The trip to Egypt's White Desert wasn't smooth by any stretch. After waking up at 6 a.m. in Cairo, I was crammed into a van with a dozen others for the drive to the Bahariya Oasis, the jumping-off ...

The White Desert, about 500 km (about 310 miles) southwest of the Egyptian capital Cairo, features limestone and chalk forms strangely shaped by the wind and sand, a terrain that gains in ...