|
 Frontpage
 Western Desert Map
 Hotels in the Western Desert
2nd Article from the Western Desert
 List of photo serials
 Printer friendly version
Email this page to a friend
Nature Calling
Cosmos Falling... in?
From Egypt's Western Desert
The humming of a strong motor was again singing its reassuring song in the desert night. Front and roof searchlights unveiled continually new tiny parts of the sand landscape. I turned to Mustafa who was driving and said, "Can you stop - nature is calling".
Well I did not say exactly that, as I believe I used one of the slang expressions here in Egypt which is to "make a telephone". Guess I said "can you stop - have to make a phone". Mustafa stopped the car and the humming engine of the four-wheel car. Then the searchlights. We went out in an endless and silent desert to make our phone calls...
It was there and then...
- and here come the real difficult part.
How am I going to explain to you who now sit in front of your computer reading these Latin letters put together to a English language pattern - what exactly happened?
 |
| It was not a desert fox coming bye |
It was not a desert fox coming bye - that would have been "real". Neither was it Hollywood's Valentino on a white horse breaking the barrier of the silver screen and time - it was something more. In short - the greatest monument I had seen during more than ten years in Egypt.
Let my try an experiment?
Imagine the Grand Pyramids of Giza, the gold mask of TutAnchAmon, the Osiris Temple of Abydos - then you close your eyes and think very strongly "MORE"!
Do you see anything?
If not, let me start all over again?
I wrote: "We went out in a endless desert to make our phone calls...".
Maybe the natural thing would be to start with the desert then?
Yes I do talk about Sahara, as "sahara" is the Arabic word for desert. Where we stood was part of both Sahara and "sahara" (note that Sahara - the worlds largest desert - covers an area about the size of the United States).
 |
| Desert and seven horizons. |
We were standing silent in the Egyptian desert - west of the Nile - a part today logically named "The Western Desert" (previously called the "Libyan Desert"). This Egyptian part of the Sahara alone covers around 680 thousand square kilometres. Two third of the total size of Egypt. As numbers sometimes speak badly, let me mention that Egypt's Western Desert cover an area equal to Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Greece - combined.
For two hours ago we were lost in this desert , on our long tour back to the Nile Valley.
You just can't afford to get lost in this area, if you value your life that is...
The dark night came closer and closer, we had been driving kilometres by kilometres in an unknown direction - then suddenly even the trustworthy humming sound from the motor got an edge of question mark in its tone. We turned before the point of no return, and in the end found where we had turned wrong. Mustafa was relaxed all the time but he had not said a word for the last hour before he said "got it". We were back on the road on a roadless road. A grain of sand in an immense desert.
Got the impression I was talking about something boundless? Fact is that we so far only have been talking "peanuts".
It was after Mustafa had said "got it" and darkness had established its presence that I said "can you stop - have to make a phone"
After nature was pleased and the eyes got used to the dark, I looked up and around. There, hovering above and around us in all directions was the greatest monument of Egypt.
Once before I had witnessed an amazing night while sailing alone 70 degrees north in the open Atlantic. Fifty meters from where I sailed in my small Troms færing (a smaller Viking cousin sail boat), a huge whale was passing while the north light drove slalom among the stars above. Not a night one forgets. Other starry nights could be added. This was nothing like it.
 |
| natt i ørkenhavet. |
Until then stars had been like holes in a two dimensional sky always making me wonder on what was there behind them. This time there was nothing behind them; how could there be? This night, in a silent four wheel car, desert all around and mile upon mile to nearest human settlement. The sky was not a covering around our globe any more.
Never have I felt so small, never did I feel so part of something so great. The stars from the closest one to those light-years after light-years away - and then all those in-between. This was not only a three dimensional reality - it was all-dimensional as I never imagined anything could be. The stars are yellow? Hey, they were alive in any colour. This reality was not only opening endless dimensions on all sides and above. Even under my feet - below the sand I was standing on, this reality made its presence. Endlessly under me. We were standing there in an endless sandy sea covering a part of the star we were standing on, part of the monument we were standing in.
Egyptians say their heritage belong to the world - and then suddenly we was presented to this "monument" in the Egyptian desert which literally belong to the universe...
All this for just "P"-ing in the sand?
A small comment:
After this article first was published in Canada some years ago a reader sent me this article about Russian astronauts. It turns out that Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian astronaut started a related tradition which all Russian astronauts have followed since. First he saw the movie "Beloye Solntse Pustinny" ("White Sun of the Desert") the evening prior launching. The other tradition Gagarin established was that all Russian astronauts had to "P" in the desert - or as CNN writes "answer the call of nature" - dressed in space suit on the way to the rocket. It can seem like cosmos got its own unwritten laws (-:
Read also the article:
Fishing in Sahara
specialist in groups
and special interest tours
www.egyptmyway.com/contactforms.html
MyWay Travel a.s.
www.egyptmyway.com
Tel. Egypt: +2 012 7739149
Tel. Norway: +47 45661608
Epost: post@egyptmyway.com
Org. number: NO 987 180 633
Send a
Post Card
|
 To the top
Frontpage
Western Desert Map
Hotels in the Western Desert
2nd Article from the Western Desert
To the Photo list
Printer friendly version
Email this page to a friend
Except where otherwise noted, this site is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Text & photo, Arnvid Aakre
www.egyptmyway.com
First Published October 2000
|
