Egyptian Gilf restrictions
I heard last night that the Egyptian authorities have imposed more restrictions on travel to the southern Gilf Kebir areas, south of 23 degrees.
How true this is, or if this new 'law' will be removed as suddenly as it appeared, who knows, but apparently if you wish to travel south of 23 degrees from 1st september it will be neccesarry to be accompanied by two tourist police vehicles as well as the usual army officer.
While being accompanied is not a problem for me, the costs that they are talking about is!!!
As I understand it, they require 206 egyptian pounds for every 2 hour period!!!!,, So for a 15 day Gilf / Uwaynat trip this amounts to over 37,000 EP, plus food, water & tips etc etc.
Please somebody tell me this is not really true, It will kill any desert travel to these areas.
Also, apparently these rulese also apply to every where else in the Egyptian desert if there are 12 or more in the group, not that this bit really applies to me personally.
I think that this all stems from last year when the Army & Tourist police fell out about who gets the cash from tourists & suspended travel for a couple of weeks, and now the Tourist police also want a slice of the cake!!
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