Discover the Award-Winning Desert Lodge at Dakhla Oasis

We all remember that scene in Karim Abdelaziz and Mona Zaki’s iconic action-romance ‘Abu Ali’, overlooking the lake as Hassan nurses Salma back to health after a fatal snake bite. Tears were streaming down our cheeks as Khaled Selim’s ubiquitous ‘Le Kol Asheq Watan’ played in the background and we dreamed of the day we got to live out our desert romance. Or was that just us? Either way, we’ve just identified the very lodge where the film was shot to help make that fantasy into a reality - the Desert Lodge at Dakhla Oasis.

Carved from raw stone at the highest point of Dakhla Oasis, the lodge overlooks the traditional homes of Al Qasr village. The rustic stay molds itself after its surroundings, with all 32 of its rooms borrowing from Nubian architecture and dressing up in the earthy colour palettes of Siwan homes. With its own private hot springs and an artists’ studio, the lodge is more of a healing destination than your average getaway.

The lodge was founded when adventurer and engineer Ahmed Moussa came across this special plot of land during one of his desert escapades, and decided to build an eco-lodge with the help of his business partners at Al Wadi Co in 2003.

“We’ve been an attraction for foreign travellers for years, and won the Best Eco-Lodge Worldwide Award from the German Travel Association in 2007,” Desert Lodge’s project manager Azza Selim tells #CairoScene. “But more recently Egyptians are learning about eco-lodges and embracing this form of travel, so we’re seeing more engagement from our own communities.”