Now THIS is an oasis
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
44
53
Trip End
Aug 01, 2005
Siwa,
Egypt
Friday, July 15, 2005
After driving through desert for 10 hours, once you happen upon the oasis it takes your breath away. The flat desert beings to change into low mountains and then you turn a sharp corner and before you lies lush green vegetation as far as the eye can see. The history of the oasis is largely shrouded in mystery, but its monuments date back to around 671 BC when the Assyrians invaded Egypt. The people of Siwa are actually of Berber decent and thus speak Berber as their first language and then secondly, Arabic
Shail fortress mosque tower
. I was also amazed at how many of the young Siwans spoke wonderful English.Siwa is a small sleepy town made up largely of mud brick houses. It is very productive in dates and olives and was once part of the famed date trade route that went to Memphis (the first capital of Egypt). Siwa is most famous as the home of the Oracle of Amun. Amun is basically the King of the Gods and is also referred to as Amun-ra as Amun combined with the son god, Ra, at one point. Thus, Amun had a priesthood that protected his worship. The Oracle is just that, an oracle. Many sought the oracle to find out about their future, their potential divinity, etc. This also included Alexander the Great who sought the oracle in 331 BBC to once again seek confirmation that he was the son of Zeus, and thus the son of Amun.
The town as I mentioned is mostly made of mud brick buildings and boasts a main square of shops. Every other establishment boasts safaris into the desert, evidence of the growing tourism industry. It's a very charming place with the most friendly people I've ever met. There are a few trucks around as Siwa is also the source of a major water bottling company. There are also some oil ventures going on in the area and other natural resource exploration. But as far as taxis go, the donkey cart is the sole means of transportation. These are run only by the young boys of Siwa and they will take you anywhere you like. One boy, Youssef, even let me drive his cart! It was a wonderful experience and I wasn't too bad at it.
The center of town is dominated by the Sahli ruins. This is a fortress enclave that dates back to the 13th century
Shali fortress by night
. But in 1926 the oasis had 3 days of rain that washed away a large amount of the fortress. But there are still people living in the outer parts of the fortress as we saw when we walked through the shali and up to the highest point to overlook the surrounding oasis. It was also at this point that we met a most interesting couple. A French woman in her mid-40s was traveling with her Egyptian husband, Osama, from Luxor. Isabelle non-chalantly informed me that she was twice married back in France (still married to the second man) and had three teenage sons. She was traveling in Egypt alone for a month and picked up Osama in Luxor because she didn't want to travel alone. I'm not one to judge and hey, it's always nice to have a travel partner (especially a local)...but her non-chalant attitude took me a bit by surprise. But Anwar and I ended up hanging with them most of the time in Siwa and it was nice to have some other company around.We all found board at the lovely Palm Trees hotel that boasted a massive garden shaded by banana trees and date palms where you could relax. Our room was decent enough, except for the fact that someone had built a pigeon house outside of our bathroom window so that every time we ran the water, they would start cooing and making a lot of noise. Also, pigeon feathers could be found at random in our room. Oh well.
Shali fortress of Siwa
Since we'd gotten into Siwa around 6:30pm, we had a just a bit of time to wander around and explore. I also fell sick with stomache problems...great. But we had important business of figuring out our desert safari for the next day. This meant that the men sat down together over tea and negotiated while Isabelle and I sat by. It was very exciting for me because I could understand a lot of the Arabic that was going on and I could follow the negotiations really well. In the end, we got a good price that inlcuded dinner in the desert.
After that, we called it a night after a trip to the pharmacy for more meds. All in all, my first impressions of Siwa were amazing and fell instantly in love with the place.
