Accommodations and Food

It’s hard to keep track of all the forced closures, re-openings, and re-namings of Bawiti’s hotels. Currently, tourists have five options. The Hotel Alperblick is the cleanest and most inviting, but also the most expensive ("economy” singles LE10, with bath LE25; breakfast included). Continuing the inexplicable and inappropriate alpine theme, the government’s Edelweiss (or Paradise) Hotel offers grimy rooms and dark bathrooms for LE3 per person, but it does have fans and a small garden canopy groaning with grapes. Several signs or any local can show you these two hotels near the main road.

Further afield, you can catch a free ride from the bus to Ahmad’s Safari Camp 4km south of the center of town. Rather dirty rooms and bathrooms retail at LE5 per person, LE10 with bath. The metal sheds for LE3 are infernally hot in summer. No hot water except from the nearby springs. Although there’s a shop, a restaurant, and free transport to the town, you are isolated here. Venture to the Rest House at Bir al-Matthar only if you seek masochistic mortification of the flesh: foodless, waterless, powerless, dirty bungalows isolated in the middle of a desert landscape tastefully decorated with dead trees are a suicidal steal at LE5. If sanitation concerns you, avoid Saleh’s Campground at Bir Ghaba (lump of concrete in straw hut LE5). How ever, the springs in the area, particularly Bir Ghaba, afford enticing settings for campers with their own transport.

At the Popular Restaurant a full meal is LE6. They even provide Stella (LE5) from their glorified shack set back from the road just past the Tourist Office. Otherwise, the Paradise restaurant and Sarussi, both on the main road towards Farafra, offer standard meals for about LE5. In the mornings, the Al-Ghash (donkey) stall next to Sarussi serves fuul and fakfel,