Dakhla

Final Egypt post I promise.

Here's a whole bunch of sand. That's probably Dakhla off in the distance...palms and greenery, and big cliffs behind. Each oasis is in a valley...they're leftover prehistoric riverbeds, and they're close to the existing water table, so things grow there. I think I was out here having a secluded breakfast, hiding my date bread and drinks from the Ramadan types.

That rock is about the size of a bowling ball. It's been weathered into a very strange piece of what looks like rusted plumbing. A lot of what it's sitting on will be smashed pottery left over from various civilizations that marched through.

Your standard relatively modern grave yard, set against more of nearly nothing at all.

More strange flat desert wasteland. The plateau on the left is full of tombs from the Roman era, a five-level condo of corpses, most of which have been removed by archeologists.

Dead guys in the aforementioned tombs. I'm sure there are dead gals in there as well. They've just been sitting out there for a couple of thousand years...

An older Islamic graveyard. When you get married or a boy gets circumcised, you head up to the white tomb and go inside, burn some incense, then smudge mud on the walls or leave a celebratory flag. A little holdover of ancestor-worship and the Egyptian relationship with the dead. Seems blasphemous to me.

The little town of El Qasr. The centre of it is multi-storied mud rather cunningly designed, although you'd never know it from this photo. Thrill to the ancient olive press! At sunset the palms host vast flocks of white birds that seem like water birds trapped inland.