Siwa has recently introduced covered donkey carts (carettas), found anywhere in town, which can take you outside town for LE1-2 per hour. You can rent bicycles for LEI per hour or LE5 per day in the market, or for slightly less at Hassan’s Hand-crafts. The one local bus crawls west from Siwa town to Al-Maraqi making a 50km loop (daily 3:30pm; winter 7:30am and 2:30pm, round-trip LE2, but check with Mr. Hweiti for the schedule). Siwa town has no banking services. Aside from the main telephone office, telephones are unheard of here; the postal service, nevertheless, seems reliable. Streets in Siwa have no names, but most establishments hand out maps like American barracuda lawyers hand out their business cards.

The climate in Siwa is similar to that in Aswan and the other oases. Winter is pleasantly warm, with cool nights. Summer is brutally hot. Round-the-clock electricity was introduced in 1990, but air-conditioning is but a diaphanous mirage. The mild weather and the many local festivals associated with the harvest make fall and winter the best times to visit.

The most practical way to reach Siwa is by road from Marsa Matrouh, but you can hire a camel in the Nile Valley, brave 20 days of sandstorms and endless possibilities for death, and break every Egyptian travel restriction law as you trek across the Western Desert. Those with a group and at least two cars can travel the 420km stretch of the new road from Bahariya. Keep in mind, if you opt for this route, that this road offers no rest house or petrol station-traveling in one vehicle is a bad idea. There are, however, police checkpoints every 60km along the route.