The cobras at Saqarra - photos by David Rich

Read More about Egypt on GoNOMAD

Mummy Dearest: A Visit to the Real Egypt

A decade after first sampling Egypt’s pyramids, temples, obelisks, and other tourist traps (for ease of collective reference, mummies), I returned curious.

Had Egypt changed, and did it offer any attractions outside its well-worn mummies: the Pyramids, Sphinx, Egyptian Museum, obligatory cruise on a Nile hotel boat, ornate temples, and looted tombs? Surprisingly, I found viable alternatives to trodden tourist tracks... Read more

The Mystery of Egypt's Great Sand Sea

The Great Sand Sea of the eastern Sahara is aptly named; an unbroken mass of dunes the size of New Mexico 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 -- extreme even by Saharan standards... Read more

By Sand or By Sea: Sinai Safaris Take It All In

A mecca for pilgrims as well as sun worshippers, Egypt's Sinai desert is a lesson in duality --simultaneously holy and profane, barren and bountiful. Some travelers come as pilgrims; others prefer to sun themselves senseless on the beaches of Basata or Tarabin. But, for an alternative way to tour the region, try a Sinai safari... Read more

Camels are more fun than jeeps. Photo by Anton W. S. Segal

Inside Egypt: The Mummy, the Pyramids and Me

I found the prospect of visiting Egypt daunting, but not because I feared terrorism. (Don’t let the February ’09 bomb in downtown Cairo mislead you; Egypt’s Tourist Police have not permitted a single such incident at the country’s archaeological sites since 1997.) Nor did I fear the famously searing heat. (There’s a simple solution: Go in winter).

No, what scared me, simply, was claustrophobia.

To see some of Egypt’s greatest ancient wonders, such as the breathtakingly vivid wall paintings in the pharoahs’ Valley of the Kings, you first have to get through narrow passageways to crypts cut deep into hillsides. My concern, therefore, was that in order to savor these and other treasures, I’d have to shake my fear before I left the Cairo area.

The temple at Luxor - photo by Mary O'Brien

Egypt: Who WAS King Tut, Anyway?

When I was a child, I learned that Egypt was the desert home of the last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World - the pyramids and sphinx at Giza. It didn’t occur to me then that I would one day see them for myself but when I finally did land in Egypt, I did what every tourist does – I went to Giza.

The pyramids are just as pictured, only slightly the worse for wear after 4000 years, but they still take your breath away. It comes as a shock when you realize that those enduring monuments rise not in some faraway desert, but just minutes from Cairo, a city of 18 million.

A Celebration in Luxor

“So, where do you want to go?” asked Omar. I directed him to Karnak temple, just a few minutes away from the centre of Luxor. Since I had already seen the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank and Luxor temple in the city centre, Karnak, once the heart of the great Theban Empire, was to be my last major sightseeing excursion.

As we plodded northwards to Karnak, Omar gave me a historical tour of the city. He showed me the broken remains of the Avenue of the Sphinxes, and told me that he had learned about them many years ago from his schoolteacher... Read more

Dirving the Sahara - photo by Chris Scott

Desert Driving: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Overlanding the Sahara

Around this bend, a dry riverbed runs beside a fertile palm grove. Around that one, an ancient kasbah looms above a village. A few kilometers further, a group of villagers are washing dishes and clothes in an unlikely stream and on the horizon, a caravan of camels makes its ancient way across the sands as the sun dips below the dunes.

Driving in the Sahara is top on many romantic adventurers' travel lists. Images of explorers traversing silent dunes, camping among Bedouin villagers, watching mirages turn to caravans of camels and back again make the imagination of the intrepid desert lover swoon... Read more

Hollywood's North African Mirage

Qarat-Qasr-Salim - photo by David Rich

Whether creating the fictional planet of Tatooine for "Star Wars," the legendary dunes of "Lawrence of Arabia," a romantic adventure for "The English Patient," or a Roman coliseum for the recent blockbuster, "The Gladiator," the desert sands and colorful cities of North Africa have long been favorite locations for Hollywood's dreamweavers.

Perhaps it's the light--dry, clear and bright--that attracts filmmakers. Or maybe it's the varied landscape--moonlike wastelands, towering sand dunes, lush, palm-filled oases and snow-capped mountains--that creates any cinematic geography, real or imagined.

David Rich's Egyptian Photo Gallery

GoNOMAD's Number One Nomad takes a trip outside Egypt's Nile corridor to find "the real Egypt" in the Western Oases.

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