Updated: January 2008

The Map of the Gebel Uweinat (Egypt) by R.A. Bagnold (1931)

A piece of our Planet we grow in a very special affection is the Jebel Uweinat, an isolated massif crossed by the international boundaries of three nations: Libya, Egypt and Sudan. We have already visited the Uweinat four times: the first in November 2004, the second in April 2005 and the last times in April 2006 and December-January 2008-2009.

We love the Jebel Uweinat notwithstanding the abundant garbage found everywhere, the modern hooliganism affecting every easy to reach place, the evident destruction of the natural environment. It is a long time that the Jebel Uweinat is no more the "Loast Oasis" discovered by Hassanein Bey in 1924. This is a place heavily polluted by the thousands of people that stop there: truck drivers, traffickers of every sort, military guards and... a lot of tourists that visit the place in a sort of "hit and run" frenzy without taking back their garbage. Notwithstanding the dilapidated environment, We love the place thanks to the way it was described by Hassanein bey, Bagnold, Almasy, Mònterin; Bermann, Di Caporiacco and other excellent explorers, travelers and scientists. Once, the Jebel Uweinat really was a lost oasis.

Prior to our visits, we built a large data-base encompassing everything was published about the region adding everything was possible to retrieve from the archives, including the private ones belonging to the Italian explorers, which in the past contributed to the knowledge of the Gebel Auenat, as it was called by the Italians in the '30 of the past century. Now we numbered in our master file many unedited documents about the early Italian explorers and even Italian soldiers.
According to the geo-morphologist, the Uweinat is more an island than a mountain, well deserving the scientific jargon name of inselberg (originally derived from the German geologic literature).
Jebel Uweinat, Gebel Uweynat, Gebel Uweinat and Gebel Auenat are the different versions of the place name generated by the past inaccuracy related to the romanization of Arabic place names. Gebel Auenat is the name you still find on some recent Italian atlas; it originated from the famous topographic expedition lead by Captain Oreste Marchesi in 1934. When spelled in Italian it is a much more better approximation of the Arabic sound than the English one of the most widely accepted form, i.e. Jebel Uweinat, which we of course adopt because of the weight of the scientific literature.

Garbage dumped by tourists in Karkur Ibrahim

The Marchesi's expedition worked very hard for eight months on the field to compile an expedite map at the 1:100.000 scale. By courtesy of the Istituto Geografico Militare (IGM), the Terramata collection of historical maps of the massif is complete. Actually this maps exists in two version: the "politically correct" version preserved at the Istituto Geografico Militare in Florence and the original one featured by place names given to the major or most suggestive peaks to honour the fascist gerarchi (the fascist political leaders), first and foremost the Cima Mussolini, now Mount Bagnold (according to a 1969 proposal by a Belgian team of scientists). Oddly enough, this version is not preserved in Italy but it exists in the library of the major European geographical institutions. Of course, we own both copies. The Marchesi's map is a magnificent piece of history but clearly can not be compared in quality to the Russian maps not to mention the most modern maps directly compiled from satellite data.
Unfortunately the Sudanese side of the Gebel Uweinat is covered only by the Russian map at the 1:500.000 scale, a not enough detailed scale to represent the complex topography of the many wadis hosting the prehistoric rock art making the Uweinat a first-class World-heritage archaeologic sanctuary. In 2004, we started an effort to generate a first set of customized maps, specially conceived for our hiking needs. Combining Landsat multispectral imagery, Terra-Aster, SRTM elevation data, old maps converted to vector maps, and also our own data collected on the field, we built a huge GIS project. In 2005 we were able to generate a new whole set vector maps ready to be used with the latest-generation of cartographic GPS devices.

Modern Arabic graffiti defacing Ain Doua, the most important archaeological site of the Libyan sector of the Jebel Uweinat

In 2006 a gigantic step forward was achieved thanks to the Quickbird multi-spectral satellite images made available to the scientific team of the Emeri Project by Telespazio S.p.A. These image are featured by a spatial resolution equal to 60 centimeters (about two feet)! We were able to extract detailed topographic features by these raster data and vectorialize them in the format accepted by Garmin devices.
In the 2006 spring, the special group of travellers commited to the exploration of the Libyan Uweinat was at the forefront of hikers' cartography and science. Then it came the terrific revolution represented by GoogleEarth, i.e. the GIS technology made simple and available to everybody. GoogleEarth made easy to every Saharan travellers to scrutinize at no cost the most remote places with a wealth of high resolution images (SPOT and QuickBird). Our leading edge in the Sahara faded but there is still a big difference from what a GIS specialist well versed in geology can obtain from original multi-spectral satellite data in respect of the good but levelled solutions offered by Google.

With an increasingly more sophisticated complex of electronic devices tied to our backpacks we had to deal with the problem of power consumption. We are now using advanced HT solar cells to recharge our batteries.
We already crave for leaving Italy for the fifth time, to walk again on the wonderful sunburnt rocks of the Gebel Uweinat...

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