Saturday 19^th October 2002

When I awake at 8am the sounds of Cairo are already in full swing. People shouting, car horns blaring, music and a faint humming, the origin of which I can’t quite put my finger on, but it is always there, the pulse of a living city. As I open my sleepy eyes and look at the old room with it’s plain yet grand furniture, its high ceilings and tall French windows, it feels quite ordinary to be waking here in the Cosmopolitan. Only as I start to shake off sleep do I realise that that in itself is odd, I should feel some sense of disorientation, but nothing could be more natural or familiar.

I arrived alone late last night and was efficiently met by Ragab, the driver who took care of both me and Georg in March, I called him from England yesterday and nothing could have been easier. Ragab’s welcome appearance at the gate is just about the only smooth thing about the entire journey so far. To begin with I nearly missed my flight due to terrible congestion on the motorway, and had to run at breakneck speed across the airport, jumping queues and shouting apologies over my shoulders. I stopped briefly to change some money, only to discover that the counter had all but run out of Egyptian pounds, I took what they had and ran.

On arrival in Cairo airport I went to buy my entrance visa only to discover that, perversely, none of the suppliers actually accept Egyptian pounds, they want dollars.  Eventually one of them, no doubt deciding that I was altogether too big a person to be allowed to lose her rag in a pubic place, took pity on me. What a prize idiot I am.

At breakfast I am soon joined by Kit, Raymond and Andras who strolls up and gives me a big hug with a twinkly grin. He informs me that when he had suggested to Magdi that she get up too and come to breakfast, she had made a very dangerous sounding noise, so he’d beaten a hasty retreat leaving her to sleep. We explain to Kit and Raymond that approaching Magdi in the morning can be a bit like bear baiting and must be handled with caution. However, to my delight, 20 minutes later my beautiful friend appears blinking sleepily. The boys soon get into an in depth conversation about some technicality of the trip, and we automatically catch each other smirking secretly, then burst out laughing, the old humour is still very much intact.

Both Kit and Raymond are English, and indeed we have met several times back home in the last few months. Raymond in fact only lives a few miles away from me in Newbury. He is 78 but as sprightly as can be, he lives alone with his dog Meg and about a million books. He loves the desert fervently and as well as having travelled in them extensively has read just about every word ever written on the subject. He is consequently very well informed and talks knowledgably with great enthusiasm.

Kit is harder to put an age to. I suspect he is around 60 although he has the energy and demeanour of a much younger man. He is bright and elegant with a good sense of humour and a lively intellect. Kit was a photographer for the majority of his working life, but now teaches computing, he is also a great desert traveller. In the last ten years Kit has organised his own trips all over the Sahara in his trusty Landover, and is no stranger to wilderness. This will be his first time in the Western Desert.

I am sure both these two are going to be fine company.

I have a lazy morning strolling about the streets around the hotel, then catching up on a few hours lost sleep. At 3pm I meet up with Magdi, Kit and Raymond, and Ragab drives us to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. We spend several hours pushing our way through the tiny crowded streets, running the gauntlet with the hundreds of persistent street vendors and shopkeepers.

When our energy starts to ebb we make our way to Café Fishawy and sit ourselves down for a well earned coffee.

This place is somehow untouched by time and although I’ve held its image so clearly in my head all these months, its dusty intricacies reveal themselves anew in unremembered detail. The walls are filled with giant gloomy mirrors with fabulously carved wooden frames. There is an old sepia photograph of a pasha sitting resplendent astride a proud and stocky horse. As I suck peaceably at the thick sweet apple smoke in my sheesha I rest my eyes on the alley outside and let its busy human traffic move under my gaze. There is a core of stillness here.

On our return Magdi and I make our way over to the Oscar Tours office to see how Andras is getting on with the final preparations and packing the cars. All seems well and he is in good spirits. I am suddenly confronted by the delighted faces of Salama and Zayed, and grinning happily we pump each other’s hands in joyful greeting. “Zayeeed! Zayeeed!” “Hannaaaah! Hannaaaah!” He sings back at me.

