I got up this morning at 6:30am and had breakfast on the roof of the hostel. A great way to start an amazing day. I sat up there feeling smug and feeling like I owned the country, as I had been able to organise in ten minutes what we couldn't accomplish on the truck in a whole day. Don't get to smug yet, I thought, you have to get out there and back first.

I went down to meet my transfer which was just a guy who got in a cab with me to the bus station and then showed me which bus to get to Bahariya Oasis. I got on the bus and it sat there for a while before we left. We stopped a few times to pick up other passengers and it took about two hours to get out of Cairo. The trip was in total an exhausting six hours, which really is a long time to be sitting on a public bus by yourself. I can sit on the truck all day, but I know everyone and I guess its familiar territory.

I got to the oasis and met the transfer who took me to Ahmad's Safari camp. I had lunch and then hoped on the safari which to my relief had four other people on it. I didn't want to go out into the desert by myself, with only Egyptians as company. We got into a jeep and we were off. First we visited the black desert and climbed around the black mountains, the views were amazing. We drove to Crystal Mountain, which is only a small hill, but mad entirely out of Crystal.

We drove for a while before we reached the White Desert National Park and we went in and started crashing around the dunes. The jeep became like a roller coaster carriage, with no seat belts, come to think of it the seat weren't even bolted to the floor! We got further and further in and ghost like white formations started to appear. We saw one that looked like a sphinx, then one that looked like a table. The driver pointed out "Chicken and mushroom" and one of the other guys said "Sounds good" he thought that's what we were having for dinner, but it was two rocks shaped like a chicken and a mushroom. There was a profile face and even a giant bunny rabbit, which reminded me of Siobhan and also of the killer bunny game we play on the truck.

We drove around for a bit more before stopping to camp for the night. We had a really nice dinner and as we watched it being prepared, white desert foxes came out to investigate us. There were four of them, they kept creeping closer to us and running away. They came really close to us at one point and we could see their tiny faces, surrounded by their huge ears. They we so cute, we left all our scraps out for them. Our driver left a glass of water out and it was funny to watch them drinking from it.

Camping here wasn't like on the truck, no tents here. It was literally grab a mat and sleep on the sand and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I grabbed a mat and walked a bit further into the desert, I found a large formation and made sure I was sleeping west of it, so the sun wouldn't be directly on me in the morning. I made a makeshift pillow out of my jumper and grabbed a Bedouin blanket and passed out in the lunar landscape.