SAUDI DESERTS
Saudi Arabia is full of deserts. There is the Rub' Al-Khali, a body of sand twice the size of Italy that extends the Sahara towards the east, bringing it to the Arabian Peninsula; the Nefud desert is located on the opposite side, to the north, under Jordan and Iraq, and in Arabic means "Great Sand Dune". A third desert connects them, stretching latitudinally for a thousand kilometers, it is the Al-Dahna. Finally, along the coast, there is the Persian Gulf desert, whose surface is shared with the small states of Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, and the southern region of Iraq. All together they form the Great Arabian Desert, which with a surface area of over two million square kilometers is by far the largest in Asia.
The best way to cross it is to follow the eastern coast of the peninsula and avoid the absolute desolation of the central area. It is imperative to move before summer, temperatures regularly exceed fifty degrees and the sun beats down relentlessly on every inch of the body, there is no shade to offer shelter. Radiation and aridity burn the skin and not even the eyes are safe: the glare of the sand is blinding and hurts the sight even under sunglasses. If I want to hope to make it, I must move immediately.
I am in Dubai for final preparations. March is entering its second half and I can count on about forty days before the heat becomes dangerous. Forty days to reach the northern edge of the desert and pass Basra, in Iraq, beyond which rises the Zagros mountain range. Once there, I will be safe. Four borders divide the piece of land I want to cross: Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran. Fifteen hundred kilometers to travel. On foot. A spring outing.
PREPARATION
As usual, I organize my supplies by drawing a table without margins on a sheet of paper. Writing by hand has the power to imprint a rhythm in my head, as if the path traced by the pen were repeated in my mind. This will be the fourth desert I cross and as I write down the food to buy I observe the calm with which the pen leaves ink on the white page. The awareness of previous experiences gives a feeling of security.
In the weeks leading up to Dubai, I had recorded the amount of water I consumed every day, so now I have precise estimates to work with. The forty-kilometer stage has become my standard unit of measurement for distance, and in the ten hours it takes me to cover it, my water requirement is two and a half liters. Considering the water needed to brush my teeth and cook, I can be comfortable with three liters a day. The basic setup (camping gear, spare parts, electronics, clothes, and so on) is about 20 kg, about ten are food, so the rest of the weight to be carried goes to water. Ezio, the stroller in which I carry what I need, can carry up to forty-five kilos, the math is easy: fifteen liters of water, five days of autonomy, at forty kilometers a day that's two hundred without needing to refill.
I trace the line I will have to follow on the map and take note of towns and gas stations. The former are scarce, but the service stations are spaced out at a maximum of three days from each other. The result is comforting. However, I must take into account that as I go along the heat will increase, so I will need to bring more water. I mentally note to take a few bottles of supplements when I go shopping, they will not reduce the amount of water I will have to drink but at least they will help to replenish the levels of mineral salts and keep thirst at bay.
Bernat and Amalia, the guys who are hosting me while I'm in town, talk about the summer heat they've been experiencing since they moved to Dubai. Although the conversations are one-on-one, they both use the same metaphor: the sensation you get when you leave your house is like opening the mouth of a lit oven and being hit by a gust of scorching air. In the insignificant journey from the front door to the car and from the car to the office entrance, your shirt gets soaked - completely, not just under the armpits - so much so that they have to bring a change of clothes to put on as soon as they get to work. For months, you don't see anyone around.
Time and money allow you to do many things; in the Emirates, where workers' rights are practically non-existent, their exploitation has allowed the creation of an unimaginable city. But even in an authoritarian country with few protections like this one, in the summer workers are exempt from working outside from ten in the morning to six in the afternoon. It's too hot. The anecdotes give food for thought, but the dream of completing the world tour on foot will give me the strength to continue. My body has been trained by three and a half years of walking and in India I realized that the mind can take the body to further levels of endurance. But you have to know how to get there.
DEPARTURE - HOT
On March 17th I say goodbye to my friends and set off with Ezio north. A new chapter begins: crossing the Arabian Desert. It takes three days to get past the metropolitan areas of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the landscape is the dull one typical of industrial suburbs and the journey is boring. An unfair price to pay in exchange for the ease of getting supplies. I want to quickly leave them behind and head for the coast. But right away the heat arrives unexpectedly and hits without mercy. How is it possible? It seems that someone has turned up the thermostat out of spite. Until yesterday the temperature barely exceeded thirty degrees and only in the central hours of the day. I haven't had time to mentalize the heat that the mugginess already makes every movement sticky. The asphalt makes the boiling air bounce, irritating the skin of my legs and at the end of the stage I find them red and swollen. The smog weighs down my breathing, creating a thick and oppressive blanket.
To protect my head I wear a legionnaire whose front flap of cloth covers my face by buttoning to one side of the hat. This way my face is protected, only a strip of skin around my eyes remains exposed, but the fabric weighs on my nose and breathing becomes difficult. A thub, the long-sleeved male tunic that reaches to the feet, typical of the Arab world, is pulled down over my body. I preferred it to trousers because it lets a breath of air pass through in certain areas. Studying the local culture to adopt certain aspects of it brings unexpected and pleasant advantages! The only exposed part is my hands: in the space of two days and despite the sunscreen, the backs of my hands are burned and the first blisters are forming. I improvise some protection with a bandana and a neck warmer, tying the corners of the first behind my left thumb and twisting the second at the height of the knuckles of my right hand. Dressed like this, the heat is suffocating but at least I avoid sunburn. At the end of the walk I use sanitizing wipes to remove the mixture of sunscreen, sweat and sand, but I soon realize that my skin suffers from the burning heat and cleansing it is not enough.
I stop twice during the day, once in the middle of the morning to stretch my muscles and then at lunch. I seek shelter in the shadows of trucks parked on the side of the road and under overpasses that cross the direction of travel, feeling immense relief when I unbutton the fabric covering my face and take off my hat. The feeling of coolness lasts a second, then the heat attacks again. To protect Ezio and the food he contains, I buy a sunshade of the kind used on car windshields; it will be a companion to the umbrella I use to shade myself during my breaks.
Until now the food I prepared lasted 36 or 48 hours, depending on the temperature. This time it didn't reach twenty-four. I made a bitter discovery of this on the second day, when opening the can of lentils cooked the night before a disgusting smell of fermentation informs me that the meal will fertilize the earth. As I bite into a crunchy and juicy apple feeling a secret lust, I realize that it will be more difficult than I thought. I am assailed by the fear of thirst, a cloudy and dark emotion that anticipates the real need for water. It is the imagination that dries out the mouth, that makes the throat feel parched even if I have just drunk. If I were to attach myself to the five-liter can I wouldn't be able to put out the fire, I've already tried; in fact, I would find myself with a bloated stomach and a liter less of water. Thrown away. Wasted. I take one of the mineral salt tablets and place it between my tongue and palate waiting for it to dissolve. The fizzy effect and sour taste are a pleasant diversion for the minutes that follow.
THE SALT PLANTS
After passing the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, a dirt track enters endless spaces. The sun has disappeared behind a thick blanket of clouds and the wind has begun to blow insistently. The dirt road disappears for long stretches into the compact sand, elsewhere it alternates with strips of asphalt that last just a hundred meters and lead nowhere. Suddenly, the sand gives way to white salt flats that take over the horizon. The landscape becomes surreal. I find myself stuck in mud, with Ezio sinking under the weight of the water reserves. The ruts left by the wheels imprint the wet salt for several centimeters, multiplying the fatigue. Every few steps I look around in amazement, unable to realize how I could have ended up in this trap. I look for dry salt crusts in order to advance quickly, those on which the cracks are light and superficial prove to be quite reliable. I stubbornly press forward, waiting for an escape route, and after a good hour I manage to get out of the swamp and onto a service road that runs through the salt flats. Ezio’s passage has left narrow corridors on the surface, the only sinuous lines in an otherwise severe landscape.
