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Bahariya Oasis

الواحات البحرية

Traveling to Bahariya was a trip I was looking forward to for a long time. My husband and I were a bit afraid of the road leading from Cairo to there, but we couldn’t have been  more pleasantly surprised and the trip couldn’t have been more fun.  We took off from Cairo at 9 am and headed to Qasr Bawiti, the hotel where we intended to stay and where they had organized our day trips.  The traffic inside Cairo was horrific, but once we passed the Sixth of October city and onto the desert, the scenery was just amazing and the road was empty and flowing!.  It started out with flat desert for the first couple of hours then came the sand dunes.  Once we got close to Bahariya , clusters of palm trees started appearing.

Qasr Bawity, is highly recommendable.  The people were warm and kind.  The hotel itself is also very picturesque.  Set on a desert hill,  the rooms are on different levels all with very simple native architecture, with domes and high windows to keep cool from the heat.  Inside the rooms are bedouin furniture featuring high beds, bedouin cushions and carpets and some of the more fancy ones have private baths with water from natural springs that the oasis is so famous for.

1.view inside our room             2. The hotel’s coffee shop

We spent the evening running after my 3 year old son in the hotel, which is very safe and fun for children, and looked forward to dinner, which as we discovered was a communal affair!  Actually food couldn’t have been more delicious.  The menu is very homey, with native Egyptian food, salads and deserts.  All very simple  and served on the most charming tables decorated with dried flowers.  I think by the time we left there, we had made the acquaintance of everybody and everybody had made the acquaintance of us.

After dinner there was a little bon fire, right in the middle of the hotel, where everyone gathered, sicialized and ate batata (sweet potatoes).  By 10 pm, we were  ready to turn in and were looking forward to the next day, when the real desert adventures began on the way to the White Desert.

Tell you about it in my next blog.  Till then.

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