For the people that come to Egypt and go to the Giza Pyramids and maybe catch a cruise down the Nile. You are missing out on the best that Egypt has to offer. Skip the crowded tourist sites with the annoying touts and scammers and head out to the desert and oases. Take a tour with a local guide who knows the area. I have travelled with Ahmed several times now and have seen new and fabulous things every time. I love that usually these trips are largely unplanned and so you never know what is just around the corner or in this case al’a tool (straight ahead) in the desert. Here we stopped to check out some tombs on the side of the road. There are no signs, no gates, no public toilets as the one lone guard explained very succinctly “desert toilet”, and most importantly no tourists. I think these photos may be of the last tourists that visited. Yes, for real, these are human mummified remains just inside an open tomb. I could have reached in to pick up the skull but it is possible that the guard would have been displeased. Hard to say though. These bodies would have most likely been mummified during the Roman era and clearly they were not royalty or particularly wealthy but just regular sorts.
Several of these caves were rich with bat shit. Some of them more than others and you could hear the bats chirping. I made an attempt to collect photos of the bats by climbing in to one such cave and snapping some pictures but it was so dark that I had no idea what I would get even though the flash went off. Turns out I got some photos of rock and bat shit, too good to share with you here. For now those elusive critters will remain a mystery. I will get them next time for sure.
Desert Fox Diaries 