Return to Fayoum - Part 1

In the past, we have made a couple of memorable trips to the Fayoum Oasis, located about sixty miles, as the crow flies, to our southwest.  Of course, no one ever travels like the crows here in Egypt, so we began our journey by heading north st 8:30 in the morning to catch the southerly Cairo-Fayoum road.  We were planning on heading to the point indicated by the red arrow.  Our driver, thinking we would be "in the neighborhood" was more interested in showing us the petrified whale bones at Wadi el-Hitan, or Valley of the Whales.

 

At that early time, bus riders were standing near the major square near the pyramids.  Some carried construction tools and others had lunches from the nearby Gad sandwich shop.


Our earlier post about traveling to Fayoum to with a police escort and our rope-tow return in 2009 can be found here.  The excursion to the nearby pyramid at Hawara can be found here.


We had fond memories of the drive along the lakeshore and of the village square at Fayoum with waterwheel and basket artisans.




A closer look at that route map on Google, shows the path along the lakeshore and the entrance to

the Wadi el-Rayan Protected Area. (Wadi is Arabic for valley.)

Switch over to the Google Earth Terrain view and the final part of that route leading to Wadi el-Hitan looks even more interesting.

We left the blacktop and headed out into the Sahara, passing this marker.



(to be continued)