just expat in cairo because i had a brain fart when i was registering and that was the most neutral, non-gender thing (yet that would describe my point of view when i posted) that i could be bothered to come up with.

i did a white/black desert trip to Bahariyya Oasis which is 1/2 way between cairo and luxor, roughly.

beeeeeeaaautiful!! it was only a short weekend trip from cairo, but we went riding on the dunes in a 4x4 (much more fun than i ever imagined) enroute to one of the destinations, went to a place where dinosaur bones have been found, another place called the black desert due to the volcanic stuff still strewn around after i don't know how many thousands of years (we had a bad tour guide)... even got a collection of these little tiny rocks shaped in the oddest and most beautiful way and found one with a sea shell pressed into it. i thought that was incredible. and the white desert is fantastic too... just do a search on the internet to see the photos... it looks like Mars or something out of a science fiction novel with these giant mushroom-like formations... here...this is the first web site I found when I did a search for "white desert egypt"
http://www.shunya.net/Pictures/Egypt/Farafra/WhiteDesert.htm

In the one called "desertscape" - 2nd one from top, you'll see a white 4x4 loaded with stuff? They drive you out there on those things, about 30-40 minutes into the desert (once you get off the real road)... you find a good "mushroom" formation and you camp under the stars! There's no tents with a covering overhead, instead there's tent walls...2 cars make an "L" and you set up the walls along the L...then everyone huddles together in the blankets. All the equipment is provided by the tour company, you just have to bring warm clothing and help cook dinner.

It's not as isolated as it seems, because even though you're in the middle of nowhere, there's a caravan of these tour groups...when I went, there were about 10 or 15 of them...spaced apart enough that you feel alone, but close enough that if you get lost, you can make your way to another campground.

I heard that if you have the time, Siwa is absolutely breathtaking...it takes about 9 hrs to get to from Cairo, so it's more of a 10 day trip.

Hope this helped.