The road is slightly elevated and allows you to look around 360 degrees. The resulting impression leaves me speechless: if I had been teleported onto a mountain I would have the same scene before my eyes. Snow or salt on the ground, a blanket of clouds above my head, the wind howling in my ears, pushing devilishly against the direction of travel. The temperature may have dropped twenty degrees compared to yesterday but the radiation is still strong, on my skin you can feel the pressure of the sun to which is now added the tingling of the salt carried by the wind. The march crosses the afternoon in search of a handkerchief of land where we can set up camp. In vain. I give up half an hour before the sun sets and to protect the floor of the tent from the corrosive action of the salt I spread a sheet under the basin. Roughly cleaned, I take a packet of crackers and a can of beans for dinner. I am too tired to cook. As I think that this is only the fourth day of forty, a dazed smile spreads across my face. This was the easy desert, right?
ENTERING THE DESERT
The following days the wind does not stop howling for a second, pushing stubbornly and in the opposite direction. During the night it furiously attacks the tent, which takes the blows groaning and creaking. But the structure holds, the guy ropes stretched like violin strings remain anchored to the pegs and the Manaslu is resurrected every morning together with the traveler it guards. Little by little I enter the rhythm of the desert listening to its breath enter my lungs. I thank the wind because it mitigates the heat and every morning, when I stick my head out of the tent, I greet the clouds that for one more day will keep the sun at a safe distance.
Serenity comes by accepting the conditions under which the desert forces us to play. I establish a routine, I observe its times precisely and with renewed discipline I am able to appreciate the journey and its pauses. Up at dawn, thirteen hours of light, at sunset I settle into the inflatable mattress and read the adventures of Carla Perrotti, explorer of the Sahara and Kalahari deserts, on the backlit screen of the e-reader. As happened in the past, as I advance into the desert it descends into me, providing the mirror in which to observe myself. I look around, and the material silence becomes space; I look inside, and the space becomes silence.
BORDER - SAUDI ARABIA
Border is a debased term that indicates the end of one jurisdiction and the beginning of the next, sometimes accompanied by problems, never in the presence of relaxed nerves. In Al-Ain you are checked for doing the same things on both sides of an imaginary line. Passing of papers, money, stamps, banal questions, visas, laissez-passer, goodbye and welcome. This morning I was in the Emirates, this afternoon in Saudi Arabia, but the desert is always the same.
Living nature in these parts is scarce, very different from what happens in the Australian desert. Over there a large artesian basin supplies living species with water while here the gold hidden underground is black, a color unsuitable for life.
In a week the only life forms are a snake and a couple of shiny pink lizards with bodies similar to a torpedo, with a tail disproportionately small compared to the torso. Instead of running away they approach curiously, letting themselves be admired for a few moments before becoming intimidated and hiding under the sand. No birds, perhaps because of the strong wind. For the rest, some dry and stubborn shrubs and a palm tree every now and then.
THE OASIS OF AL-HOFUF
After three weeks I arrive in Al-Hofuf, the capital of the Eastern Province and the commercial center of the region. The largest reserves of oil and gas in the world lie underground as well as a gigantic aquifer, located right under the city. A local guide informs that the million and a half inhabitants who live there could survive for fifty years before the reserve is drained. The basin has given rise to the largest oasis in the world, with an intense cultivation of date palms and various species of fruit and vegetables. I know that I wrote earlier about the sparse vegetation compared to the Australian Outback, but Al-Hofuf is the only exception. All around, for hundreds of kilometers, sand reigns supreme.
I am a guest of Mohammed, a thirty-five-year-old professor who in his spare time runs a trekking association. We are at the end of Ramadan, during the day he is not seen because he is dozing or working, but in the evening we find ourselves chatting and sharing a bite. Iftar is the moment when the fast ends and we go back to eating, always in company, sitting on the floor and helping ourselves with our bare hands from enormous trays filled with all sorts of goodies. Rice and meat are the basis of the Saudi diet and depending on the spices and cooking method used they take on different names: kapsa is the basic version, mandi is the one cooked under the sand with wood obtained from palm trees. For thousands of years Al-Hofuf has been the crossroads of an intense trade exchange between India, Arabia, Africa and Europe, therefore it has also absorbed the tastes and culinary traditions of the peoples with whom it traded.
