Into The Empty Quarter

it's hot as hot as I've ever known we've already walked in marathon today we did the same yesterday and on all the days before that we still got miles to go today and many many more before we reach the end I think again about Wilfred Thesiger the adventurer whose journeys inspired our own and I'm awed yet again by the hardships that he and his bed who guides encountered out here in these silent scorching sands of The Empty Quarter desert my name is Alastair Humphries I live in a little village in England a pretty normal life but I seem to have this curse of incurable wanderlust that sees me just wanting to head off on adventures around the world so far this year I've rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and I've skied up onto the ice cap in Greenland and I'm just hoping now I can try to squeeze in one more big trip before the end of the year so I've just sent an email to Leon he's a friend of a friend he cycled around the world he's just walked 3,000 miles across Mongolia and China and this is what I said in my email hi Leon hypothetically speaking would you be interested in another long walk six to eight weeks desert pulling a cart and november/december home for Christmas yeah who can possibly say no to that when I got an email from Alastair Humphries about doing this trip I really couldn't say no this is the sort of thing I love and even though I didn't know this guy very well I couldn't imagine anything better through this a couple months of my life I'm really lucky and I get to make a living from adventure and by writing articles and giving talks I can make a career out of it but who I love is actually going out there and doing the adventures gay night in the wilds of the world for expeditions and so this ticked all the boxes Wilfred Thesiger was an icon of British adventure and he was one of my heroes he was born in Ethiopia and he fought with the SAS in World War two after the war he spent his life traveling and living in some of the wildest places on earth his greatest journey was crossing the Empty Quarter desert he tells that story in Arabian sands and ever since I first read that book I had dreamed that one day I would make a journey of my own infested his footsteps into the empty quarter desert The Empty Quarter on the Arabian Peninsula is the largest sand desert in the world and Wilfred Thesiger spent five years here in the 1940s he traveled by camel he survived on meager rations and sometimes had just one pint of water a day our journey is going to use him as the inspiration but it will be very different in a number of ways firstly we have no idea what to do with camels and we can't afford them so instead we will pull all of our supplies in a homemade cart we also can't get into Saudi Arabia as tested you're dead because no tourist visas are issued anymore so our journey will be 1,000 miles from the south coast of Amman Salalah passing through desert and small towns and finishing in the United Arab Emirates in the madness of Dubai I love the chance to be able to follow in the footsteps of a hero even in it just on a tiny fraction of what fasted you did just to be out in the landscapes that he was in really excites me and I'm looking forward to just doing something that's in the new part of the world so I've never done before and also something that's refreshingly low-tech and simple self-funded self-organized self-filmed it's just the two of us out there doing this trip doing it not really for any particular reason other than they just excites the hell out of us and I think that's it it's a pretty good reason to go off on an adventure really so we leave for the desert a week today and my main concern at the moment is our cart it hasn't been built yet and time is really ticking pretty nervous about our cart we've got a friend of ours building the cart I think he's done an amazing job the only downside is that he's built it off the specifications that how and I give him Christian means that essentially it's it's our idea and our car we don't know anything but cards have terrible ideas that there's just a unnerving aspect to the fact that were um reliant on something that we designed hopefully I'll be fine it's stressful just twiddling our thumbs so while we're waiting for the car to be built we're going to here to Eton to Wilfred vestiges old school it's probably the most famous school in the world a school for kings and prime ministers we want to try and get a bit more of a feel for Thesiger as a man seems he was very different to Leone on me we're pretty normal people we like normal live home pubs stuff like that passage I hated all that and he was happy only away in the wild places so I'm really excited to read his expedition Diaries and get a bit of a sense of the man behind the legend I guess all three of us are people who are drawn towards difficult challenges and difficult places so there must be some sort of overlap between us somewhere Wilfred Thesiger mediums photography and the low hour and I have no support team or camera crew we still really want to make a film of the journey in order to do