Egypt, the western desert

Una versione italiana è disponibile qui: Egitto, deserto occidentale

The Western Desert covers about 700,000 square kilometers and accounts for about two-thirds of Egypt's land area. This immense desert to the west of the Nile spans the area from the Mediterranean Sea south to the Sudanese border. The desert's Gilf Kebir Plateau has an altitude of about 1,000 meters, an exception to the uninterrupted territory of basement rocks covered by layers of horizontally bedded sediments forming a massive plain or low plateau. The Great Sand Sea lies within the desert's plain and extends from the Siwa Oasis to Gilf Kebir. Escarpments (ridges) and deep depressions (basins) exist in several parts of the Western Desert, and no rivers or streams drain into or out of the area.

There are seven important depressions in the Western Desert, and all are considered oases except the largest, Qattara, the water of which is salty. The Qattara Depression is approximately 15,000 square kilometers and is largely below sea level (its lowest point is 133 meters below sea level). Badlands, salt marshes, and salt lakes cover the sparsely inhabited Qattara Depression.

The Siwah Oasis, close to the Libyan border and west of Qattara, is isolated from the rest of Egypt but has sustained life since ancient times. The Siwa's cliff-hung Temple of Amun was renowned for its oracles for more than 1,000 years. Herodotus and Alexander the Great were among the many illustrious people who visited the temple in the pre-Christian era.

The White Desert is located 45 km (30 miles) north of Farafra. The desert has a white, cream color and has massive chalk rock formations that have been created as a result of occasional sandstorms in the area. The Farafra desert is a typical place visited by some schools in Egypt, as a location for camping trips.

The Gilf Kebir (Great Barrier) is a plateau in the remote southwest corner of Egypt. This 7770-square-kilometre limestone and sandstone plateau rises 300m from the desert floor.

The Gilf Kebir contains the Kebira Crater, a 950-meter (3,100-foot) impact crater, dating to 50 million years ago crater, and part of a field that spreads over 4,500 square kilometers (1,750 square miles)  more than 75 times larger than Earth's next largest known crater field.

The Uweinat mountain range at the very south of the plateau is shared between Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

The Great Sand Sea is an unbroken mass of dunes which smothers the barren frontiers of Libya and Egypt and is home to not one living soul. Parallel dune ridges run north-south for hundreds of miles, and anyone journeying here has to be exceptionally well prepared, as there's not a single well or water source in 150,000 square miles.

Until the 1930s, this hyper-arid region had barely been explored, but during WWII, clandestine German and British desert patrols, including Count Almasy, aka The English Patient, probed this remote area, spying on each other's movements. Today, the area still remains largely unknown and is so rarely visited that 60-year-old tire tracks are still visible on certain surfaces.

The Great Sand Sea spans 650 km between Siwa in the north and the Gilf Kebir plateau in the south. It's average width of 300 km spans from the Libyan border to the west and the Farafra Depression to the east. The sand accumulation varies in shape, color and geologic origin from one place to the other.

On the southern shore of the Sand Sea--on the Egyptian side close to the Libyan border lies a unique geological oddity: the world's only known field of silica glass, tiny pebbles of pale green glass, their upper surface polished by the incessant winds. The exact origin of the glass is still unknown. A plausible theory suggests that the sand, which is almost pure silica, was fused by the intense heat of a meteor impact.

What to read
Laszlo E. Almasy, The Unknown Sahara
The eastern Sahara's Libyan Desert (covering Egypt, Libya, Sudan), was one of the last corners of the desert to be explored and still remains wild and barely visited. In the late 1920 and early 30s - the Hungarian Almasy (a contemporary of Bagnold and Clayton and fictionalised as the 'English Patient') criss-crossed this region in then newfangled motorcars which enabled systematic exploration of this hyper-arid quarter. The book tells the stories of his many feats in the region: the first drive to Kufra from the west, the clarification of the Zarzura legend, the discovery of countless rock art sites including the famous Cave of the Swimmers, were some of his achievements.

Wael Abed, The Other Egypt, Cairo 1998
The first available general english language book on the Wesern Desert, a good mixture of facts and narrative of trips taken by the author. Definitely worth reading.