Al-Hofuf is preparing an unexpected meeting. A few weeks earlier Stefano had hooked me up on Instagram, he's a guy from Foggia who left South Africa by bike. He was pedaling in the opposite direction to me, we were hoping to meet up along the road for a game of chatter. When I got to the city I got in touch and, surprise! it was his last night here. We agreed to meet up in a few hours and go out with Mohammed and his friends to grab a bite and drink the inevitable sugary tea. Stefano has a lively energy and a big smile and we spent the evening telling his new friends about the months spent on the road. Before he left again the next day, we exchanged good wishes for a fair wind and some information about supply points. On his bike, heading for Qatar, he'll cover in two days the distance that took me a week.
I stay in the city for a few days, gain weight, celebrate the end of Ramadan by wearing a very white thub and the shimah, the red keffiyeh of Saudi Arabia held in place on the head by the egal, a black cord twisted on itself like a snake. Mixing organization and luck, I manage to spend the occasion with a Saudi family. In a large living room we find ourselves exchanging greetings by saying “Eid Mubarak”, happy Eid (the name of the holiday) once again drinking liters of hot tea and eating a diabetic quantity of sweets and dates. To greet each other, the men shake hands and kiss the right cheek three times. The family is large, for previous generations it was normal to have eight or ten children and each of them has had as many, so I spend the evening shaking hands and introducing myself to an endless theory of Mohammed, Hussain, Ali and Abdullah. The most popular questions are the same ones they asked in India: where are you from, are you married, when will you get married, do you have brothers or sisters, what work do your parents do. Questions about family far outweigh those about the path, probably they are trying to understand who they are starting from the roots, or, simply, these are the questions they usually ask.
LAST STAND
I set off again torn, I could have stayed a few more days but avoiding the heat is a constant thought, I have to move if I want to avoid cooking. But luck, at least in the battle against the heat, seems to be on my side. The next three weeks, the time needed to get to Kuwait and leave it behind, see a continuous alternation of weather conditions, exceptionally unusual for both the season and the place. The sun beats down at forty degrees for days, then the wind arrives, always against it, to lower the perceived temperature, finally the clouds gather and a storm breaks out. During the night an electrical storm breaks out, with flashes that tear through the darkness every second, it is a scary sight because, after all, I am sleeping inside a canvas envelope supported by two duralumin poles. Inside here is the material part of my life and if the tent were to collapse everything would be lost: the travel diaries and the pieces of electronics with the archives they preserve. The night echoes with a mournful sound, the crash of thunder does not follow the light of the lightning; a long ethereal hiss, like a tuning fork note, is the moan with which the darkness makes itself heard. The next morning there is a cold wind, it will be twenty or twenty-five degrees less than the day before. I reach a service station under construction where some workers have their shacks. The supervisor speaks fair English, he comes from the Indian Punjab, and informs me of the weather warning that went off yesterday afternoon.
The second part of the desert continues between rain, wind and sun, in an exhausting alternation of conditions. On the right, a long fence appears that runs for tens, perhaps hundreds of kilometers, ruining the sense of infinity that the desert would like to communicate. The metal mesh indicates the presence of oil sites. In the middle of nowhere, extraction and refining plants arise and it often happens that you see tongues of fire blazing against the gray sky. After having seen them once, their presence quickly becomes boring. Along with them appear the high-tension pylons that bring electricity to the sparse inhabited centers along the coast. It happens that you pass under them and hear the threatening buzz of the current that passes through them.
At the border with Kuwait everything goes smoothly, in the city I find hospitality again thanks to Couchsurfing, I recover my energy, wash my clothes, do the shopping and leave again. Despite the difficulties I kept a good pace and excluding the breaks in Al-Hofuf and Kuwait City I covered fifteen hundred kilometers in exactly forty days, from Dubai to the border of Salwa, where I am now.
It's the last night in Kuwait, tomorrow I'll cross yet another border but somehow it will be different because the stories told about the countries I'm about to venture into are not all positive. Those who have been there have fallen in love with them, many others instead look at them with suspicion and, sometimes, fear. I can't help but be influenced by it, but during the weeks of walking I thought long and hard about whether it was a good idea to go into these delicate areas alone and on foot. Especially now, given the tensions with Israel, we will have to pay particular attention to what is said and done. In the end I decided to go, moved by the curiosity that the stories about Iraq and Iran have aroused. The Gulf desert is over. Another chapter begins: I'm going to get to know Persia.
