About the place
About Siwa Oasis
Getting to Siwa is the first thing to plan: it is an eight-hour-plus drive from Cairo via Marsa Matrouh with no airport of its own, which is why most trips here run three nights or more rather than a weekend. Inside the oasis, distances between the town, the springs and the lakes are short and usually covered by bicycle or donkey cart.
The salt lakes are dense enough to float in and sit beside old quarry pits; Cleopatra’s Spring and Fatnas island are the standard swimming and sunset stops. Desert trips into the Great Sand Sea leave from town with local drivers and are the main reason people extend their stay. Dates and olives, not tourism, remain the oasis economy, and local custom around dress and photography is more conservative than on the coast.
