Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By midday, the sand dunes had ebbed away and we marched across a plain of grey and
black. Jagged black stone stretched out before us, capturing the heat of the sun and sear-
ing the soles of our shoes. In the distance, a line of gleaming purple mountains marked the
heart of the desert. These, Moez told us, were the volcanoes of the Bayuda. Innumerable
peaks rose up, shimmering in the haze. All in all, there were ninety volcanoes of differing
sizes across the plateau, fifteen rising taller than the rest to claw at the sky.
'Are we going to get burnt to death, too?' asked Ash.
'They're dormant,' said Moez. 'In fact . . .'
'In fact, what?'
I stopped dead. The same thing had occurred to me as to Moez. 'If we head straight for
the highest peak, there ought to be a gorge down into the volcano itself.'
'And?' said Ash.
'It's our best chance at finding natural water.'
The mountains, in their enormity, took an age to reach, the wavering heat obscuring
their true size and range. One mile turned into two, then three into four, and it was not until
twenty miles of silence had passed that we stood in their shadows. Even Awad and Ahmad
had ceased to sing today.
Behind a sheer cliff of black basalt, a small trail wound into a narrow gully. We snaked
along its length, emerging again onto the plain west of the volcanoes.
I stared into the distance. At first, all I saw was the same unyielding black and grey, the
plateau extending into the west. Then, my eyes lit on a passage in the rock another mile
away, a place where the volcanic mounds rose up, and a ravine was the only way through.
At the other end of the passage, there was green.
'There!' I shouted out, with the last of my remaining energy.
'You're not bloody wrong,' said Will, climbing to a gravel mound to see for himself.
'Trees!' screamed Moez.
'Water?' asked Ash, in utter disbelief.
Awad rode level with Will and, high up on Burton, stared into the distant tree-line.
'
Moya
,' he said, with sheer relief. 'Water.'
With renewed vigour, we made for the cleft in the rock, emerging onto a small cluster of
acacia bushes clinging to the base of the pitch-black mountainside. Pillars of rock rose like
ancient monoliths out of the scree and there, to my utter disbelief, stood two boys.
By the looks of them they were Arab, Bedouin like Awad and Ahmad, dressed in simple
jellabiyas
with beads around their necks. At our sudden appearance, they started, exchan-
ging a panicked look. The first tightened his hold around the rope by which they were lead-
ing a diminutive donkey. It took me a moment to realise what I was seeing in their eyes. It
wasn't quite fear, and it wasn't quite shock; they were bewildered, staring at a collection
