Hard Core Expedition style Safari from Dakhla to Gilf Kebir, Silica Valley, Great sea of Sand, Ain Dalla, White Desert and Farafra Oasis.

These Trips Are very academic covering a wide range of Subject Matter from, Geology, archeology, ecology, ancient and recent desert history. Plus we will be discussing and viewing some of the deserts amazing flora and fauna species.

It should be noted that the masters And senior teachers of this domain Are The Desert Fox Colonel A. Mistikawy, of Zarzora Expeditions And Fliegel Jezerniczky Expeditions, It will take me years to accumulate the wealth of knowledge of those masters but I am working on it.

For these type of expeditions there is no detailed or itinerary or time table. There is however a detailed rout that we will follow camping when night fall and progressing by sunrise the duration of the expedition is 12 days of the expedition is twelve days. Dakhla to Dakhla.

Planned Rout:

Leave Dakhla early morning traveling to Sugar Hill & the Samir Lama Memorial A great photo op.

Onwards to Abu Balas (Pottery Hill) When the early explorers visited the site, there were about 300 complete pots and amphorae at the depot, though most were broken or had man-made holes in them supporting the theory that this was the water cache referred to by the Dakhla natives, which they destroyed when pursuing the "black raiders" a few years before Rohlfs recorded the story in 1874. The existence of this depot one third of the way to Kufra led Almásy to speculate that there had to be another depot or well two thirds of the way, most probably the unknown Zarzora oasis. (In fact the Gilf wadis are two thirds of the way, and there was an an intermittent well at Wadi Abd el Melik, proving Almásy's logic correct.) Unfortunately by now all the complete pots have been taken or broken, and all that remains at the site is a pile of broken shards at the foot of the hill. The photos below were taken in 1998 & 2000, by now even less remains. During his 1926 visit, Prince Kemal el Din found some engravings half way up the rocky hill, which he published together with the sites he found at Karkur Talh in Revue Scientifique Illustre. The cow suckling a calf, the gazelle hunter and a large indistinct human figure all seem to belong to the historic periods, having more in common with rock art near the Nile valley than the Gilf-Uwainat area. On the other hill a few hundred meters away, Giancarlo Negro noted a curious engraving on a boulder at the foot of the hill, possibly showing a falling meteorite (?).

A re-examination of Abu Ballas by Rudolph Kuper and his team revealed a small cave in the side of the hill, near the engravings. The clearing of the cave is ongoing, no results are published yet. A further startling discovery made by the HBI team was the age of some of the pottery at Abu Ballas: thermo-luminescence dating yielded a date of 1500 bc! This early date puts the whole context of the cache in a different light. What was previously considered to be the water depot of the Tibu raiders (who may well have reused some of the post for this purpose), all of a sudden it seems to be evidence for an extensive trade network traversing the desert in Pharaonic times. Other new discoveries in the region also point towards the existence of the Abu Ballas Trail in us in ancient times

From Abu Ballas to the Prehistoric Lake  Bed where there are a group of low sandstone hills that have built a series of long trailing dunes on their southern side. Before the dunes formed, the area to the south of the hills was a shallow depression that contained a large shallow lake that is clearly visible on the satellite photos as a dark patch surrounded by the dunes. The mud of the lake bottom has eroded into a series of Yardangs or mud lions. Their pink hue makes an incredible contrast with the golden dunes and the cobalt sky, making the spot one of the most picturesque in the Libyan Desert. In Neolithic times the lakeshore offered an excellent habitat, attested by the numerous implements and the remains of several hut circles on higher ground around the lake. Nearly all the hills have the remains of one or more circular stone features on their flat tops, probably shelters for prehistoric hunters who had an excellent vantage point to watch game come to the lake to drink. The best preserved are two large circles of fairly large blocks on the flank of a hill overlooking the deepest part of the lake, where water must have remained the longest. A notable discovery were a few microlith blades made of Libyan Desert Glass, more than 300 kilometers from the source of the raw material.

Arriving at the southern end of Gilf Kebir The plateau becomes much broken near it's southern end, and two large wadis, Wadi Firaq and Wadi Wassa cross it's complete width. Near the middle of Wadi Wassa distinctly pink hued sand is built into giant sand ripples along an ancient lakebed. Near the mouth of Wadi Firaq, a conspicuous row of hills, named "Eight Bells" reach out to the plain,  This was also the site of a old world war 2 airfield. Near the airfield the ground is littered with discarded petrol and food tins.

