Ecotourism in Egypt: Siwa Oasis
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Image via WikipediaVisited by travelers as varied as backpackers and European royalty, Siwa is now being touted as a destination for ecotourism.
Mounir Neamatalla, a U.S. educated Cairo native, hopes to make Siwa a model of sustainable development with private incentives and microfinance programs through his organization, EQI.
Captivated on his first visit in 1996, Mr. Neamatalla opened the Adrère Amellal ecolodge four years later. Built from the local material kersheef, a mixture of mud and salt, the compound blends into the landscape and requires no electricity. At night, the lodge is illuminated completely by candlelit lanterns. Organic gourmet meals, served under the shade of date palms near the swimming pool, are cooked using propane tanks with ingredients grown mostly on the premises.
A spring delivers water to the pool, garden and 40 rooms: Water flows from the pool to irrigate the garden and plantations, and from the showers to the wetlands, where the runoff is purified through a system of absorbent papyrus and three layers of rock salt, finally streaming into Birket Siwa, a large salt lake.
Mr. Neamatalla recently opened two more modest hotels in downtown Siwa. The mud-brick Shali Lodge, a five-minute walk down a palm-lined road from the main square, is decked out in handicrafts and Bedouin carpets, with a large lounge area and lively terrace restaurant.
I stayed at Albabenshal, an 11-room bed and breakfast built into the ruins of Shali, the 13th-century citadel, which is being restored. Indiscernible from the ancient mud structure, which resembles a melting sandcastle, the hotel has a calming, spare aesthetic, adorned with carved palm-wood doors and shutters, cylindrical salt lanterns, and striped Bedouin carpets in earth tones.
The rooms are comfortably ventilated with a traditional cooling system: 50-centimeter-thick mud walls with three circular holes in a triangular arrangement near the ceiling. The highest one conducts heat out; the lower two, half the diameter, bring in fresh air.
Excerpted from an article by Cathryn Drake for The Wall Street Journal
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