Templates of Desert Tours 1 4 - Day Tour Sailing the Sand Sea

Important Note: These tours are examples and for information purposes only. Broadly similar tours are available but individual operators will amend and tailor them to suit conditions and demand.



The largest Sand Sea in the world is your ocean for a few weeks as you explore this amazing desert of towering dunes, little known oases and prehistoric remains. Leaving Cairo behind you make your way to Bahariya Oasis and then on to the majestic uninhabited lake of Sitra. Driving through the northern end of the Great Sand Sea you alternate visiting the fascinating oases of Bahrein, Nuwamisa and Arag with rolling dunes and canyons of remarkable beauty. As this area was once under the Mediterranean there are ample opportunities to see fossil remains such as shark’s teeth and ‘sand dollars’.


You emerge from the northern leg of the journey at Siwa, the calmest and most mysterious of the Oasis towns. Your stay should take in the collapsing mud town of Shali which looks like a set out of ‘‘Star Wars’’! From here you will be eager to plunge deeper into the Great Sand Sea, driving down the endless dune corridors past fantastic displays of star, barchan and seif dunes. Through this surreal landscape you emerge at the Ammonite scarp, most recently discovered by the German explorer Rohlfs. The top of the scarp is littered with the fossil remains of ammonites. 


From here you reverse the journey Rohlfs made in 1873 and arrive at the place he called Regenfeld- ‘rainfield’ in German- a place where it rained and allowed him to refill his water bottles. Past Regenfeld you hit the Abu Ballas trail and view the strange water mountain and its myriad broken pots before leaving the sand at Dakhla and returning to Cairo via the stunning White Desert.