Wilfred Thesiger · 1959 · survival

Wilfred Thesiger's 1959 account of five years in southern Arabia. Travelling with Bedu companions on camels, eating what they ate and carrying nothing more, he crossed the Empty Quarter twice - from Salalah by way of Mughshin and the great dunes of the Uruq ash Shaybah to Liwa and the Trucial Coast. He wrote it knowing the life he described had already ended.

1. 1
   Salalah

   Thesiger returns to Salalah on the Arabian Sea in October 1946 with permission to travel only as far as Mughshin - and the private intention, if his Bedu companions can be persuaded, of crossing the Empty Quarter itself.

2. 2
   Mughshin

   At the wells of Mughshin, on the desert's southern edge, the party divides: most stay behind, and Thesiger goes north into the Sands with four Rashid who know the country and a quantity of flour that will not be enough.

3. 3
   The Uruq ash Shaybah

   The high dunes of the Uruq ash Shaybah are the crux - hundreds of feet of soft sand to be crossed with camels already failing, on rations cut to a few dates, in the hardest country Thesiger believed a man could travel.

4. 4
   Liwa

   They come down out of the Sands near the oasis of Liwa in mid-December, starving, and wait three days for companions to return with food - who bring two packets of dates, gritty with sand, and are thanked for them.

5. 5
   Abu Dhabi

   The journey ends on the Trucial Coast at Abu Dhabi, then a small town of mud and palm on the Gulf - a decade before the oil, and a few years before everything Thesiger had come to find was gone for good.