The southern half of it is very sparsely populated and very difficult to get around, even in a chopper, the terrain is alot like a bunch of shark jaws stacked together. The Arabs (Whom the Egyptians despise) living there are notorious smugglers, it's been their way of life for centuries, and only the goods have changed. They're pretty much the lawless Islamic cutthroats they've been for all that time. There aren't really any towns to speak of, the population is spread out very thinly up the wadis. You can tell you're in a heavily vegetated part if you can see more than a dozen camelthorn trees (which would be in one of the wider wadis, since nothing grows on the rock crags that loom over them), though way back up the wadis there are a few places where there are springs and a few date palms, but nothing like the expansive Sahara oases like you might see in a movie. On some schedule known only to themselves, the Arabs get together in surprisingly large numbers for market purposes. I swear they were auctioning off girls at one such gathering we encountered there on a patrol.
