Where's Sharawrah? by Gordon Pearce

Author:Gordon Pearce
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910456002
Publisher: 5M Publishing Ltd

Army escort... what next?

We all drove out through the gap in the sand dune. First the 4 x 4, then the Army truck, followed by me. This time I drove without so much trepidation on the now more familiar desert.

I looked in my mirror, mainly to see if my load was secure, when I saw that we were being followed by another vehicle. I did not expect that! And I wondered what it could be. It was difficult to see with all the dust trailing behind me. By letting the vehicle catch up, it started to pull alongside, and I could see that it was a big six-wheeled fuel tanker.

“The more the merrier,” I thought.

As usual it was easy going for a couple of hours, and it was good to be moving again. Apart from one stop for prayers and nearly getting stuck in soft sand we made good progress. At one place, as we weaved our way around some 20’ high sand dunes, I could distinctly make out my tyre marks from the previous trip. As I followed them on the hard sand between two sand dunes I could see my old tyre tracks turned to the left, and completely disappeared under a big sand dune. That sand dune was obviously not there a couple of weeks ago. Thousands, if not millions, of tons of sand had shifted in just that short time!

By midday we had travelled about 80 kilometres. The Army truck did not go as fast as I would like, but then I realised we would probably be travelling into Yemen some of the way. We were not always in Saudi Arabia as I at first thought. This was one of the reasons the Army truck and soldiers were with us I supposed. In that respect it was reassuring to have their company.

After three hours and another stop for prayers we arrived at the first outcrop of rocks. We all sat in the shade of a huge rock a couple of metres out from the main rocks. For over two hours some of the soldiers slept while I swatted flies, and wished it was not so hot!

Two of the Bedouins got up and went racing off around a large rock. I did not see what they did, but they came back with a long thin snake. It was dead now and I did not know if it normally had a flat head or the Bedouins had reshaped it.

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