Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'My grandfather was an Imam,' said Ahmad to his cousin, when he was finally finished.
'I have to set an example to you, you heathen . . .'
I lay back, to look at the stars plastered across the blackness above. Ahmad and Awad
had begun to bicker like boisterous teenagers again, but I barely heard them.
'What is it, Lev?' asked Moez.
'Do you know what today was?'
Moez hazarded a guess. 'Your . . . birthday again?'
'No,' I said. 'Today was the day I passed half-way.' I stood, to take in the sounds and
smells of the desert at night. A warm wind gusted sand and grit about my feet. 'Today, we
passed the middle of the Nile. Do you know what it means?'
Moez shrugged.
'It means,' I said, 'that I'm on my way home.'
'But, Lev, there are still more than two thousand miles to walk . . .'
I knew it, but in that moment those two thousand miles didn't seem so far. Every step
I took from this night on was part of the countdown. After five long months, the expedi-
tion's end seemed a real, tangible thing.
There was just the small matter of the Sahara Desert to contend with first.
Three days later, we had passed through Shendi, a sprawling town where traditional trade
routes across the desert used to converge, and pushed north into land that was unmistake-
ably the Sahara. The town itself seemed strangely modern, and as we travelled through
its outskirts, our procession of camels and ancient handlers - grimed in dirt, Awad and
Ahmad looked like extras from
Lawrence of Arabia
- garnered strange looks from drivers
waiting at the intersections. To the north, what had once been scrubland was transforming
into a sea of gold and russet sand. The undulations of dunes marked the horizon. This was
the desert as I had imagined it: a parched ocean under an unforgiving sun.
We had been following the river as closely as possible. Here it began its great sweep
west, the Bayuda Desert separated from the rest of the Sahara only by the curve in the
river. An hour north of Shendi, however, Moez brought the procession to a halt. 'Come,'
he said. 'There's something every traveller passing this way has to see . . .'
At Moez's direction, we left the river behind, blazing a trail across the sand. After a
few hard miles, enormous dunes of golden sand, piled up against a backdrop of sandstone
mountains, marked the horizon. It was already midday and the sand underfoot was incred-
ibly hot, especially as the dunes got deeper and the sand poured in over my boots. Moez,
who was wearing only sandals, gritted his teeth admirably. 'This way!' he said, with child-
ish glee. Fuelled by a newfound burst of energy, he steered us towards a steep wall of sand.
The dunes grew steeper as we began the ascent. Above, there was an obvious ridge, bey-
ond which the only thing we could see were craggy mountains off to the east.
