“I like it” is Lukie’s new catchphrase, repeated often, usually while eating. It also aptly describes how our family feel about the desert.
The experience has been too rich to describe, but going to sleep in the moonlight, with no ceiling over one’s head except the canopy of stars, was a very special experience, indeed.
Watching the moon plough a track across the sky, having the sight of the various constellations be the last thing one sees before being claimed by slumber, being woken by a new dawn’s sun bursting out from behind a gigantic sand dune… These are things that it is hard to put a price on.
Lest the poetic prose sweep you away, there’s also the more mundane reality of wearing the same pair of underpants until they start to creak, and squatting in the sand to defecate, trying to lean far enough back that the shit doesn’t land in your trousers, but not so far that you lose balance and end up with sandy sphincter syndrome.
These are minor inconveniences, though; a small price to pay for the absolute solitude and all-consuming silence that we city dwellers can otherwise never experience. An urban domicile affords one a lot of modern convenience, but it comes at a very real, perhaps too exorbitant price.
We spent several days and nights on our expedition in the desert, amidst landscapes of large limestone mushrooms, 20 metre sand dunes, springs and mountains. Scarab beetles left tracks around our sleeping bags at night and desert foxes approached our camp fire at supper time.
You can imagine the fun the children had, climbing the sand dunes and tearing down them again. The food has been delicious in a way that only food prepared fresh in such humbling surroundings can be. Similarly, every mouthful of water one takes out here tastes like nectar. You quickly learn to take little for granted in this environment.
Our final day in the desert was a little odd, requiring a police escort on board our vehicle as we headed into a new desert. We had to move luggage onto the roof to make space for him. He stayed with us all night, supposedly so that he could shoot any wolves that came to where we’d made camp, but I doubt there even were any wolves in that desert. It was probably nothing more than a strange bit of Egyptian bureaucracy (and there are many).