Travel: Western Desert

Al Masry Al Youm

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun,” wrote Jon Krakauer in his nonfiction bestseller Into the Wild, a chronicle of Christopher McCandless’s post-graduation two-year travel experience throughout North America.

McCandless's decision to depart on the journey--which ended with his death in Alaska--aimed to rediscover his identity by living in symbiosis with nature. The young American’s “fight” against society became a “fight versus himself” first, and against nature later on. But, as Krakauer’s book portrays, nature is both wonderful and harsh, and you must know its rules to be part of it.

Without a similar tragic ending, the Egyptian Western Desert safari camping experience echoes the themes of Into the Wild. Feelings fluctuate between astonishment over what only nature can create, relaxation, forgetting the stress caused by a restless society, inner peace thanks to the silence that compels you to reflect, and harmony with others.