Further on we will pass through Wadi Foraq then head north West of the Aqaba Pass, the high cliffs continue for over 200 kilometres north-west. About 50 kilometres west of the pass, a small rocky promontory with a spectacular scenery juts out of the cliffs. Apparently ancient humans thought likewise, as the promontory with its maze of rock islands and wadis is one of the most important rock art sites in the region, Wadi Sura.

Wadi Sora is located in South-western Egypt, along the western edge of the Gilf Kebir plateau. It's not really a Wadi, just a sheltered inlet among a promontory and a couple of detached outliers of the main plateau. The main painted caves were discovered by Almásy in October 1933 during the Frobenius expedition. They contain the little ‘swimmer’ like figures which inspired the fictious cave of swimmers in the movie "The English Patient". In the vicinity of Wadi Sora there are numerous other rock art sites, including the "giraffe rock" discovered by P.A. Clayton in 1931, and few lesser sites discovered by Almásy and Rhotert in 1933 (Published in Rhotert's Libysche felsbilder, 1952). There are several quite spectacular sites scattered in the nearby bays and wadis that have not been seen by the early explorers. These have been discovered over the past decade by Giancarlo Negro, Yves Gauthier, Werner Lenz, Fliegel Jezerniczky Expeditions, Colonel Ahmad Mistikawy and others.

Back tracking to aquaba pass, going up to the Gilf plateau where we will camp and spend many hours exploring. The north-western half of the Gilf dips northwards. The plateau top is perfectly flat, but the whole plateau is much dissected by major wadis and their tributaries, which all drain to the north. These wadis were first seen from the air during the 1932 Almásy - Clayton expedition, and Almásy made a strong case for their identification with the mythical lost oasis of Zarzura. Aside the scarps, the general flatness of the Libyan desert is only interrupted by a series of plateaus and massifs near the centre of the Libyan Desert, around the convergence of the Egyptian-Sudanese-Libyan Borders. The Gilf Kebir plateau rises about 300 meters above the general plain, and lies entirely in Egypt. It roughly equals Switzerland in size, and is similar in structure to the other sandstone plateaus of the central Sahara. It's South-eastern part is well defined on all sides, with sheer cliffs and deep, narrow wadis. The North-east part, separated from the other half by a broad valley called the "Gap" is more broken, and supports three large wadis with live vegetation.

Descend the Gilf plateau heading to Wadi Hamra Wadi Hamra, the easternmost valley, opens to the Gap about 60 kilometers to the north of Aqaba. Near its head it supports a healthy cluster of acacias, making it the greenest of the wadis. It received it's name on account of the red sand filling it's bed near the vegetation zone. Near it's centre section and close to it's head, three rock art sites, with engravings that are possibly the oldest in the region. Wadi Hamra is a very dry and desolate place now, but as late as 70 years ago or so, this was a valley in which camel herders could graze their camels in the spring, and a strategic place where camel trains could find water. Now, there is a line of Acacia trees which mark the line of an underground river, but no sign at all of any surface water. What there is to see here are rock engravings made by nomadic pastoralists some 5,500 years ago. The engravings are of cows (lots of them), giraffes, ostrich, antelope and even some elephants.

From Wadi Hamra to the dune field east of gilf heading to bangolds circle:

Then on to the silica valleys for camp and several hours to explore:Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) is the purest form natural silica glass to be found on earth. It is usually a light green in colour and can be found in a small oval area about 120km long by 50km wide which is (despite the name) on the Egyptian side of the border with Libya. It is found laying on the sand in amongst burnt igneous rocks on the floor of the corridors between the dunes. The size of chunks of LDG are usually small enough to fit easily in the palm of the hand, but have been found in large lumps weighing in at over 25 kgs.  This area is also rich in tools and artifacts spanning all of mankind's prehistory. It needs a good eye to pick out the tools shaped by man from the litter of rock fragments laying around, many examples of stone knives, axes, spear points, and other tools - some knapped from LDG.

From silica glass to the depths of The Great Sand Sea of the eastern Sahara is aptly named; an unbroken mass of dunes the size of New Mexico which smothers the barren frontiers of Libya and Egypt and is home to not one living soul. Parallel dune ridges run north-south for hundreds of miles, and anyone journeying here has to be exceptionally well prepared, as there's not a single well or water source in 150,000 square miles--extreme even by Saharan standards

The great sea will take at least 2 nights and 3 days to cross once we arrive at pillar rock We will  the Treacherous terrain of the great sea will be behind us. From pillar rock to the old explorers  cars and on to Ain Della through to the most scenic part of the white desert For camp and exploring.

From the white  desert to Farafra oasis for a swim in natural spring and tour of oasis one night in hotel then on to Dakhla oasis

end of trip.