White Desert

Description

A camping safari, paying homage both at sunset and at dawn to this dramatic theatre left by an antique ocean, is the best way to appreciate the White Desert. Whether seen by jeep or camel, the marvelous contours of this pale landscape, which at times resembles a field of snow and at others gives the impression of a giant ice-cream parlour, are an unforgettable vision in one of the most spectacular of all deserts.

Just north of Farafra one begins to encounter the Khoman chalk ridges created from the sediment of marine creatures deposited in the bed of a vast ancient sea. A similar but rather white, chalky limestone is the source of the ice-white bricks used all over the Western Desert, north to south, as building material for structures that will last only a tiny fraction of the aeons the stone took to form. A layer of harder limestone dating from the later Eocene period forms a pink crust over the surface of the chalk.

The fantastic shapes of Farafra’s White Desert are the result of millions of years of erosion of this chalk by wind and by sand blown in from the Great Sand Sea.

To see the desert at its whitest one must drive some way from the main road. The weathered chalk mounds are dotted now like pavlova cakes, now like ice-cream cones or pools of icing. One might skim over a snow-swept glacier or thread one’s way through a maze of peppermint drops.