Medinet Madi Attempt #1

A few days ago, we launched off to go find Medinet Madi which is a temple site in the desert outside the Fayoum. The Fayoum area is down where we are and is considered an oasis area even though it relies on Nile river water rather than a true spring. You can think of it as a green island, filled with lots of irrigation and farm land, surrounded by desert. The desert starts right where the irrigation stops - it's quite dramatic, really. Anyway, we've read descriptions and seen pictures of the Medinet Madi; it was a Middle kingdom temple built to Sobek, the Crocodile God, and fairly recently an Italian archaeological team found the remains of what was a crocodile nursery with fossilized crocodile eggs at different stages of maturity. Apparently, it was their practice to hatch these crocodiles, rear them to an appropriate age, and then mummify them for sale to worshipers. Later on this was the site of a Roman town and several early Christian churches as well. The pictures we saw were staggering and, because you have to drive to a village at the edge of the Fayoum and walk into the desert for a couple km to reach it, there are no guards. This in itself seemed incredible to us so we were determined to find it.

We were equipped with a somewhat detailed map, as well as directions from a 1984 guidebook and a 2001 guidebook. Our map made it look pretty straightforward but, as we soon learned, didn't include many of the small villages along the way. This in itself wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that I haven't learned how to read Arabic yet so we had no idea what village we were entering bc we couldn't read the signs! I'm going to have to remedy this soon. But we had our book directions and we were helped out in the beginning with some blue cultural signs which included Medinet Madi in English. So we'd see a sign and think "Oh, we must be in this village.....we're on the right track". Then the signs stopped and then the book directions warned NOT to go to the village of Minya on a Sunday since Sunday is market day and it will be nigh impossible to drive through the town. We entered what we thought was Minya on a Wednesday and it was clearly market day....which in retrospect should have been our first clue we were not on the right road. :)

We got completely trapped in a market logjam. Note: In the following photos, we are not moving:
















After spending at least 45 minutes navigating through the market, we meandered through a network of villages until we hit the edge of the Fayoum and encountered a highway which shouldn't have been there.


We finally figured out that we had come out on the southern edge of the Fayoum rather than the western edge and with it nearing noontime temperatures, Medinet Madi would have to wait for another day. But since we now knew where we were, we could see on the map that we were relatively near a couple of manmade lakes. They called this lake area Wadi el-Rayan and the purpose was to divert the excess water from the huge natural lake on the other side of the Fayoum, Lake Qarun, to prevent flooding of the surrounding farm lands (the lake is very salty). Our guidebook said there was a waterfall between the two lakes....the only waterfall in Egypt....so we thought we'd have a look. The sand dunes were amazing and, while here the sand seems to blend in with the sky, I can imagine how beautiful they must be in the late afternoon light.















Soon we saw the lower lake:


Now in our guidebook, there were detailed maps of secondary roads where you could get off the highway and drive on the sand. One of these roads traveled along the lakeshore and actually you could take it to Medinet Madi from an entirely different direction. The sand looked packed down and there were lots of tire tracks so we thought "Why not?". The road was marked out by rocks...can you see them?


We encountered a rise where the sand looked softer. This is David checking it out:


And this is the truck once it got stuck.




I was pretty nervous since at this point, we were about a half mile from the road (which was pretty untrafficked) and it's hard to tell how hot it was at that point but everyday now the temps are between 100-105 degrees in the afternoon. So it was very hot. David, of course, shines in these situations and kicked into gear. We placed a floor board under one tire and a floor mat under the other, would be able to reverse over the mats a few feet before getting stuck again, so we'd dig under the tires, replace the mats, and reverse a few more feet. With an enormous amount of relief, we made it back to the packed sand, cried Uncle, and hightailed it back to the road.

We did end up going to the lakes and seeing the waterfall before heading home to regroup for another Medinet Madi attempt another day. :)
















David recovering from our adventure with some Wimbledon and watermelon: