Circumnavigating the Western Desert: Part Two- Kharga.

I reached Kharga very early in the morning, having taken an overnight bus from Turgoman gate in Cairo. There was hardly a soul on the roads of Kharga. At the outset, Kharga resembled a Cairo suburb, same architecture-soulless and purposeless, as if pursued only for the sake of constructing something, bereft of aesthetics.

Something told me, that coming to Kharga was a mistake- at best it could and should have been a brief stop-over for more enticing destinations of Baris, Dakhla and some such places. But then I argued, look at the brighter side- Kharga was always up there in my mind and I would have done it this way or that way. But if the circumnavigation was counter-clockwise; then Kharga would have had come as a big dampener.

One should avoid a folly, which I do often and often; I am not sure if it’s a folly at all- but yes, it has often worked at cross-purpose. The folly is that of trying to see everything worth seeing in a place, of trying to squeeze maximum in one's schedule. That mars one's travel in two ways- one, it does not let you relish a place with a leisurely pace and two, by trying to visit everything the monotony starts catching up. Something similar happened to me when I visited Luxor and Aswan, after a while I lost count of what I was seeing and every other monument seemed alike to me.

Another dampener was my choice of hotel. As I arrived very early in morning- there were limited choices of stay before me…I chose to stay in a place near to Bus station called Dar-al Bayda (the Arabic name for the exotic Casablanca)…it was a ten minutes walk from the bus station and therefore I argued that just in case, I want a day trip to Baris, Dush (an old Roman fort guarding Darb al Arbaeen), I will be better off being near to Bus Station. At the face of it, the logic was great but the hotel was poor.

A word about Darb al Arbaeen- ancient Romans used to bring slaves from South Sudan, Chad and may be further south- through the treacherous deserts. The desert trek was of 40 days and therefore named the 40 days road (darb is route in Arabic, arabaeen is forty).

The entire route was therefore guarded by a line of Roman forts that also doubled up as tax collection centers for those who privately brought the slaves. Near Kharga there are three such forts- Dush is the largest, most magnificent and most isolated, probably because of the isolation it has preserved itself despite the ravages of time. The other two are Qasr al Ghweita and Qasr Az Zayyan, within 10 kilometers from Kharga and therefore have turned into a day picnic spot.

I had some faint plans of seeing Dush and Baris, but once in Kharga I realized that these places are not all that well connected. I need to hire a whole vehicle by myself to get to these places, there is little public transport and one might have to depend on their erratic schedule. So I dropped the plan of going to the two places.

The worse thing about the hotel was not its lack of cleanliness or poor service; it was utter lack of a personal touch and a sense of being thugged. The hotel charged me 50 Egyptian pounds for a dirty cubicle like room…. I have stayed in worse places; in Recong Peo (Himachal Pradesh) for instance I stayed in a cockroach infested dormitory- but never did I feel cheated. There was absolutely no personal touch- it was like take the key, go to your room and finish. Later during the travel, I stayed in Homda's little lodge at Al Qasr and though this place was run down, but the personal touch of the owner made it the best place I stayed during the entire circumnavigation.

Enough of bad things about Kharga. The people in Kharga were very friendly, though I was perpetually questioned about my religion. One man also lectured me on the virtue of being a Muslim, albeit very politely. After a while I used the same trick which Amitava Ghosh had used in Egypt, years ago- I said that my parents who are old will feel bad if I changed my religion. That did the trick, Amitava was right- family bonds are a very strong factor in the lives of Egyptians and the respect for parents is paramount in the social interactions of an average Egyptian. However during the entire episode, I never felt that people wanted to offend me in any way.

Kharga has a very nice and compact museum. It tries to capture the four significant periods in the history of the area- the Stone Age, Pharaonic Age, Ptolemaic Age and then the Coptic-Islamic Age.

The place is well laid out and a pleasure to walk around, unlike Cairo museum- which to me is one of the badly mismanaged one- holding on to too much like a greedy old fellow. The other places worth visiting are the Temple of Hibis (it was being renovated when I went there), the temple of Nadura (in ruins, but worth a stop, it lies on a plateau and therefore gives a wonderful panorama of the place and a marvelous vantage for the sunset). And then there is the most beautiful necropolis of Al Bagawat. I roamed around that necropolis for hours together, seeing the wall paintings inside the tombs, the sheer setting of the place and its loneliness makes you awe struck and frightened at the same time. It was an old Coptic cemetery dating back to 2^nd century AD and has more than 200 tombs.

There are more such places in the deep desert, but one needs to have GPS and four wheel drive to reach them. Beyond them, Kharga is a nice place for an evening walk- wide roads, wide pavements, little traffic, gentle people. I had a wonderful opportunity of testing my knowledge of colloquial Arabic as nobody in Kharga knew English.

Not to forget eating at the Pizza Ibn Al Balad, see him cooking a baladi pizza and relish its taste, heavenly.