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Palden
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The Sahara Desert
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A good friend, Alan Heeks, invited my son Tulki and me to join a party visiting the desert. He runs a trip every year. We were thirteen, with six Bedouin and fifteen camels. One abiding impression of the desert is the sheer silence of it. Wind is common there too, whipping up the fine, dusty sand and swirling it around. The Bedouin, of the Karous clan living at Nouiel near Douz, had once lived out in the desert until the wells started drying up in the late 1980s. Permanent desert life became unsustainable by the mid-1990s - probably because of climate change plus water consumption by the tourist resorts on the Tunisian coast. But the clan hopes to move back, restart their gardens and bring back their herds, after a new deep well and pump are installed. The trip was a great gift. The Bedouin were fine people to be with, and looked after us well. It really is easy to get utterly lost in the desert, and they helped us feel really at home there. Not least because of the singing and drumming they did around the campfire in the evenings. |
Palden Jenkins
07967-965667 (*44-7967-965667) |