Days 127-128: White Desert, Egypt

It's fascinating to watch the desert slowly evolve into different terrain.  It's a mistake to think that all deserts look the same, as there are myriad forms it can take- flat plains, towering sand dunes, volcanic rock, jagged mountains.

Possibly the strangest of all the desert forms is the terrain at the White Desert.  It is dominated by chalk rock formations, some of them massive mountains, some small boulders and ridges, which can be broken into pieces with your hands.  There are also bizarre meringue-like floating rocks- once much larger but have been slowly eaten away by the wind, leaving random puffy shapes of contorted rock.

It's the closest thing I can imagine to being on the surface of the moon.  Walking over a crunchy, calcium surface, scrambling up steep mountainsides trying to avoid bringing down half the mountain in an avalanche of tumbling, crumbling rock and grit, and staring out at alien rocky pillars in the distance.