.... Came back like 30+ min later with a good story... Jajaja!

Flat tire on Christians Jeep... Good thing is most of us carry two spare tires, one on the rear of the Jeep and another one inside....

Here we finally arrived at the Djara cave after 1.5 days of crossing the desert....

I have been to a lot of caves in my life, including the Mammoth Caves National Park in Kentucky, USA. The Djara cave is very impressive, but whats most impressive is how its essentially untouched... No stairs, board walk, nada... just the cave (we brought in the string of lights)...

The cave actually has 5m/15ft+ of sand... Some of the Stalactites and Stalagmites actually go from roof to floor...

We also had lunch and a nap in the cave. It was over 100*F outside but very cool inside the cave!

Camp night 2...

Axel filling up the tank on our drive out of the desert.... Once we got back to Baharia we actually had a tough time getting gas to drive back to Cairo. We managed to get one of the gas stations to $ell us from their reserves!

Actually wrote this post in the car on my way to the airport... Going to Davos, Switzerland for 5 days!