There have been some complications developing about the drivers. We are only taking two cars this time as we are only ten in number, so to begin with Aaid has sadly had to be left behind in Hurgarda (we will have to cope without ‘The One Who Returns’ this time). However, we will be joined by Khaled, an old friend and driver whom Andras has used for many years

Sitting in the Oscar Tours office I finally find the last two members of our group, Bernhard and Andreas from Germany. They greet me with friendly grins and I like their faces immediately. Bernie has travelled with Andras and Magdi before both on their first organised trip to the Western Desert in 1996(?) and last year in Libya. Andras made his first ascent to the summit of Uweinat with Bernie from there. Andy has never been to this desert before, and is full of quiet curiosity. The two of them are both 40 and old friends, they trained together as dentists, although a less likely looking pair of dentists I can’t imagine. Bernie is a fit, moustachioed man with a worldly air about him, Andy is tall and quiet, they both have really good laughs. At dinner in Felfela we settle into an immediate banter, and to my delight it becomes clear that the three of us are going to really hit it off.

Sunday 20^th October 2002

At 5am this morning I calmly opened my eyes in waking stillness, a full 5 minutes before my alarm went off. The city is remarkably quiet and the familiar opaque light of pre-dawn filters through my shutters. I dress, step out onto my curving balcony and resting my elbows on the parapet watch Salama and Zayed, some 6 floors below, manoeuvring our two cars in front of the hotel steps. Dawn is coming. Zayed drives ahead with Khalid and the supplies and luggage in his car, and Salama follows second with all of us.

Leaving Cairo as it stirs I see four girls in black robes each sitting sideways on a snow white donkey; a boy on a moped pulling a trailer piled high with crudely made wooden cages full of song birds; a man selling sweet potatoes, baked in an oil drum oven on the back of his little cart. If there were portents to read, then these would be mine. Lucky images to fill a traveller’s imagination.

The road from Cairo to Bahariya rolls away peacefully beneath us. Raymond has fits of chattering enthusiastically. He has travelled this road several times before and is very familiar with the geography, history and sociology of the area. Nevertheless the route really hasn’t become any more interesting in the last six months, and I take turns at dozing and staring at the non-descript landscape.

In a quiet moment my eyes are resting on the car in front when it suddenly swerves alarmingly off the road. Clearly the driver has momentarily fallen asleep and for a sickening moment it flounders dangerously at speed in the deep sand at the side of the road before recovering the tarmac. I gasp loudly in fear for Zayed and Khalid, alerting the others, but all now seems well. My next thought is how such an incident is so unlike steady Zayed, but when we draw alongside it is Khalid and not Zayed’s face at the wheel. We pull over and Andras tells him that Salama will take over for a while. It would be fine to admit he is tired and had nodded off, but Khalid comes out with some off the cuff nonsense about avoiding a stone. He is on the defensive this big brash man, and still very much not himself it would seem. I think he will not readily admit a mistake. Andras is handling him well, but he makes me a little nervous. Still, perhaps Doctor Desert will show him the way. Indeed, if not those empty spaces, then where should a sad soul go to be healed?

In teeming Bahariya at the ramshackle teashop we are joined by our military escort. His name is Ashraf and to our surprise, he is a Colonel. We immediately start to wonder why on earth such a high ranking officer should choose to join us and just how blind an eye he is likely to turn when we get to the remote Sudanese border… However, for now he seems relaxed enough, so we will just have to wait and see.

On we drive, hour after hour, through Farafra and on towards the Dhakla Basin. When you reach the edge of the escarpment the road descends down through a steep pass, and for a short time the depression pans out in a spectacular view across the surrounding desert. The air is clear and bright.

We stop for a swift lunch in the White Desert. Unlike the surreal landscape we have visited before, this area is classic open desert featuring great rocky mesas, but in contrast to the usual sandstone these are spectacular in purest white.

A short walk across the sand reveals a huge natural arch soaring into the air, and for a while I sit opposite transfixed by the white stone leaping into the rich azure sky. Things could not be more different to our last visit here, it’s hard to imagine that wild and terrible night now on this clear blue day.

Back in the cars, back on the road, hour upon hour, mile upon mile. At six the light starts to go and we watch the sun sink into the darkness behind us. I am tired despite the day of inactivity. I long for a good meal and my bed, but I know there is a lot to get done before that will come to pass.

When we reach the hotel in Dahkla we hungrily wolf down our food, then Kit, Raymond and I join Andras on the trip to the garage to take on board diesel and change the oil in the cars.

Fuelling is a huge operation. 24 22 litre jerry cans from each car are filled, and the lids of each one lined round the seal with bathroom silica gel before being screwed firmly down. Then, now very heavy, each one is lifted back onto the roofs of the two cars and strapped down. While all this is going on, Salama and Zayed change the oil and do final checks on the engines.

