The desert, The Great Sand Sea, a magnificent expanse of undulating dunes. Sand so fine that it falls from your finger tips catching in the wind like smoke. I walk from the truck. I don't walk far. not far enough to be out of my depth but far enough for me to have to navigate myself back by tracing my outcoming foot steps. The silence is incredible it wraps itself around you in a wave of contemplation. A rarely found theraputic releif from the the emissions of modern life. It is a wilderness that i have not felt before. I am almost scared to walk further as my senses warn me of the dangers of the deserts allure which draws you in and envelops you.

I link up with a Dutch couple in Siwa and find that one of the Desert guides is about to return to Bahraiya after finishiing a trip out here. We negoticate a brillient price have a brief stop to get the requisotory police permission and set off. We take the long desert track past salt lakes, crystalline sculptures and sand as far as the eye can see passing little life but the odd isolated police check point.

It is a strange feeling to be in a place on your own with no sight of sound of any human habitation and even stranger to be out of sight or sound of any form of life what so ever,not even a plant. The only other life force is in the wind.

Of course the desert is home to foxes, gazelles, and the odd acacia tree but none of these is present in the view from my spot where i sit on a white mushroom shaped formation in this white desert. Watching the deep purple velvet sun set behind the hundreds of white, plaster of paris scupltures, that form this fairy land.