My first visit to Siwa, in November 2024, was one of those experiences that leaves a mark — in the best way. It's not just the salt lakes and sand dunes that pull you in to this forgotten corner of the world. It's the people. We made real friends there — Spyros and Nikos opened not just their homes but their whole world to us, with a hospitality so effortless that by the time we were on the flight back to Greece, we already knew: "We're coming back here."
And sure enough, just two months later, in February 2025, we found ourselves on a plane to Alexandria again. We stayed one evening to soak up a little of the coastal city's melancholy, and the very next day we got in the car with our driver Waled for the long, often exhausting nine-hour journey through the desert. This time with no plan and seven days ahead of us. All we wanted was to be there again. To sit and watch this extraordinary place.
The moment you arrive in Siwa you feel it — the oasis gives off an irrational calm that sooner or later pulls you back. When you think about the fact that right here, in the middle of nowhere, the Oracle of Amun was built (a sanctuary that drove commanders to cross the desert for months at the risk of their lives), you understand that something inexplicable lives in the air and energy of this place.
The images that follow have no chronological order. They don't need explaining. They're scattered moments I held on to from what we lived there. Vast lakes of salt, labyrinths of stone and mud, skies that bewitch you with their stars, hidden springs among the palm trees. Siwa holds countless secrets — far more than the eye can take in the first time.
Making such an exhausting journey twice within sixty days might sound excessive to some people. But if you surrender to its rhythm, it makes complete sense. There are places you visit once, take your photos, and move on to the next. And then there are a rare few places that call you back. Siwa, for us, definitely belongs to the second kind.