I am something of a curiosity to the Egyptian men running the garage, they clearly don’t quite know what to make of the tall, blonde, white girl shouldering the heavy diesel up onto the top of the cars, particularly when I casually tell them that “Yes, I am married, I have three husbands.” Salama thinks this is a great joke and chuckles about it all the way back to the hotel.

We are done by 11pm and I fall exhausted into bed and into deep, deep sleep.

Monday 21^st October 2002

Everything is going remarkably smoothly considering we are in Egypt. We are up and fed by 6am and driving out of the town by 6.30. The interminable tarmac unfolds in a thin ribbon across the sand, and each hour puts more and more distance between the familiar world and us. I can feel the desert calm stirring and stretching and looking around with interest inside me. The atmosphere in the car is light and full of anticipation. Bernie and Andy speak Bavarian most of the time, and ashamed as I am of my linguistic deficiency, I am frustrated by it because we are getting on so well and I want the friendship to grow as quickly as possible.

I feel left out. Never being one to let a thing bother me for long I soon make a joke out of it. Every time they say something I don’t understand I retaliate in some inappropriate way. I tickle them, I mimic them, I slap them, I tease them, and soon with much laughter I am pretty much fully included in their conversation. Every so often they go off on a long Germanic spiel but I hear my name in the middle of it, when I whip round to demand what they are saying about me, I am faced with two innocent faces looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. I realise I have handed them the perfect method of winding me up whenever they like.

At 2pm we draw close to Bir Tefawi and the point where we will turn out across the plain and into the arms of the true desert. We are not to go as far south as the Bir, and I ask Andras if there is really a well there. He tells me that there is but that it is little more than a small murky pool, he tells me that Tefawi means bitter. A bitter well. Even a bitter well would be sweet if you were in trouble out here I guess. Magdi is beginning to suffer quite badly with a very painful back, so letting her stretch out a little more in the back I take her place up front between Salama and Andras, and from here am able to appreciate the full pleasure of entering the wilderness.

The surface of the plain looks like the sensitive hide of some huge creature. In my imagination I know that if I were to reach out with a great hand to touch it, then the beast would quiver like a thoroughbred beneath my fingers, and stir with recognition and pleasure at my softly murmured words. In my mind’s eye, the desert is a living thing.

I must have dropped off to sleep with these thoughts, because when I next stir the horizon is all a-ripple with distant dunes. By 3pm we have stopped in what appears to be the very place we camped in in March. We stretch out our cramped limbs and walk up onto the back of the big barchan. In the hotel in Dahkla I had said to Andy that having been fairly nomadic for most of my life, nowhere had ever felt particularly like home, but that for a month after returning in March I had suffered my first ever experience of terrible, terrible home-sickness, and that now, returning to Karkur Tahl, would be like going home. Now he turns to me in this place, in this exquisite monotone beauty and says, “Are you home yet?” I look around me for a time, then reply slowly, “No, this place is not a home, a place fit for homage maybe, but not a home.” “Yes,” he replies, “You are right. This place is not of this world.”

A few hours later we stop in the sheltering embrace of a perfect horseshoe barchan and make camp. The light of dusk throws deep shadows across the amber sand, and sitting on the sharp edge of the dune above camp, I love with all my heart our tiny nation nestling in the wild. How does a great civilization begin? From nothing grander than this simple communion of good people I am sure. The desert simplifies thought. Its endurance against the dominance of man, its constancy across thousands of years, gives us access to an unimagined pre-historical past. It turns my thoughts to beginnings, and with that comes an unfathomable, glorious sensation of hope. In our approach to life mankind has hopelessly complicated such a simple thing.

As the sun sinks pink into the dunes, those wonderful words drift commanding and familiar over my tent. “The bar is open.” Our first sundowner is a suitably eccentric Vodka and fizzy orange. Why is it that anywhere else in the world this electric orange concoction would be vile but here it is utterly delicious?

It’s a mystery of the Western Desert.

The mood of the group is very relaxed and happy. It feels so good to be finally out here and in our first camp. That journey from Cairo really is a killer. Salama and Zayed are completely exhausted, and having lit a fire for us, immediately go to bed in one of the cars without even eating. They are going to need a day or two of Doctor Desert too before they fully recover I think.

The Fliegel Jezerniczky catering gets off to a magnificent start with a delicious chilli-con-carne featuring real beef. Not a turkey in sight. The Bavarians have spent the last two days intrigued then amused by my scrupulous and paranoid application of sun-cream, but I explain that if I get burnt, I will be grumpier than a bear with toothache and they will soon be laughing on the other side of their faces. Now they launch off into some ridiculous nonsense stream about how they could smear the sticky chilli remaining in the pot all over me and roll me in the sand to create a perfect impenetrable sun block. I end up rolling them over in the sand instead.

