Q about Egypt Sahara
 

Hello!
I and my friends (2 cars, 6 persons) are going to go on oases of Egypt from Cairo in December. There are some questions.
1. How in oases with fuel for cars?
2. For journey from Siwa in Bahrija documents (permits) are necessary. Them do in police? How many they stand? How many they do on time?
3. Whether there is a road from an oasis of Harga in Abu Simbel?
Can be at somebody there is a GPS-TRACK for travel from Siwa in Bahrija?
Dmitry

Egypt Siwa Bahariya Oasis Route
 

hi Dmitri

you need a permission for Siwa - Bahariya, you can get it in the Tourist Office within 24 hours.
Maybe you must even take an officer or guide with you - its not quite clear who does and who does not ;-)
The road is partially tarred, but mainly a dusty piste - you don't need wpts
Fuel is usually no problem in the Oasis

Ursula

Mahdi
 

Siwa Tourist Office: director Mr. Mahdi Hweiti mahdi_hweiti at yahoo.com

Thank you!!!

I've been along the Siwa - Bahariya road this past March, give up all hope! The road is only passable with a 4wd, there are a couple of sandy stretches with practically liquid sand completely covering the 'road' at about 70 kms from Siwa. The road is under construction, so you have stretches of excellent tarmac that last 5-10 kilometres, then 20-30 kilometres of completely corrugated and potholed stretches, with terrain too soft along the sides to go there. Plan a full day (12 hours) to do it.

Siwa to Bahariya road
 

We have traveled this road but from Bahariya to Siwa 3 weeks ago, took us about 8 hours and we had a trailer. Sand is loose in places but nothing worth worrying about.

I have a track log if you are still interested

Interesting, so it seems there is some work along the road. Did you see any roadworks in progress ? In March there was nobody...

Road from Siwa to Bahariya
 

There was no work being done. The road is corrugated in places, the asphalt is falling away in places but look at the tracks along the road and you will quickly see where the locals drivers leave the asphalt and drive on the sand. You will have the hang of it quite quickly and then the going is quite easy, one thing though, some of the military check points aren't directly on the road so you will have to pull off, they don't like it if you skip these check points :nono:

Dear Andrasz, with all the respect, looks like you're forgetting this is an off-roaders' forum and not a nail-polishers' forum. So please, give some respect to the others, too.

Cheers,
DS

Hi ds,

With all respect, this is not an off-roaders forum, but an overlanders forum. Read more posts form Andras and you'll soon be able to appreciate the difference. For off-roaders forum, please exit here: http://www.offroaders.com/ :D

Dear DS

With fullest respect, I would have loved to see you struggle through single handed along the particular stretch of 'road' I was talking about :) I've seen a few patches of sand, believe me if it takes 2 hours for an unladen HZJ 75 to get accross 600 metres, I'd call that stretch pretty bad...

No offence taken, but suggest you do some reading before you make statements.

What is wrong with you people? Siwa Bahariya is not off road, it is only a unfinished road.

We did the Siwa- Bah. road begining of Aug. last year. We needed 14 hours (2 4WD cars) and we were digging from time to time.

We did it end of Aug. this year again. We neded 7 hours alone. Road was cleaned one week before. No problems, no digging,.......

They take care and are trying to finish this road. Comparing to the last year the stretches of good tarmack are longer. But they are working during the winter I guess.

But still don t go with only 2WD you ll need at least one 4WD. And yes, you can not travel unguarded (police OR guide) Police is cheaper, but in this case you normally have to do it in one day.
If you pay a guide he will organise everything, according to how much you pay, and going from Bahariya to Siwa is also possible.

OK, to tie off loose ends and make it clearer for any who have not passed along:

This road was surfaced some 15-20 years ago. This original tarmac has been eroded by traffic/sand/wind to an extremely potholed and rutted surface, with really bad corrugation in places where the surfacing is missing altogether. Sure, it is passable, either below 30 or over 70 if you do not value your suspension. In many places the going is better in the desert beside the road, but due to everyone doing it, that too is badly corrugated, and frequent soft spots force the tracks back to the road.

Since about 2 years there have been roadworks, building a new embankment with a good tarmac road on top (to avoid getting covered with blown sand). When ready, this road will be on par (or better) with the oasis circuit road. However at present less than 20% is complete, a short stretch just outside Bahariya, and several isolated stretches (don't ask for logic) of 2-10 kilometres between Siwa and Sitra (but nothing beyond as of March this year). The embankment is complete till around half-way, but it is so corrugated that the same applies as for the old tarmac.

