White Desert Tours starts 20 KM south of Bahariya with the black desert. About 160 km south of Bahariya Oasis, the White Desert begins. It is truly white, in clear contrast with the yellow desert elsewhere. At night, and many of the organized trips out here include overnight stay out in the desert, it gets a character reminding of an Arctic landscape. This place is very popular tourism spot for its dramatic and unusual rock formations, you should not miss out on the weird rock balancing on top of a white pillar. The snow-white desert is actually made of chalk that has been exposed for years to what geologists call "differential weathering," the erosion of soft particles that results in eerie protrusions of hard rock. These mushrooms were rock formations, ten to fifteen feet tall, whose limestone bases had been worn away by the mixture of wind and sand that had blown by them at high speeds for thousands of years. Seemingly defying the laws of gravity, these huge rocks stand high atop narrow bases that looked like they could crack at any moment. The differential weathering explains the very beautiful forms that now fill the White Desert including shapes like domes, minarets, castles, towers and so forth.