that we'll have to record everything ourselves carry all of our equipment as well as walking every single day so for inspiration we come to Oxford we're all affected your superb pictures are not held we hold 74 personal albums compiled by feta relating to his journeys in the UAE in certainty Arabia and Yemen also 38,000 negatives which have all been digitized and there's about four albums late to the antique Lawson for the most part he's interested in characters and you know this is great great from Arabian Sainsbury says the harder the life the finer the type and so he's really looking at the you know the features expression on the face new in terms of the types of characters that are being formed by this harsh environment with our cart ready in the nick of time we had to Margate of all places to test it on sand it'll have to hold a hundred litres of water a month of food and away up to 300 kilograms we're going to have to haul it for at least a half of the day with thousand miles one afternoons training of Margate Beach in the pouring rain doesn't really feel like particularly ideal preparation it's a wonderful setting for Felina car this is duh it's been a very useful exercise thing it's raised a few questions about our cart design and that well lots of things really yeah that was much harder much much harder than I expected and it's relentless you never get a second dress 20 minutes ago is quite confident and now I'm not so confident but I'm really hot and really firstly well in about 15 degrees they're up to 20 minutes at work this is potentially our solitary day of sand test even for a designation if you outside to be alone [Music] let's give me telling you - a very bad idea [Music] [Music] Salalah is werewolf professor drew prepared for a trip across the empty quarter 65 years ago he travelled with the local desert nomads the Badger and came to the city to buy camels and supplies while we were preparing for our own journey owl and I will be staying with an expat mechanic called Claudio who's a friend of a friend and his wife Kathy our first job is to assemble our cart which we have brought flat-packed from the UK this is 30 days worth dinner we hope and then for calories we've got pure dairy butter ghee which will take a nice healthy scoop of each night the food needs to be light cheap long-lasting and full of energy so we've ended up with a pretty horrible mix of noodles meat and biscuits once we turn off the rodent the desert it's going to be just a blissfully simple expedition we have all of our food already we have a limited supply of water and we just walk out in the desert experiencing this incredible emptiness it's gonna be pretend you know finally just a few minutes from leaving I was packing up the rest of our stuff we're gonna do it we're gonna walk across the desert we said our goodbyes and set off on the expedition [Music] with the cart fully loaded for the first time it became apparent very quickly that we had a serious problem we headed out of cloud in Kathy Kaylor this insanely big card which is going to be absolute hell until we get to a desert somewhere so to get out of time you have to walk on the pavement holding onto these straps which is not ideal at all but we just can't steer you're sweating profusely already after four hours and an embarrassing small amount of kilometers we gave up our expedition was in tatters without the cart working properly we had no chance of making it to Dubai we called Claudio he zoomed out to our rescue accompanied by some of his team of mechanics immediately claudio comes up with some math sounding ideas for building a steering system [Applause] the same frame' down we are down them his design certainly cannot be any worse than our own terrible efforts so we just leave them to it and hope for the best in the morning we'll head to the workshop to see what happens the great thing about traveller the unexpected twists and turns that come up along the way things that at the time seemed a real pain or a bit of a disaster but lead to such fantastic chance encounters and random new experiences of course it's very annoying that we've been delayed by three days it's seriously jeopardized our chances of reaching to buy but we've had a great little adventure in salalah we've met fantastic interesting people cloudy or the mad Eritrean Italian mr. Fixit we've met Pakistani welders don't nearly chopped his fingers off in a rolling machine this whole new culture of Omar that we would never have got to see through the Industrial Estate tonight we were out in a Oh Marny meat joint eating camel goats cooked by this fantastic we did it he looked like a posh to the proper Hermione experienced that was just wonderful and Sweetman point in the center okay this is holding this is booting it was guys staple 11 o'clock last night working on our car then we're back there at 7:00 a.m. this morning I can't believe the changes in our cart since we arrived here we've had new tires floor breaks steerage systems pulleys ropes with tried all sorts of things and now we've got this fantastic list of people's autographs all over the