Egypt oasis risks becoming mirage

Four days into the journey his men had run out of water. By the time they eventually stumbled across the oasis it must have appeared - as it still does - like a mirage out of the sand.

Today Siwa is a nine-hour drive from Cairo, across some of the most barren desert anywhere on the planet. It sits 18 metres below sea level, the main oasis surrounded by green desert islands where water naturally springs to the surface.

Beneath the sandstone is the Nubian aquifer an enormous - yet finite - supply of fossilised water that has flowed for thousands of years.

It fills the turquoise bathing pools in Siwa; one of them, "the spring of Juba", is so old it was mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus who lived in the 5th Century BC.

So abundant is the water that within the oasis they grow over 120 different types of dates, some considered the best in Egypt. But the ancient caravan routes on which they once transferred their produce to market have now been replaced by a tarmac road.

It brings tourists, technology, growth and the sort of development that threatens delicate eco-systems. In the past 20 years the water, that once flowed naturally from beneath the rocks, has been sucked at alarming rate from hundreds of man-made wells.

Mounir Neamatalla runs an eco lodge in Siwa, a hotel complex built with mud brick, a model of sustainable development. He is now fighting a lonely battle to preserve the unique Berber culture and the precious water reserves on which the oasis survives.

"Unfortunately the whole industry of well drilling is now very active in the oasis," he said, "to feed our greed and appetite for more.

"As a result the rate of natural replenishment of the springs is lower than it ought to be. We are competing with a natural phenomenon that has existed for thousands of years."

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