02 Dec Oman: in search of the desert

Once again, work has taken me to Oman, and for me, faced with the proximity of a desert (or a dive), it is difficult to restrain myself or leave me locked up in the hotel. And if the temptation is none other than the Rub al Khali desert, the great empty space, the largest sea of dunes in the world, I abandon myself to my fate and let myself be swept away.

Although I think what has me most trapped is the seduction of the word far away. Far away, remoteness, leggins...

Actually, I don't know why I'm still so attracted to harsh and inhospitable places like this, if the office hours of the last year have gradually tamed my spirit.

Some embers must remain in my sleepy soul that keeps begging for my adventures to always have their small doses of bitterness (as Flaubert, whom I follow a lot although I haven't read anything of his yet, Sofia Mazagatos dixit), used to say.

What I have been reading about for too long is the adventures of Bertram Thomas or Harry St John Philby, those explorers who ventured across the Empty Quarter for the first time, or those of Wilfred Thessiger who not only crossed it twice, but stayed and lived there in the company of a Bedou tribe, for a little over six years.

The problem is that so much reading is upsetting me and, as happened to Don Quixote, I go out in search of adventure, thinking I'm an explorer like Sir Richard F. Burton or Mungo Park. But since I'm more like Danny deVito or Dora the Explorer, I get into the kind of trouble I like so much.

The bad news is that the limits of adventure are becoming increasingly difficult to overcome, and I don't think that doing the "mannequin challenge" at the top of the Wahiba Dunes, which at the moment is the most intrepid thing I've ever thought of doing, will allow me to become a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. Who knows...

Who knows if someday, although I can start to get ready because I'm in the discount time, I will reach the glory of finding behind some distant dune, the lost oasis of Zerzura, the hidden city of Ubar or why not, the vanished army of Cambyses...

Some day....

©DESERTANDO

But for the moment, with so little time available, I'm going to have to make do with wandering through the Tiwi ravine, peering over the Wahiba dunes or following the course of the Bani Khalid wadi. The fjords of Musandam, the forts of Ibra on the edge of the desert or simply quenching my thirst for adventure with a beer with a forbidden taste in some Muscat hovel have also served as a placebo.

I know that one day, with Desertando and those friends irresponsible enough to trust me, we will take each of those roads into the Muscat Mountains, or better still, we will take part of the route that Thessiger took between Shalala and Doha when he first crossed the Rub Al Khali.

Someday...

And this is when I feel like saying that one day I will return to these lands to gallop free like a runaway horse while the wind caresses its mane...etc etc, but of course, they are going to tell me to stop drinking Hacendado Gin and abandon the white brands, and look what happens?

To finish I was going to put a photo of me, but I have discovered that I have grown a grey hair, and I refuse to accept that even Peter Pan also takes its toll on the years, so instead I have put another little mountain in its place.