Planning
It all started in the bar
When Bill approached me in the college bar one night and asked if I wanted to cross the Sahara desert with him and Lenny, I didn’t really think it was a serious question, who would?
I went along with the conversation though because it was fun talking about how hard it would be and that’s the sort of thing you do after you’ve had a few drinks.
I assumed it was just another bar conversation that would be forgotten about the following day.
Bedouin tribe
Some months later, in the same bar, Lenny came up to me and excitedly blurted out, “Gav! Bill and I are going to spend a week at Easter in the Middle East with a Bedouin tribe! Do you want to come?”
It turned out that this was the information gathering trip for their future Sahara crossing, which had now evolved into a possible crossing of the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia instead.
Still unconvinced the main crossing would ever happen, I didn’t have any plans for Easter and liked the sound of the Bedouin tribe so said yes.
The three of us enjoying some hiking around Wadi Rum
Jordan
We did a little research, looked at the practicalities and settled on going to Wadi Rum in Jordan.
The information gathering trip whetted our appetites and left us wanting to make the main trip happen. The Sahara crossing moved one step closer.
Graduation meeting
A few months later we were graduating. It was June and we had been talking about our trip to anyone who would listen; few believed it would happen.
Before we all left university for the last time we held a planning meeting, appropriately in the college bar, and worked out what we needed to do. Luckily, all the talking to people had helped identify some of the areas we needed to sort out.
- First was health and environment: arrange a suitable first aid course and decide contents of our first aid kit. What dangerous plant or animal life might we encounter? Were there any land mines left? What sort of shelter would we need from sandstorms and the sun? What about rain or flash floods? Bill volunteered to take this section.
- Equipment and logistics fell to Lenny. What would we need to take and how much would it cost? Did we need a stove? GPS units? Water purification? Were there any entry formalities? Was the political climate stable? How were we going to get there?
- That left me with camels and nutrition. Where would we get our food? How many calories would we need a day? What would we eat and how would we stay healthy? We knew next to nothing about camels. How much could they carry? How far could they walk? How much water would they need? How would we recognise a good camel? How much would a camel cost? What if our camels fell ill?
There were so many unknowns. We had six months to organise everything before we arrived in the Sahara.
With the work divided up between us, we parted company. We all had different plans for the rest of the year and this was the last time we would all be together until the eve of departure.
Where to go next: