White Desert Camping: 2 Days from Cairo

This White Desert camping tour from Cairo takes you to one of Egypt's strangest landscapes: a plain of chalk formations carved by the wind into mushrooms, spires and animal shapes, white against the sand, with a night to see them under the stars.

You leave your Cairo hotel at 7 am for the drive of about four hours to Bahariya Oasis. After lunch in a local restaurant, you switch to a 4x4 with your Bedouin driver and head out to Crystal Mountain, a ridge of glittering quartz, and the Agabat Valley, before entering the White Desert National Park. Camp is set among the formations, with a barbecue dinner cooked by your Bedouin crew and a night under a sky with almost no light pollution.

In the morning, after breakfast, you drive through the Black Desert, whose hills are capped with dark volcanic stone, and stop at the natural hot spring at El Haize. After a break in Bahariya you return to Cairo, arriving around 5 pm.

Meals, the camp equipment, the 4x4 and park entrance fees are included. The desert is cold at night from November to February: bring warm layers.