car all these kind people who've helped us out see brick bastard our biggest challenge right now is that the card is the cards built it looks amazing and I think I think it's gonna work but it's a it's about 115 we definitely don't walk in these roads at night because it's just suicidal ik so we've probably got to leave by 3:00 and the latest that's it drive back to their house loaded up and go who's gonna be tight my pessimistic mates just worry about all the bad things that can happen but the reality is that probably things are going to be great and this time tomorrow we'll probably be well on the way out towards the empty quarter desert and the beginning of a heck of an exciting difficult expedition I'm really looking forward to it it's amazing look at this card yeah next up a huge bloody Hill Salalah is encircled by a steep range of hills so once we've navigated the mayhem of the city's busy roads who are straitened some pretty tough pullin we weren't yet used to the heat the Russian food or hauling the heavy cart but after two difficult yet beautiful days we made it through the hills and descended down into the beginnings of the desert the next morning we had an unexpected surprise by the roadside we just had an absolute result at the side of the road our stirrers eagle eyes have spotted loads of packets of crisp falling off the back of a lorry hopefully ever we got tomato flavor potato sticks hamdulillah haha I'm surprisingly worryingly chuffed about this very very hard at this time of day the appeal of walking through something like a desert is to see what happens to your mind and see just how your psychology react to being completely alone with so little stimulation doing something stupid like after all our worries in salalah about the cart it's a huge relief that it's still going strong where I'm today 3 now we're soon about to turn off the road wow it's the desert and that's when things will become well we'll learn a heck of a lot more about the suitability of the cars we missed our turnoff just my impressive in a desert with only one turn we missed it we're gonna head off west intersecting this gravel road going toward the place called shoe sure t misses probably the easiest desert you'll ever get walking from good cart and it's very hot very hot in the hills even tiny little lumps very very hard with a cart that's heavy but we're moving moving a pleasant enough sweet quite daunting ready this wind is really starting to pick up and when we're walking it's beautiful because it cools down and sometimes even pushes it along but you can see that there enjoys e and inadequate affair so expend a couple hours in the middle of the day sitting underneath this final plastic drop very very [Music] [Music] you're comfortable there Allister no I'm not comfortable we've suffered a pretty major blow this morning which is that our marest the the foam camping match where we sleep on have fallen off the back of our cart at some point this morning we didn't realize until we set up our lunch break and so now having been thinking that my bed was a little bit uncomfortable we've now got to spend the rest of the trip sleeping on the desert floor with absolutely no padding or insulation or scorpion protection whatsoever so pretty important morale boost into lower for me exploration was a personal venture I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants in order to make a map such things were incidental at heart I knew that to write or even talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert people's it often seemed incredible to me especially when I was on foot and conscious of the steps I was taking sometimes I counted my footsteps to a bush or to some other mark and this number seemed but a trifle deducted from the Sun that lay ahead of us yet I had no desire to travel faster in this way there was time to notice things the very slowness of our March diminished its monotony I thought how terribly boring it would be to rush about this country in a car [Music] well you know being on the road just over a week and I think slowly slowly we're starting to get used to this life every morning when we wake up we know exactly what we're doing and back away and we're back on the road and heading off into more desert it normally takes a little period of time to enter that and now I'm just used to having no exterior influences really in life it's just head down and walk and see what the desert offers up and unfortunately we're uh we've had to get back on this road for a few days just to make up some miles just slightly depressing but even still the landscape all around is very lunar very sparse and so we just have time alone with our thoughts and we just walk every day it's a really simple life wake up walk as far as we can and go to sleep and that's implicit is growing on me it's hard but it's growing on me [Music] far from being the romantic peaceful solitude desert campsite that we're hoping for we've come pretty somewhere pretty foolish we're there some sort of animal graveyard Massacre site and the whole the whole reason we're here actually is because we saw suddenly saw up ahead of us some lights flickering away and we have no idea what they weren't people seem to be moving around us as always happens on these trips we ended up imagining all sorts of worst possible scenarios and freaking ourselves out quite a lot so we sneaked off the road which is how we've ended up in this animals graveyard so it gives me the shivers and just can't work out why why this is here I'm pretty sure whatever the reason it's probably a very good reading not to camp next door to it frankly I'm too naked to care if they're murderers and I'm in a graveyard I really don't care I sort of go to sleep it's a real air of death about this place after losing Arthur moretz like total idiots I think we've now just about redeemed ourselves we found this fantastic but filthy camel hair Laden prayer mat we found it in the sand and it's definitely not ideal it's not luxury but it's a heck of a lot better than the gravel floor we were expecting to spend the rest of the trip sleeping on [Music] this landscape is pretty much the same for hundreds of kilometers and it changes little bits here and there but when you walk through it like we're doing every tiny little thing becomes a so much interest on the morning like this when you wake up and there's mist completely oh I'm getting everything and you can barely see the Sun it makes it feel incredibly special and suddenly we feel really lucky to be out here and he's not gonna last very long but I'm sure there'll be something else later today and something else tomorrow there's a quite high chance that we're going to get absolutely nailed by a truck coming towards us [Music] we finally find a solution to our sleeping dilemma which has been that we've been sleeping a little better prayer mat but today pastor little time written an exploratory John came back with these two wonderful stylish downside being we now look evermore like dragon bone men our cars got number plates strapped all over it now got a prayer mat and two cheap floor matches is strapped to the top if anything we're gonna win the expedition desert sister grim place for processing thoughts and it is made me think about a lot of things before my doing with my life and my ways here Maya bummed probably shouldn't still be a bum maybe she clearly weren't pulling hard enough can i still be a bum and make living from it who knows this is a real treat hard work after a full day and few weeks of pulling this car through the desert but this is one of the moments we've been waiting for this is a chance to walk through the desert into the night under the light of the full moon it's just beautiful it's fantastic that there the heat has gone away from the day which is a joy in itself and the novelty of the loan is a stopping me getting two tires the full moon is something that happens regularly and I never enjoy it I never appreciate anywhere else and I think people who live in the desert the berry best is your when he travels here we're always blown away by after an exhausting Trek deep into the night we finally arrived into MOOCs in the small oasis settlement professor himself struck like northwest into the wilds of the empty quarter of proper it's a good feeling to be in Luke Shin it's a place that I've read about lots of times and as his often the case with places you read about a lot the reality is slightly underwhelming and when Fletcher came here it was a the last outpost where could get some final supplies before heading into the desert and I suppose the same still applies today although we're sitting in a car park with a few effectively Pakistani burger vans and we've been on our feet for fifteen hours now so sir been a long long day and that's never a good frame of mind to consider launch off into desert I think after curry bit of sleep load up with water I'll be ready for some adventure tomorrow we've had a fabulous journey up through Oman so far but it's certainly an experience that would have felt very very alien to the Oman that Wilfred Thesiger knew but from today that changes from today when we leave Wadi Mook shin here and head out north-east we're heading out into the empty quarter proper right out into the desert to a landscape which I'm assuming will be unchanged since esta was here and this then is the adventure that we really came here for it's exciting it's daunting it's intriguing it's going to be very very difficult but I feel more excited now than I felt the entire journey so far and definitely feeling quite a lot of anticipation but also apprehension because this is serious desert this is who you can't make mistakes the heat is relentless the terrain is quite hard for a cart incredibly unforgiving if it worked out then [Music] dinner is served [Music] you can see a million pictures of the statue and never appreciated until you get to run up one like a lunatic it will jump along the ridgeline [Music] let's just buy life is all about sale much you can taken from pictures from reading into the television we're really gonna do things to see what life has to offer so it's matching up to my expectations it's hard but he's wonderful [Music] yeah a really interesting perhaps poignant part of messages book he says here I knew that if I traveled here alone the weight of this vast solitude would crush me utterly I can appreciate that entirely out here the combination of these enormous dunes which arise from the flat floor and then these vast bus gravel Plains extending up as far as the eye can see in every direction these combined to create a feeling of huge sky huge ground and just total modern emptiness it's beautiful but it's an intimidating Sun scorching hot and I felt empty sick and dizzy as I struggled up the slope knee-deep in shifting sand my heart thumped wildly and my thirst grew worse I find it difficult to swallow even my ears felt locked and yet I knew that it would be many intolerable hours before I could drink we certainly don't have a damp ID so but thirsty all the time on here hungry all the time I'm tired I'm sick of having sand at my shirt I'm sick of having sand everywhere our challenge which we think are accepting is to embrace that embrace the unpleasantness embrace the misery enjoy the reward [Music] I'm hiding out here from the heat of the Sun and all we've got to try and get away from it is she had from the card she's a crap [Music] completely knocking my feet are killing me my legs are killing me and i can't remember a thing about today it's just monotonous exactly like yesterday exactly like tomorrow is gonna be I quite enjoyed it and then Oh weird way but it seems fairly futile as well and he just slams down on you really messes with my head trying to can't think straight I can't see straight everything just it's all just a whirl of scenery not changing and poles is playing clank clank as we walk nothing changes and the horizon doesn't get any nearer just start questioning water is the point all the bland featureless things that provided attracted me to come out here and i just feeling monotonous and brother we've walked for hundreds and hundreds of miles already and then I know that him we can do it I know if you walked for hundreds of miles and yet before we get to the end before we get across this desert we've still got across hundreds and hundreds more miles of this endless flat gravel play than this it's mentally so hard to do I know now we can do it if you know you can do it then what's the point to doing I know I could do it I know I can walk to Dubai I know I can't I've got nothing to prove to myself or to other people so what the hell am i doing it stretching and hurting and sweating series don't get negative just spirals crash this is nothing really village experience I do wanna might constantly pushing myself for like I'd just be happy in one place like normal people [Music] they's being just one of those crazy days that started off started off really nice waking up under the stars with the nearly full moon and then got progressively worse as most her day seemed to do and today was one of the hottest yet really really suffering the heat but after that it it just got a lot better we met a better truck driver called a leaf who was waiting to make his coffee and he was such a such a cool guy sitting there with his truck just as the Sun was beginning to go down and there's some really beautiful coffee give us some dates I always enjoy those conversations where you don't really know what the other person saying but you can communicate a lot of communications largely physical and through emotions rather than actually words come on camel I've got a real buzz it's possibly the coffee to Holly gave us and it feels pretty good watching the sunset feel like life could be a lot worse I could be doing a lot worse right now I just feel so excited to be out here again after the slight frustrating boredom just feels exactly place I want to be again and it's great is great to have the fear the buzz back at the mojo back just be excited to be out here suddenly this is feeling like a real expedition like a real 21st century version of the journey the message it took so life is very very good right now we're not a really good chunk into our journey we're really making progress through the Empty Quarter and then hopefully in about a week or ten days pop art into civilization once more Fantasy Island is bloody Pepsi behind me now is the first oilfield we've seen on this Trek is a pretty impressive sight that huge black plumes of smoke billowing up into the blue sky and the orange flames flashing around at the bottom and this of course is the the whole reason that this entire regions develops the black gold the oil has changed the Arabian Peninsula beyond imagination and certainly for all time first year when he was just about to end his travels here at the end of the forties he was lamenting the first explorations into this region by by shell the oil companies and he predicted that in the future people might see different things here but nobody again would see the Arabia that he saw I think in many ways he's right whether that Arabia or this Arabia is better is a very different question altogether they feels like the end of the while part of the Empty Quarter Desert which is a bit of a shame it means we're entering back into civilization and we'll still be in the desert but we're gonna hit blacktop roads and little towns and then for long we're gonna be in Dubai we've been waiting a few days for something exciting to happen and finally finally we've got it I'm a is a hill recliner am I getting to see something other than flat black I'm looking forward to I take it all back Hills are a disaster Hills of them was pointless speech here entire University give me back flat gravel planes give me back we're not miss Brian sandy desert Hill my life exhausted we've just arrived in the hood and it's really good to be back in civilization against had a cup of tea that height of luxury I'm just been having good chat with some local lads and then the the call to prayer sounded from the mosque and they will jumps into their pickup drove off to pray it's good to be in civilization it's good to be in food which is the original oil boomtown for Omar this is the first oil town in Oman so it's an interesting and pretty important bit of history to see what's interesting in places like this is that we are the way that we're doing these things is really very different from that spirit it's basically exactly the same concept we have to survive we need water and we need food and the way we get water is by coming to little restaurants if as he do got water was by coming to fill up a world and really to couldn't be more different but the essence is to see him to survive in the desert you need the essentials for life Vesta himself said that without the local people his journey would have been a meaningless penance and for us that's an important part of the trip to to meet people to learn a bit about Oman to interact with different people along the way the kindness of people along the roads amazing we don't want to be on the road to find it frustrating and annoying but it's undoubtedly a great way to meet a random slice of people and we are going to do by yeah we are like Abed you I don't like it I like Pepsi I'm an English better if the kindness wouldn't that we've that we've seen is just amazing you sure yes thank you you and supposing this is very good property yes Laurie stopping giving us coke and cake and thrusting bottles of water on earth [Music] friendly beats and waves from everyone Tana advices for tea and coffee and very good some guy we saw a couple of days ago I jokingly said off we need ice agreement obviously he didn't happen II and now he passes again two days eighteen says I'm sorry I couldn't find the ice cream but I found in these but gave us a bag of gifts yesterday a lorry driver from Saudi Arabia stopped insisted that when we get to Dubai we should call him and he'll kill one of his camels and we'll have a great feast [Music] I scream in the deserts nested you would be mortified but also extremely jealous I can't believe this oh this is amazing thank you so much Oh Oh bond souvenir we've been given so beautiful gold camel sand dunes the palm tree it's amazing souvenir of our time here in Oman made in China and now we've been giving you little presents from these people every time someone drives past and doesn't give us anything we can sort of feel ourselves thinking a selfish person they didn't even give us an apple or an orange look at that three lads in a truck driving past and not even a little kind of Pepsi for us just a mere beep-beep in a way of friendly smile it's not enough for you no not anymore things have changed you change no changed [Music] hmm sorry nice now we've come out of the desert and we're now walking down this pretty big highway towards the border with the emirates basically from here to dubai were on a road try not to get run over this is everything that messenger hated about modern life that the busy roads craziness of Dubai but I think it's a really important part of our trip this is what the modern Arabia is like it would be a bit delusionary to spend the whole time just wandering around Santi would think you have any grasp of what life was like now here every good journey needs a fittingly impressive destination point and we incredibly excited to finish in Dubai it just feels like the complete antithesis of everything we've seen in the middle of the empty quarter and the height quite literally of the ridiculousness in Dubai is the Burj Al Khalifa the tallest building in the world and that will be our finish point [Music] ever since we crossed the border from Oman into the Emirates the roads been stressful busy just not enjoyable at all we've realized that trying to halt our Beach to the cart into the middle of Dubai who's just a suicide mission and so we're going to try to find a good opening part carry on through the Emirates this is definitely no longer a desert adventures we've now crossed the border into the United Arab Emirates messager took a photo of a lone fort in the desert from about this spot today were right in the middle of a city of half a million people so we're now at the AL Jalili fort which sits in the middle of Allen and are very clear mission nice to get rid of our cart and what we're going to try and do is donate it to the fest is your exhibition which apparently is housed inside this fort and which is a nice idea except they have no idea we're coming and we have no idea whether there's any space for it it's pretty clear we can't take this car to Dubai so we've got to get rid of this card here I guess whether they like or not they end up with a new exhibit for their passage your museum the security guard said that they didn't want us to put a control in here because they said it it looks messy it was quite insulting yes very smart sat there next to the baby's pram this place is just incredible so much more classy you never expect it they've got these amazing prints of him crossing the dunes and know everything has an increased relevance everything's just slightly sharper slightly more in focus I'm noticing things now I like in this picture there's no clouds one of the pictures over there there's clouds they cast shadows onto the dunes and I remember what that's like to see and how that made us feel I've got to be honest I'm not feeling pretty nervous about trying to give these people our card this is such a really well presented museum we're gonna try and get rid of our smelly dirty ramshackle card here so there we were in this beautiful air-conditioned museum the cart would be great for them we needed to get rid of it it was a perfect combination but we were stinking and weird and the only way we managed to secure a quick meeting with the director of the museum was with just a wee bit of exaggeration claiming to have emerged from the desert after the greatest expedition in a hundred years shooting a Hollywood scale blockbuster the director was gracious with his time despite our appearance in the smell though he did seem somewhat surprised when we offered him our beloved cart if you want yes thank you very much for that and it's good from you that you're gonna give it to us we ceremoniously presented it to the National Museum and now we're walking out valantine with these big packs hot afternoon busy traffic this is not fun to our surprise this seemingly simple stretch of road to Dubai had a real sting in the tail for us and these final few days moved to be some of the hard and was agonizing at all it's a pretty awful day exhibitions get to this space there's really only one thing to do and that's nail the painkillers today today of painkillers and very loud music [Music] this expedition hasn't turn down at all how I thought it would and perhaps that's why I have enjoyed it so much when I arrived in salalah my plan was to travel with Leon through the empty quarter and to experience sand dunes and gravel plains and emptiness and what fester describes as the silence which withdrew from our world but the things I will treasure the most of this trip are good people incredibly kind generous people we met this is not the middle east of CNN and Fox News this is the real Middle Eastern because some of the kindest most generous people I've ever met in the world from the safest part of the world I've ever been and to follow in the footsteps of Wilfred festa to who's always been one of my travel heroes but to actually come in to sample even a small amount of his journeys has really cemented him for me as one of my all-time travel writing and adventuring heroes and a true my quantum British invention holy moly that's big they can give a head around it crazy isn't it and this and I would made it done it'll wait it's been a hell of a trip with respect to Wilfred Thesiger I think that these places are better places now than they were before the wilderness is still here for anyone who wants it the adventure is still there for anyone who would choose to seek it out but there's a busy modern vibrant cosmopolitan world here now it's not just silence and emptiness we shared so much with vestiges on this journey the heat the slog the dull food the sense of isolation yet so much was completely different but when you follow a hero their adventure is only really a catalyst you can't replicate a journey because each one is unique and unpredictable and unrepeatable and that's the magic of travel we didn't really have the time the money or the expertise to do this trip but we did it anyway we pushed ourselves hard really hard and now we've done it we've made it although our journeys and our personalities are very different I think vestiges summed it up well for all three of us with these words from Arabian Sands I remembered my excitement when the chance came to go to the desert the determination to cross it and then the doubts and fears the frustrations and moments of despair now we've crossed it to others our journey will have little importance it didn't break any records or push any new limits it was a personal experience and the reward is nothing more than memories that will last us a lifetime we're content with that [Music]

Channel: Alastair Humphreys

Views: 48,908

Keywords: Alastair humphreys, leon mccarron, into the empty quarter, thesiger

Id: J5zzrx2RtWU

Length: 52min 37sec (3157 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019