Camping in the White Desert: What Nobody Tells You

The White Desert is a plain of chalk carved by wind into shapes that genuinely look like nothing else on earth. Sleeping in the middle of it is one of the best nights available anywhere in Egypt. Here is the unglamorous detail.

It gets cold. Properly cold.

Between November and February the temperature can drop to around 2°C after midnight, having been 25°C that afternoon.

Bring a fleece, a hat and socks to sleep in. Sleeping bags and blankets are provided but they are not arctic gear.

There are no facilities at all

No toilets, no running water, no shelter. You go behind a rock with a trowel and everything is carried back out.

If that is a dealbreaker, that is completely reasonable — the Bahariya lodge version gives you most of the scenery with a bed and a bathroom.

The sky is the actual reason to go

There is no light pollution for a hundred kilometres in any direction. The Milky Way is not a faint smudge here, it is the brightest thing in the sky.

For photography: bring a tripod, shoot at 20 seconds and ISO 3200 as a starting point, and go out well away from the campfire.

On the silence

Most people are unprepared for how quiet it is. No wind through trees, no insects, no distant road. Several guests a year tell us it was the part they remember most.