I would have
thought that I might have been worried but I
was quite calm and had every confidence in our guide. He was extremely intelligent and well travelled. He was an entrepreneur and I had every
respect for him. His name was
Mammon. He located the rest of the
company and off we went again into the sand and the wind.
On our arrival at
the camp, I noticed we had a visitor; it was a goat. The guides were celebrating Eid and the goat
was part of the festival. We named him
Gary. The demise of Gary will be noted
in a later paragraph. Lunch stop was a delight and the
team were all very happy to drop on to a mat and lie down. Even though the wind and sand blew around us,
we all lay down and had a snooze. I lay
with my hat over my face shivering. The
sun had been too much for me and I decided in the morning I would make sure I
covered myself up. As soon as we stopped,
the flies arrived. When the wind had
abated, lunch was served. Fresh salad
and pasta with melon for afterwards. How
the cook managed to prepare and serve such things was beyond me. He only had a gas stove. It was decided that as the wind had not
calmed down as much as the guides would have liked, we would stay put. Which was fine by everyone as the first part
of the trek had been quite difficult.
When the sun had got up it had been really hot and then with the wind it
made walking quite hard. We were all
glad of a rest.
Later in the afternoon, we all decided to walk
up to a dune and see the sunset. This
was going to be part of our routine.
Sheri we named Mary Poppins because she always had something nice that
she pulled out of her bag - wine, sweets, hula hoops and energy bars. Sheri had also brought some wine with her and
some peanuts. We all sat on the dune
with a tiny amount of wine and watched the sun set. It was so delightful and yet eerie. We were sitting sipping wine in the middle of
the Sahara without a care in the world watching one of the most beautiful
sunsets. It was to be a very special
routine. After walking all day and being
extremely tired and hot, the evenings were a delight and so restful. Sitting on a sand dune and watching the sun
sink and the moon rise was as good as a Horlicks at home. Really relaxing and peaceful.
The camels
settled down for the night. The tents
had been kindly erected by the guides and dinner was served. We had some really lovely evenings sitting
around the campsite with our guides.
They sang and made music with us using empty water drums. It was such fun. We found out that
one of the camel guides was a real nomad.
He lived in the desert with his dad and owned one camel. I can’t recollect his
name but Angie my friend, who was such a lovely lady, could ‘sign’ and took everyone
by surprise by starting speaking to
him. He had never spoken to anyone
outside his village before and he was over the moon that he could interact with
us this way. It was quite moving and I
think some of us shed a tear. The camel
guides are the only ones who had taken time out to learn how to speak to him in
sign language. The interaction between
them all was so nice. They had a sense
of humour and played tricks on each other.
They were quite funny to watch.
That evening, we
decided to sleep under the stars. I was
rather nervous, as I was not quite sure I really wanted to do this. Everyone else was keen and I didn’t want to look
like the odd one out (or look like a fool).
I hid my fear and set my mat down near to Angie who I felt I could trust
and who, if anything happened, would know what to do. Chris, one of the lads
who was forever teasing me, stated in the morning, ‘Karen will have had her sleeping liner plus sleeping bag right up to her
nose’. He was not wrong. However, Lolly, Hailey, Nick and Amelia had
stopped laughing and had gone to sleep.
All was quiet except for the grunting noises of the camels, which I
found so comforting. The moon was so
bright and the stars were beautiful. You
felt you could put your hand out and touch them and become as one with the
universe. I spent an age just thanking
God for allowing me the privilege of being here. My prayers said (the last one being, ‘I put my trust in you O Lord please don’t let anything happen to
me this evening and don’t let anything come into my sleeping bag. Amen.’), I fell fast asleep. What made
me awake early that morning I have no idea.
I awoke looking straight into the heavens and almost at once saw a
shooting star, one after another after another.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven,
as I had never seen anything so spectacular and stunning in all my life.
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