Photo : Ibrahim El-Mezayen — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Fayoum · Wadi El Rayan
Wadi El Rayan
A desert depression filled with the Fayoum's drainage water: two lakes and dunes.
The depression opens west of the Fayoum, below the plateau: sand, low tamarisk and reeds, and two lakes that nothing on the road prepares you for. They are not old lakes; they formed when the drainage water off the Fayoum's farmland was diverted into this hollow, and a channel still joins them in a run of small steps that everyone here calls the waterfalls. The rest is plateau desert: Gebel el-Mudawara, a hill you climb on foot, and a stretch of springs further out in the sand. The whole area is protected, with a barrier, wardens, a ticket and marked tracks; gazelle and fennec fox are reported here, though nobody promises you a sighting.
The extra bit
Keep Gebel el-Mudawara for late afternoon: a short climb, heavy going in soft sand, and from the top the depression opens all at once, just as the sand takes its colour.
Know before you go
The flow through the channel has dropped a long way, going by accounts from recent years: come for the landscape and do not count the falls as given. The water's edge fills up on Fridays and Saturdays, and the sand keeps what picnics leave behind. At the falls a café or two and a few stalls open depending on the crowd; further into the protected area there is nothing at all — buy water and fuel before you go in, and expect no shade. For the springs and the desert interior you want a vehicle that copes with the track and someone who knows it; an ordinary saloon car stays on the asphalt.
