Western Desert Circuit - Day 3

Our little reed hut at the Bedouin camp
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Early rise today for exploration of the Dakhla Oasis.  After breakfast we piled into the troupe's and headed off for the nearby sand dunes.  The dunes were great fun it was like a rollercoaster ride until we stopped sharp at the top of a very steep dune.  If we wanted go down this dune it was either roll down it or run down it !  Vaughan chose to roll down it, problem was it was a long walk back up and sand is hard going !  We all walked down it in the end and it was great to see that our footprints were the only ones there.  The whole area looked like the Sahara which was only next door anyway.  After our fun in the dunes we went to a nearby natural hot spring which unlike the others this one was in natural surrounding of palms and scrub so it was very appealing.  There was a couple of ways into the spring, jump from a great height or fight your way through the reeds.  I took the reed route and Vaughan being a bloke chose to bomb drop into the spring along with Kimo.  Iron  particles in the hot spring  turned it red when  it was stirred  up.  It was warm and the bottom had a strange sensation of quicksand with the bubbles tickling your legs.  After our fun at the hot spring we headed to the old Islamic settlement at AL QASAR, coming to this place was like stepping back a thousand years.  The settlement is built entirely of mud brick and is fairly substantial in size.  We started off exploring the ancient mosque then followed the maze of alleyways into other parts of the settlement like the room where they had an ancient grain mill.  The court room is where we had some fun because Kimo asked us to imagine what it would be like to be in a courtroom in the ancient times.  We all had a part to play and acted out a courtroom scene, Vaughan got the part of the accused who stole a goat !  My part was the newspaper photographer along with Nat C.  Ree was Judge and Nat M was the poor farmer who owned the goat ! The final judgement was no one would believe Vaughan, the Judge got paid off and Vaughan was hung !  Overall we were very impressed with this settlement it was an amazing place.  Next to the settlement was a little Ethnographic museum which had some interesting displays of Oasis life.

Our huts
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At lunchtime we headed back to the Bedouin camp where we had lunch then it was time to goto our next camp spot but this time by camel !   The camel ride was unlike the one we had on Cable Beach in Broome North West Australia.  You rode these camels behind the hump and all the heard came along for the ride so we had a mixture of mummy, daddy and baby camels which were very cute.  The ride lasted about 1.5 hours and it was good fun.  On reaching our camp and dismounting our camels the cameleers treated us to a display of camel racing, the cameleers were only kids and showed us how to really ride a camel.   So here we are again out in the desert and sleeping under the stars... Well except us girls who squeezed inside an open front tent and left the boys outside to snore !