and into the desert
Siwa was not actually a place I had heard of until a room-mate in Thailand heard that I was travelling next to Egypt, and told me, “You have to go to Siwa Oasis!”, and having looked the place up online I decided that I would do so. Only 50km from the Libya border, it is a town of the Berbers, where the local language (Siwi) is still dominant. It reminded me in some ways of northern Mali, with the ancient mosque (dating from 1203) constructed in a very similar style to those in Timbuktu. In an oasis some 25 metres below sea level, it apparently has more than 300,000 palm trees and 70,000 olive trees – but these are nourished by spring-water (via streams), not by rainfall, which is rare. However in 1926 there were three days of rain, and most of the town existing at that point was badly damaged, as the buildings were made from large chunks of salt mixed with rock and plastered with local clay. The ruins are still there in the centre of town (with newer buildings ar...