In 1995, when I was eighteen years old, I began a gap year overseas. My experiences in Egypt were character-building to say the least, and I have many fond memories of attempted muggings, freight hopping, jumping off moving buses, being stranded in...
Amid the Great Sand Sea of the Sahara lies Siwa Oasis, a paradise of date palms, the ramparts of which perpetually withstand the hostile desert siege. 2,500 years ago, Cambyses II, the Persian King, sent a garrison of 50,000 across the arid wasteland to kill the famous Sybil there for not legitimising his claim to Egypt. They were never to be seen again; Herodotus, the ancient historian, says they were swallowed by the desert. For us, it was a ten hour bus journey westwards, hugging the Mediterranean, before plunging south into the interior, near to the Libyan border. This was our last trip of the year in Egypt.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Siwa's isolation has had a lasting effect on its flavour: the women's dresses and shawls are embroidered colourfully, and the ancient citadel that forms the pinnacle looked like nothing pharaonic we'd seen, more like a huge, honey-combed scarab erupting from the earth.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The place had a magically exotic atmosphere, and we explored it on a tandem, swam in one of its springs and faked walking on water shots in the shallow salt lakes there.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
When we heard that Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president, was arriving in Siwa, we naturally wanted to get a glimpse of the man. We stood for four dusty hours in streets lined with school children patiently holding limp flags, waiting for the grand moment while paranoid helicopters circled overhead. We were about to give up and go back to our accommodation when cries rang out. The motorcade whooshed by at 80 kilometres an hour, windows tinted and fully closed. The school children valiantly waved their flags despite the sand storm wake.
We couldn't believe it when we heard that all of the buses back to Alexandria were booked out by pilgrims heading to Mecca. However, as a result of our steadfast determination to be at work on time the next day, we toughed it out by standing for the whole ten hours back. As the other passengers stretched their legs on the few and far between stops, Ben and I collapsed into vacated seats to rest our weary legs.
