Kharga Oasis

The dominant features of this oasis are its long lines of crescent dunes and mountains that rise up from the floor of the depression. The main town, Qasr al-Kharga, is the capital of the New Valley Governorate, and as such it has become very modernized—a concrete yawn conceived on the drawing board. To see that the Kharga Oasis possesses the best the desert has to offer, you have to move beyond its populated areas. Its major antiquities aren't the ancient Egypto-Roman ruins south of Qasr al-Kharga at Ghueita or Zayyan (Luxor's are far better), but rather the Christian burial ground at Bagawat, a remarkable array of remote Roman forts that present more mysteries than answers, and a growing number of even more mysterious underground aqueducts that keep being discovered throughout North Africa. Combined, these are the most spectacular man-made ruins in the Western Desert.