White Desert vs Black Desert: What Is Actually Different

Both sit in Egypt's Western Desert, both are reached from Bahariya Oasis, and almost every trip that goes to one passes the other. That is where the similarity ends.

The Black Desert

The Black Desert is a stretch of low hills capped with dark volcanic rock, which from a distance makes the sand look scorched. It sits between Bahariya and the White Desert, so you drive through it rather than to it.

It is genuinely striking and it is genuinely brief. An hour there is enough: climb one of the cones, look at a landscape that appears to have been burnt, take photographs that will confuse everyone who sees them, and move on. Nobody camps in the Black Desert, and there is no reason to.

الصحراء البيضاء

The White Desert is chalk. Wind has cut the plateau into free-standing formations — mushrooms, towers, shapes that look deliberate — standing on pale ground that reads as snow in photographs.

It is the one worth staying in. At midday it is bright and flat and slightly disappointing. At sunset the chalk turns orange and the shadows arrive, and at night, with no light pollution for a hundred kilometres, the sky is the reason people come. A day trip to the White Desert shows you the rocks. An overnight shows you why anyone bothered.

Side by side

• Colour: dark volcanic caps against yellow sand, versus white chalk against pale ground.
• Time needed: an hour for the Black Desert, a full evening and a night for the White.
• Best light: Black Desert reads well in hard daylight; White Desert needs the low sun at either end of the day.
• Camping: only the White Desert, and it is the point of going.
• Between them sits Crystal Mountain, a quartz outcrop that is a five-minute stop and worth the five minutes.

So which one

This is not really a choice. The Black Desert is on the road to the White Desert, so you get it either way. The real question is whether you stay the night, and the answer is yes — the overnight camp is the difference between having seen the White Desert and having been in it.