We got up relatively early to start off, which we needed as we spent about an hour arguing with the tourist police to let us go into the desert. It is standard for tourists to go, they just have to sign a disclaimer saying they don't need a police escort, but our tour leader had something wrong with the paperwork. After eventually talking with his supervisor the bloke let us go though.

After picking up some supplies we went on into the desert, first into the black desert and then onto the white desert. The black desert is so called because it is littered with black volcanic rocks, and it has these big conical hills dotted throughout the landscape. We stopped for lunch at this random spring in the middle of the desert, the water was pumped into a pool before going into the fields so allowed us to have a swim and freshen up. It was so nice being a in a cool pool in the middle of arid desert, we spent about an hour messing about with some egyptian guys. We drove on, stopping at a place called Crystal Mountain, which is a huge rock made out of crystals.

In the late afternoon we entered into the white desert. The sand is like proper desert sand, but every few metres it has weird chalk-like rocks rising 30cm to 15m from the ground. It didn't feel like a place on earth, it was incredibly quiet and still, with these rocks going on into the distance. We stopped as the sun was setting and set up camp, some mattresses on a blanket. A desert fox came and visited us, it was really small but very tame. We explored for a bit and then had dinner, chatting around a fire before eventually going to bed. It was so quiet and the stars were amazing since there was no civilisation for 200km, and really dark. Unfortuantely diahorrea hit me, but there is nothing like digging a hole in the desert and looking up at he stars while you squirt your guts out. Twice.