Bahriyah and Farafra

Despite the growing number of visitors looking for peace and quiet in the palm groves, cures in the hot springs, or adventure in the desert, the oases of Bahriyah and Farafra still nestle gently in Egypt's Western Desert, worlds away from the bustling Nile Valley.

But when Ajmed Fakhry first visited these remote islands of tranquility, their isolation was extreme in comparison: in 1938, for example, "there were no modern means of communication between Farafra and any other place - no telephone, telegraph or radio, or any mechanized transportation.

In an emergency, the 'umdah sent one of the guards by camel to Bahriyah, a journey which took four days".

In this now classic portrait of Bahriyah and Farafra, the Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry is our guide not only to the pharaonic and Greco-Roman history of the oases but also to the lives, dress, language, customs and habits of their modern inhabitants as he knew them through more than thirty years of working there.