Western & Eastern Desert
• Introduction
• Oasis
• People
• Map
• Pictures
Our Tours • by jeep
• Great Sand Sea 6 days
• Sand boarding 4 days
• Sand boarding 6 days
• Sand boarding 9 days
• Eastern Desert 9 days
• Classical Oasis Curcuit 6 days
• Classical Oasis Curcuit 9 days
• Classical Gilf al Kebir15 days
• Uwienate Gilf al Kebir15 days
• Uwienate 15 days
• Uwienate and Gilf al Kebir 21 days
Our Tours • by camel
• Expedition 15 days
• Expedition Gilf Al Kebir 30 days
• Expedition Uwienate 35 days
• "Gerhard Rolfs" 40 days
Our Guides
• Mahmoud Marai
Among the famous explorers of the Libyan Desert is Gerhard Rohlfs. The German explorer , with backing from the Khedive of Egypt , crossed the Great Sand Sea in 1873. Harding King , made a series of camel journeys between Dakhla and Farafra just before the WWI. It was him and Wilkinson who recorded legends of lost oases located deep in the desert , including the famous ‘Zarzura' oasis , a mythical place with hidden treasures. Legend also spoke of ‘black raiders' occasionally attacking the Egyptian oases from the west , and then disappearing west again. Finds of pottery jars in 1918 near Dakhla supported the belief that the legendary places do exist.
Yet , the first major expedition into the heart of the vast desert was made by Ahmed Hassanein Bey, an Oxford educated Egyptian of Bedouin origin. In autumn of 1923 with the permission of the Senussi leadership he followed local rumors of ‘lost oases'. Hassanein was the first to report of rock engravings "of great antiquity" at Karkur Talh, the northern valley of Uweinat.
Prince Kemal el-Din was a pioneer and he was the first to reach Uweinat by motor car. He named the plateau Gilf Kebir (great wall). The prince also found some rock paintings alongside the engravings at Uweinat. His scientific publications raised the interest of the outside world.In the late twenties and early thirties most of the unknown territory was traversed and mapped by a handful of explorers.
Ralph Bagnold, and Kennedy Shaw, both British officers, László Almásy, a Hungarian gentleman-adventurer, and Patrick A. Clayton, of the Desert survey, all took their part. Bagnold and Almásy were the first ones to venture with ordinary motor cars into the deep desert in 1929 and explored the hitherto unexplored section of the Darb el Arbain. Almásy discovered painted ‘caves' at the base of the cliff in the western Gilf Kebir, at Wadi Sura (the "Valley of Pictures"), among them the now famous figures of the "swimmers". Bagnold successfully conquered the Sand Sea in 1930. In the mean time Clayton and the Desert Survey was extending systematic mapping of the western desert.
After the WWII war the western desert became quiet again. In 1968-69 a Belgian expedition discovered a large number of unknown prehistoric paintings in the upper reaches of Karkur Talh at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir. Since the eighties the Heinrich Barth Institute of the University of Cologne carried out ongoing archaeological and geological work in the Gilf Kebir area.