White Desert

White Desert National Park was declared in 2002 in the Egyptian Western Desert, north of the Farafra oasis, and protects some 3,010 km².

Its landscape has no equivalent in the Sahara. The substrate is a white chalk of marine origin, laid down in the Cretaceous, which the sand-laden wind has eroded differentially over millennia: the softer layers have worn away and the harder ones have been left standing, forming hundreds of yardangs, monoliths and isolated figures of dazzling white that emerge from the golden sand. Local tradition has named many of them for their resemblance to animals and objects, and the whole takes on pink and orange tones at dawn and dusk.

The area also includes the Black Desert, where eroded volcanic cones have covered the ground with fragments of dark basalt, and Crystal Mountain, an outcrop of crystalline calcite. The wildlife is the sparse Saharan kind: dorcas gazelle, fennec fox, Rüppell's fox and adapted reptiles. The main threat is tourism itself: vehicles driving off-track, litter and the removal of fragments from the formations, which are extremely fragile.