Around 70 kilometres from Siwa a tongue of the Sand-Sea juts into the path of the road. It was bad enough before the roadworks started, but since then a pile of soft rubble has been piled on both sides of the road along this stretch, that captures the sand in a deep rut, and with soft sand on both sides too, there is no way out (again, March). The sand is very soft (you sink in to your ankles if on foot) because it is constantly churned by passing vehicles, and at least a metre deep, so the going is much worse than enywhere on open sand. Of course a friendly bulldozer can change the conditions in a few hours, apparently I was there after a longer stretch without any passing by. I have not seen any signs of recent construction work on the road, however Jean's report indicates that there is some periodical cleaning going on.

PS: at the time we went, there was no need for any escort, just the paperwork, which we managed to get in Siwa in an afternoon.

Road to Siwa
 

As I said, no biggy toward the end of August.

One thing though, even if this road is bad at times you have to think of the alternative which seems to be to drive Bahariya, Cairo (I'd face any corrugations not to drive there), Marsa Matruoh and then down to Siwa. At best this constitutes 2 days of hard driving and the road from Marsa Matrouh down to Siwa was the most boring we experienced in a while.

The road from Siwa to Bahariya has awesome scenery in places, some oasis and lovely dunes, large parts of it skirts the Great Sand Sea so lots of scenery, we really enjoyed it a lot. Even if you take 2 days to drive it, it's still better than the alternative. We used a book called The Western Desert of Egypt by Casandra Vivian, it has a lot of info on the things to see on this road.

I've driven Siwa to Bahariya about a dozen times but not since about 2001 or so. I'll be going again this December.
My confusion occurs with the mention from matafi1 that he needed a guide/Police.

You never did before, Andrasz, who travels around here regularly, didn't/doesn't and Jean Visser? Did you?
Or matafi1, were you swindled into having one? Who said you must - the guide you contacted?

At the first check point (starting from Bah after few km, from Siwa after 40 km) they will not let you go on withaut proper papers. OK you can go around the CP, but there are more along the road. Do you know where they are and where to go around? And even if you go around all of them, you ll be braking the law, and do you want to do it?

We never hired an agency, but issuing a permit the police (in fact army) give you someone to sit in a car - for free. They change at the CP s and they are not a pain in the ass. It s not worth to spend a week negotiating for alowness to go alone. Of course you may be happy and they alove you going alone at once. You never know it s Egypt....

This year we traveled Egypt 5 weeks and we managed to escape all konvois (from Asuan, Luxor, Abu S), we passed some CP without proper papers (but not Siwa Bah). But it happened a police wantet to sit in our car for next 100 km (Edfu - Marsa Alam). And it s not worth to fight with them for next couple of hours, as I said they are mostly OK.

Guide on Bahariya to Siwa road
 

You organise everything at the Tourist Police office, on the right just as you pass the first check point in Bahariya. They said we had to take a police man with and we only had to pay 300 pound for his return trip. We stayed at Ahmed's safari camp, the guy said he can organise one of his guides for 150 pounds since one of their vehicles had to go through a day later with tourists, so we ended up doing that.

You see what a mess! If you ask me; you never have to pay for return trip of an officer....

But more important about Egypt:

1. What is your experience with permission for a car? Or carnet was stamped for one month after a big talking. First they wanted to stamp it for two weeks only, but in both cases with possibility to extend it in Cairo (Traffic police). We did it but it was worth nothing when we were leaving Egypt and so we left some more money in Egypt since our boat in Nuweiba was already leaving......

2. Someone mentioned Cassandra Vivian book. Yes it is a great book about history people, BUT were you able to find any of places she is writing about? Sometimes I thought she was never there.....

Interesting point about extending the carnet....

I entered Egypt in 05 and my carnet was only stamped for a month. I tried several times in Cairo to extend it, but with Egyptian bureacracy being what it is, this proved to be almost impossible. Possibly with a local fixer it might be easier?

I left Egypt six months later without my carnet stamp being extended. I played stupid at the border crossing at Nuweiba, and although I had to pay a bit extra to cover the additional five months, the hassle involved was significantly less that trying to extend the carnet stamp. It was also done legitimately with no baksheesh and I was provided with a customs receipt.

The moral of the story was that next time I wouldnt bother trying to officially extend the carnet stamp and instead just deal with the issue when you try to leave the country.

cheers

Like noted above, most rules can be worked around, however you never know when they suddenly start taking them seriously. At the time when we did the Siwa - Bahariya six months ago, we were also told we will have to take a policeman, however when we reached the check-point, apparently none of them felt like going along in a sandstorm, so the matter was dropped quietly. On the other hand, I have been driving about and renting cars merrily with my Hungarian license (yes, I know supposedly you need an international one), a couple of weeks ago I was flatly refused a car by the Avis office where I regularly hire, saying now this rule is strictly enforced. (Half an hour later at another agency cash talked... ;)).

Egypt Oasis
 

They stamped ours for a month in Aswan, we later extended in Cairo at Customs (GPS: N30.12058 E31.39681), was bureaucratic, first they wanted us to back to Aswan to extend it. After talking to the manager we had to part about about EGP 1500 and all in all it took about 3 hours, I suppose it's not too bad. Turned out it was worth it, a British couple couldn't get past the border at Amsaad and had to go back (with an escort) to Cairo, it took them 5 days to get it sorted and back to the border, by this time their Libyan Travel Agency also charged them extra for the delay. In hindsight I am glad I got it sorted in Cairo. BTW when the papers started running out we were in Dahab, we went to Nuweiba and tried to extend there but they couldn't / wouldn't.[/quote]

We found most we were looking for, the directions are shaky at times, a lot are listed on Tracks4Africa though. The only thing I have against the book is that it's a bit too much information.

I´d be really interested in this track log - we´ll be there from 07.04 till 15.04. Could please send it to me bjorn.vercauteren ATAT pure-sang . net and if possible any other tracks of Egypt ? Thank you very much :thumbup1:.

Björn.

We entered Egypt a few days ago (10 April 2009) from Aqaba Jordan to Nuweiba. We were preparing ourselves for a 30 [day] entry permit for our 4x4 (with the option to extend in Cairo), but managed to get a 90 day entry permit for the vehicle. (We have a multi entry 6 month visa allowing you to stay in Egypt for 90 continues days). It cost the same as a 30 day entry permit

Costs were as follows (all in Egyption Pounds)
515 custom fee
550 insurance
100 temporary registration/number plate
10.50 for something else...
and we gave the toursit police guy 20 for his excellent help.

Cheers

siwa - bahariya
 

finally I did the trip one week ago... no problems whatsoever.
First had to get a military permit. Just in front of the police station on your right hand side of the tourist office is a small office that arranges everything for you : 5 dollars en 10 EPounds / person + copies of passeport and drivers license. They look if there is another car doing the trajectory, if not you have to hire a guide / police. We got lucky there was another 4x4 doing with Egyptian guide. We asked for the papers in the morning and the same evening we had them... The first 2 checkpoints you do together, after that you do as you please, having your permit of course. The road is OK, we did some offroad to enjoy the sceneries... (and the remains of some crashed airplane) there is even a part of the road that looks like a first class highway - hope they won´t work to fast otherwise it will be no fun at all...

diesel in egypt
 

hi.

maybe u know it is possible to cross egypt border by diesel car?
i find in internet difference informations.

No problem crossing the Egypt / Libyan border, I have done it recently with a diesel car, although the only crossing point is in the North at Saloom, & the beauracracy / formalities are a bit drawn out, there are posts on this forum about it, also check out chris scotts 'sahara overland'
Andy

We live in Cairo and off road a lot. The Siwa - Bahariya road is as Andrays describes. You may be lucky and get through in a 2 WD, but you would not have done on the day we did it.

We had to deviate considerably twice (several kilometres) from the track to get over the tongue of sand he describes. Driving a 2007 4.5 litre petrol Land Cruiser (Amazon in the UK) I got massively bogged down here in a dust bowl. We did more digging that day than I have cumulatively done on every other trip in Egypt.

I know someone else who got stuck on this route and needed third party assistance (summoned on a sat phone) to get out.

This is relatively easy off road driving but it is still the desert and not a benign environment.

On fuel, Siwa, Bahariya, Farafra and Dhakla all have filling stations. Kharga I don't know. Not all sell petrol. (Half way house on the Cairo - Bahariya road only has diesel, for example.)They are unlikely to have anything better than 90 octane and it may well be leaded. They occasionally run out of petrol, particularly around public holidays. I am told they never run out of diesel, but have not tested this theory.

Does anyone have GPS coordinates for the crashed plane?

Siwa -Bahariya road update
 

Hi all
just did Siwa Bahariya road few weeks ago ( for maybe the 15Th time in the last 8 month) ,
about permits ,
it is so easy now to get it ,
5 USD for each person and 10 USD for the car and some few Egyptian pounds more
if you are foreigner depend on the officer mood ,he might ask you to take a military guide ,or you can be in a convoy with the rest of the cars which will drive in the same way ,usually you make permits like a day before you depart and then he will ask you to be in front of the military office around 7 to 7:30 am the day you will travel ,
if there is any local guides will do the trip he will put you in convoy with them ,or he will put an escort with you ,just to make sure you will have safe trip
you must pass through check point ,i dint think its a good idea at all to not do that (as its smuggling route and close to Libyan border ,just dint do it
the route is OK ,easy to do ,but there is 2 sand dunes areas can be really hard and lots of digging,( show respect to the desert )
these route known for locals as the tires and suspension eater ,very easy to tear Tyre or two there

the good news they are working really hard and fast on it and i think in a year or two will be easy 2 wheel drive road
to hire a 4x4 car from Siwa to Bahariya or vise verse is from 1000 to 1400 Egyptian pound (check the rate today is 5.6 per 1 USD
cheers