During my trip to Egypt in February and March 2025, I spent three nights at the Zad El Mosafer guesthouse in Tunis in the Fayoum and Lake Qarun region. I used Tunis as a base to visit Wadi Al-Hitan, Gebel Qatrani, and Soknopaiou Nesos. I organized all these activities through my guesthouse. What's more, they also arranged transport to Alexandria, with stops at the monasteries of Saint Pishoy and Saint Macarius the Great and Abu Mena.

On my second day in this region, the excursion organized via my guesthouse took us to the north shore of the lake. I had requested an excursion to Soknopaiou Nesos, the petrified forest, and the quarries of Gebel Qatrani. I was again with the driver who had accompanied me the day before to Wadi Al-Hitan, but this time we were sharing the vehicle with a second guide and a Russian tourist who was also able to act as interpreter, as she spoke both Arabic and English. As was the case on several occasions during my trip to Egypt, the excursion organized and negotiated with my guesthouse did not go according to plan.

We began with a visit to the ruins of Soknopaiou Nesos. A guard showed us the site and asked for a tip as we finished the tour. The site is large, but contains few particularly interesting remains. All that remains are the ruins of brick buildings. Some walls, however, are incredibly high. The guard showed us a bas-relief depicting a figure. Only the body was now visible, the stone having been cut off at the neck. The brick piles observed by Wojciech Fedoruk have now been used to reinforce the base of certain walls around the village.

I wouldn't be outraged to see this site inscribed on the World Heritage list, but my visit didn't convince me of the OUV of the site. There could be a lot of room for improvement in terms of on-site interpretation. I think these ruins are very seldom visited, as even our driver was taking photos and discovering the site with interest as if he were here for the first time (which would explain why a second guide was needed today). However, a group of tourists were arriving at the site as we were leaving. After the tour, we stopped off at the Qasr Sagha temple before continuing on to Gebel Qatrani.