Gilf Kebir - Join the club

Gulf Life (Richard Hoath)

The Gilf Kebir, on the south-western corner of Egypt’s Western Desert – remote, uninhabited, virtually rainless – holds a particular place in desert lore. Named and mapped only as recently as 1926 by Prince Kamal Al-Din, one of the sons of Khedive Hussein, it was explored in the years running up to World War II by a colourful and travel-hardened group – members of the Zerzura Club, in search of the lost, perhaps mythical, oasis of Zerzura.

The Gilf might have remained unknown to all bar the most adventurous archaeologists and a few students of those early expeditions but for Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 novel The English Patient, which won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for fiction that year. Five years later and this lyrical book, woven around the intertwining wartime lives of four characters, was adapted into a film, winning nine Academy Awards. The Gilf Kebir, where some of the film’s most beautiful and moving scenes are set, had found a worldwide audience. And though the desert scenes were filmed in Tunisia, the film’s success meant that today a new generation endures the rigours of a desert trek to visit the Cave of the Swimmers, with its extraordinary wall paintings, in Gilf Kebir.

This is a good and detailed article. I'm not sure how long it will remain on the above page.

There's also a piece on the Gulf Life website entitled Off The Map And Onto the Page, which describes five classic books about desert exploration and travel and exploration. If desert travel is something that interests you then have a look at the main Features page on the site, which describes the appeal of deserts across the planet.