I was telling Andy the story of Georg producing the Mozart’s Kugels at this point back in March, when, as if blessed with miraculous resources of desert magic, Raymond produces a box of the most divine chocolate orange creams. Magdi and I go into raptures. Chocolate twice in the same desert, how lucky can two girls be? It is good to see Magdi smiling, I’m worried about her. She has very bad back pain in her lumbar region and it is shooting down her right leg. I gave her a massage on the sand once we pitched camp, but I don’t think it has helped. I think she has trapped a nerve. She doesn’t want to, but I persuade her to take a painkiller for the night, in the hope that if the muscles relax it will free everything up. She can barely walk by bedtime. We will just have to see how she is in the morning, but I can’t see her climbing any mountains in her current state.

Tuesday 22^nd October 2002

I dreamt vividly all night, in that way when you know you are dreaming, but you have no awareness of the waking world. After timeless wanderings and conversations and journeys, I finally found myself in a familiar dream, a world of soft light and pale colours. Here I am calm and safe and I know that if I can just stay here then in the morning I will wake fresh and rested. As sleep starts to leave me and the gentle sound of softly murmured Arabic surfaces into my consciousness, a smile creeps onto my lips and I am filled with a huge sense of well being.

Photo by Lajos Nemeth

I am awake and this place is no longer a dream. I am back in God’s own country. I sit up and push my head and arms out through the fly gauze and look at the dunes. Amazement. I feel amazed. All a mazed. Mazy. There is a gentler connotation in this word than its everyday use allows. 

I pack up quickly and climb back up to the centre of the horseshoe dune ridge above camp. I am joined in the cool light by a small bird who sits beside me, and we watch the activities of the little nation striking tents, eating breakfast, warming hands at the fire. Quiet voices drift up clear to us. The relationships in the little group can be clearly seen tracing their way back and forth like fine calligraphy. And we see it all. Bird and me.

Suddenly bird takes to the sky and as my eye follows him his darting body leads me to a darker, alien shape on the plain. It is so unexpected that I pause for a moment, turning the information over in my brain. Then I come to my senses and shout out “Car! Car!” Everyone stops what they are doing and swings round to stare intently out onto the plain. The Colonel becomes quite agitated and walks out a way in deep debate with Andras. The car is alone, which in itself suggests something suspicious, and the moment it sees us it swings away and heads off away over the dunes. From his gestures I can see that the Colonel is keen to give chase, but to my relief Andras looks to be firmly of the opinion that dashing after a potentially armed smuggler in a heavily laden landcruiser is definitely not what we are here for. The dot of the car disappears in the distance and the moment is passed.

Bernie and Andy join me at my vantage point. Bird circles in undulating flight over the camp in front of us. We watch the Colonel who has calmed down now, trying to persuade Andras to accept some money towards his food and supplies, and Andras trying to explain to him that he is doing us a necessary service and is here as our guest.

The car, or maybe another car, appears on the horizon once more. It is travelling at speed across the sand. The Colonel is once more seriously on edge, and this time, perhaps out of courtesy to him, Andras agrees to go out to see who they are. The two of them take off with Salama, and I watch them go with terrible apprehension, but our heavy car is slow and the stranger is long gone by the time they reach the last sighting point. They soon return and slowly our peace returns.

Magdi is still suffering very much, so once again I sit up front with Andras. Andras is a man who the longer I know him, the greater my very deep respect for him grows, he demonstrates patience, strength and good judgement in every situation and we could not be in safer hands out here in this forbidding environment. I love the rapport between him and Salama. Salama picks his way through the difficult terrain while Andras watches the GPS and guides him with the smallest gestures of his hand and occasionally a quietly spoken word. They are a good team and clearly respect each other’s abilities. We leave the dunes behind us, having only to push a car out of soft sand once, and pick our way south west over a couple of hundred kilometres of rough and stony terrain.

The high, broken and jumbled edge of the eastern Gilf Kebir comes into view around mid morning. It doesn’t look like a great wall here, only a great maze of huge boulders and rocky hills. We follow it southward on the clearer ground some 15-20km out from it. From this distance we can still see several familiar landmarks, the hills that give Eight Bells Airstrip its name, the distinctive plateau that stands guard over Prince Kemal el Din’s monument and later the unassuming silhouette of dear old Plateau Simon off to the west as we pass.

