The Mammoth Book Of Travel In Dangerous Places - Plot & Excerpts
But he embraced the sands less as a geographical challenge and more as a test of the human spirit. After a childhood in Addis Ababa and subsequent wanderings in Somalia, Sudan, Syria and the Sahara, he had come to think of the desert as his natural home. After World War II he welcomed a move to Arabia, initially to work on locust control and then to make a series of remarkable journeys. He was particularly interested in how the beduin (bedu) had adapted to their impossibly harsh surroundings, and he was deeply saddened that this unique lifestyle and its values were about to be eclipsed. More than any of his contemporaries, he lived as abedu, suffering the pangs of thirst and hunger with them, enjoying their companionship, and making no concessions to comfort. His first crossing of the Empty Quarter in 1946 was made with just five companions from the Rashid and Bait Kathir tribes. After the meal we rode for two hours along a salt-flat. The dunes on either side, colourless in the moonlight, seemed higher by night than by day.
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