Posted: Feb 27, 2009 02:20 pm EST
(ThePoles.com) Mark Evans and John Smith spent 28 days living and travelling in special adapted vehicles across the sands of the Empty Quarter (Rub Al Khali) in Oman exploring the desert and interacting with the people. During this desert expedition they often compared the sand desert to a snow desert and sailing on the sea.

Way of travel

Mark and John traveled with vehicles that were adapted for the desert conditions, remote areas and long distances. For much of their journey they had no tracks and had to rely on a GPS for navigation.

On a rest day Mark wrote, “After three days of long driving it has been good to give our eyes a rest; extended desert driving, where there are no tracks, takes its toll.”

“For the lead driver it is especially hard, trying to read the sand immediately in front at the same time as looking ahead to route find over the dunes whilst keeping an eye on the vehicle behind.”

“Local desert dwellers are able to read the sand easily, driving seamlessly across the dunes without the frequent stopping and checking that the rest of us mere mortals have to do. When the sun is high the ‘dead ground’ is hard to spot, requiring extra concentration to avoid hitting any depressions which might impact on the vehicle.”

“Driving in remote desert country is akin to sailing a boat far out at sea; you need to know where you are, you need to be comfortable being where you are, know where to head in case of problems, and your vehicle is everything to you in terms of safety and survival.”

Mark explained that they had to read the sand and the landscape, “careful concentration is required to safely weave through the maze of passageways and slip faces over and through the dunes-with only two vehicles, if we get ourselves into a situation we cannot drive out of, we have a problem. In some places the sand is very soft, yet in others it is as hard as concrete-patience is the key, and getting out to walk in front and check if the route ahead is uncertain is essential.”

“To give you an illustration as to how difficult desert travel can be,” he further explained, “both in terms of navigation and fuel consumption, to travel the 14.8km GPS distance west today took us five hours, and 48.8 km on the ground, crossing another four or five large lines of dunes reaching up to 300 metres above sea level.”

Water

Mark and John took water with them in cans for a week or two at a time. When they started their journey, they reportedly loaded 380 litres of fuel and 260 litres of water into the two vehicles to see them through the first week until they got to a community.

Along their journey the men camped at several oasis, which were permanent sources of water in the otherwise huge arid area.

Mark said the one thing that catches most people by surprise when they overnight in the desert is that they are highly likely to wake up to a thick fog each morning. “Sometimes visibility can be down to 50 metres or less, and in winter the fog can linger for three hours after dawn, making for a chilly and damp start to the day.”

“The fog owes its creation to the proximity of the sea, the night breeze pulling the warm moist air over the cold sands, thus causing the moisture to condense as fog. A number of the ingenious plants and animals have adapted their lives to capture this airborne source of moisture, yet more evidence that the deserts here in Oman are a fascinating environment in which to travel, and worthy of closer examination by us all.”

One morning Mark reported, “we woke to a heavy dew, and a fog in the valley below. A simple wipe of the table with a towel resulted in wringing out a substantial amount of water, an indication of just how much moisture is available for the plants and animals here in the sands if they can harness it in some way.”

Tent

Mark described their tent, “The tent we are sleeping in is of Bedouin design, 5x3 metres, completely open at the front to avoid overheating and so we can admire the night sky from our sleeping bags on the sand.”

In the mornings they saw signs in the sand that tell them they had various creatures crawling and hopping around their heads as they slept, “including a desert gerbil that comes in just before sunrise, and a number of lizards.”

The Arctic

Mark wrote that he and John spent a year living in a Lappish reindeer herders tent (called a Lavvu) “some 500 miles from the North Pole, on an island called Svalbard, a place where polar bears outnumber people. Whilst the contrasts are obvious, there are also many similarities between the two environments.”

“Deafening silence is one, as is the purity of what lies underfoot. The patterns in windblown sand are almost identical in snow; both are moulded by the wind. Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Canada once sent me a poem he wrote likening the igloo to the bedouin tent, and how both the Inuit and the Bedouin have adapted to living on the very edge of human tolerance, at one and with a deep understanding of their surroundings,” he said.

On another day he wrote, “Like snow, sand has its own qualities, reacting to changing temperatures and to changes in moisture. It can only hold a certain angle before sliding down what is called a slip face, and after a heavy dew, what was soft and difficult to drive upon becomes hard and easy.”

The men also used the sun to navigate with, like they did in the Arctic, Mark explained, “With 24 hours in the day, and 360 degrees in a circle, by a process of simple division one hour of arc of the sun represents 15 degrees of a circle, so at one hour past noon, north is 15 degrees to the west of the shadow, at 2.00 pm it is 30 degrees west, and so on.”

“Using this simple technique it is possible, in extremis, to navigate your way to safety in a way that does not rely on GPS, which are prone to flat batteries and malfunction. I have used it several times, with great accuracy, when travelling on sea ice in the Arctic.”

Vast, remote, silent

John wrote a final word, “So what is it about the Empty Quarter that is such a magnet? Firstly, it is so vast and remote. Then there is the silence – so silent you can hear it, day after day.”

“There is the absolute grandeur of its nature – the massive high dunes, the tiny plants thriving on so little moisture, the heat of the day, the cold of the night, the sun, the wind, the rain – yes, it does rain – we experienced it.”

“Most importantly, the dwellers of the desert – the Bedu. Their hospitality is unparalleled. The evenings we had with them in various tiny communities will live in my memory forever. Shukran.”

“And its effect on me? Yet again, it made me consider the simplicity of life. We can make our lives so complex.”

Mark Evans has lived in Oman and Saudi Arabia for 10 years. Director of Outward Bound Oman, Mark uses the desert as a classroom to promote greater cultural understanding between young people from the western and Arab world through the Connecting Cultures programme that he founded in 2004.

John Smith is a leading landscape photographer with lots of desert travel and photography experience. Based in Christchurch New Zealand, John has his own photography and picture framing business and spends much of his time in the sands of Saudi Arabia and Oman, where he leads photographic safaris.

Between Mark and John they have climbed in the Himalayas, Greenland, the Rockies, the Alps, Svalbard, Ruwenzori, Kilimanjaro and the southern Alps, crossed Greenland and kayaked 1700 km in 55 day around Oman.

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