The White Desert is a field of chalk-white rock scattered across Egypt's Sahara, much of it balanced on slender stems like giant mushrooms about to topple. Some stand taller than a person; others lean at angles that look a season away from collapse. Visitors have given the oddest shapes nicknames, and the most photographed pair is known as the Chicken and Mushroom. The field spreads through the Farafra depression, 45 kilometres north of Qasr al-Farafra, and has been a protected area since 2002. Two other stops break the drive in. Crystal Mountain is a small natural arch studded with barite and calcite crystals that glitters when you get close, and the Aqabat valley folds white cliffs into golden dunes. Everything here is soft rock, and the wind that shaped it has not stopped.
By day the chalk glares white against the sand; as the sun sinks it softens to gold, then rose and violet, before the rocks harden into black shapes under a burning sky. Then the sky itself takes over. With no town or paved road for a hundred kilometres, the dark fills with more stars than most people ever see, and the Milky Way stands out clearly overhead. Days can be scorching and nights drop close to freezing, so almost everyone comes on a guided overnight safari rather than a day trip. You sleep among the pale formations, waking to a silence broken only by the wind. Close enough to Cairo for a two-day trip, it still feels like standing on another planet.