Happy Oasis Hotel

Tucked against El Dakrour Mountain at the edge of Siwa Oasis, Happy Oasis Hotel sits where the desert plateau drops toward the palm groves and salt lakes that define this remote Egyptian enclave, roughly 560km west of Cairo near the Libyan border.

The property is small and ungraded by stars, giving it a guesthouse character rather than a resort feel — useful for travellers arriving after the long desert road who want quiet over ceremony. El Dakrour itself is known locally for its therapeutic sand baths, practised on the mountain slopes each summer.

Siwa town, with its mud-brick Shali fortress and the Oracle Temple where Alexander the Great consulted the priests, lies within easy walking distance. The Great Sand Sea dunes begin just beyond the oasis edge.