By mid-day we are struggling our way across the broad tract of land savagely scored by so many Second World War military convoys. This was the main route between Kufra in the west and Wadi Halfa in the east and the track is several kilometres wide. In the pursuit of military transportation during a war that really can never have had much meaning here, this huge area has ironically been rendered almost impassable by vehicle.

The surface of the desert has been so damaged that the sand is soft and deep and our heavily laden landcruisers struggle across, engines straining in low ratio. Half way over Zayed hears a noise in his car and stops. We manage to turn and get back to him, and discover that one of the leaves of a front suspension spring has snapped. Luckily after a close examination Andras and Zayed decide that it shouldn’t hamper our progress, and we are soon moving clear of the army route.

Still, as the day goes on we pass and cross many more recent tracks and they irritate me terribly. There is a real sense of freedom when you have nothing but virgin sand before you, but there is a paradox, for the moment you cross the fresh ground you leave behind you new tracks that will remain potentially for hundreds of years. What should we do? Follow set routes? Lay down tarmac roads? A wilderness with roads is not a wilderness and such human intrusion would do more damage ultimately than the few current visits here by man each year. This is a big desert and the scars we leave it are relatively small, perhaps it can bear them without resentment in return for the peace it enjoys the rest of the time.

I try to find a way for the tracks to be less annoying, and my thoughts drift over them as they pass beneath the car. Each track was made by a vehicle, and each vehicle was driven by a person, and each of those people travelled in this place where I am now, this place, which I consider more extraordinary than any other. Each of these people are or were people who will have been touched by this place in some way similar to my own experience. I would have liked these people very much. Gradually the tracks become personal, individual. I want to stop and place my hands into them, as though somehow I would be able to draw their stories up into me and speak with those friends I will never know.

We pull away from the jumble of hills that make up the Southern Gilf Kebir and head out over the gravel and shale to the south.

We stop for lunch among Clayton’s Craters at the foot of crater D. “Those who want to forfeit lunch for climbing the crater, we have one hour.” Says Andras. I pull on my boots, grab a bottle of water and start up the steep slope alone.

The cars grow smaller and smaller and I can see some of the others ascending below me. When I reach the crest I can see I am on the lowest edge of the rim, and I will have to cross to the much higher far southern edge to get a clear view out to Uweinat. The crater is much smaller and deeper inside than the yawning crater B we climbed in March. As I drop down inside its sandstone walls the air falls still and the heat is unbearably intense. I walk very slowly and my body is heavy with the weight of the sun on my head and shoulders. When I reach the foot of the far slope I have to crouch in the meagre shade of a boulder for a few minutes to gather the will for the last push. Then I stand and start to climb. I think only about the next few feet in front of me and don’t look up. The sky opens out in front of me and I am on the ridge. I walk along to the highest point here and look out at the familiar shape of Uweinat, soft grey in the distance. Then I turn and look across the crater. One third of the way round Bernie and Andy are already standing on a point just higher than me, and opposite I can see the tiny figure of Andras tackling the highest point of all. This is what it means to be alive.

I return the way I came but take a slightly different route down the last slope to the cars. By chance I come upon a complete natural arch in the stone where it has sliced its way away from the main rock face. The sky shines deep blue through its dark stone frame.

Andras has startled a pair of kites from their nest on the high crest. They circle overhead relentlessly and their lonely cries fill the air.

For the next few hours I patiently watch Uweinat grow slowly larger in front of me. It rains at Uweinat every eight to ten years on average. This summer the African rains stretched unusually far north and Andras is quietly excited that they might have reached here this year. He and Magdi witnessed the effects of the last rain in 1996, and the transformation sounds spectacular. He describes the deeper reaches of Karkur Tahl as being a sea of green, teeming with plants, butterflies and insects. I would give almost anything to see this miracle.

At about 4pm the lone optimist tree appears on the sand plain before the mountain and shortly afterwards we come over the rise into the mouth of Karkur Tahl. I can’t speak.

Not a day has passed in the last seven months when I have not closed my eyes and conjured this vision to me, but still it takes my breath completely away. The soft perfect sand and the dark green acacias winding down into its heart. I sit and sit and drink in the view, committing every grain of it back into my faded memory.

Now this feels like coming home.

We drive up though the wadi, past the beautiful dune that was home in March, up to the place where a huge rock island in the middle of the valley marks the point where the wadi forks. There has been no rain, but we are too pleased to feel disappointment. As we pass the old post marking the Sudanese border, there is a moment of suspense as Colonel Ashraf goes crazy. There is a frantic exchange between him and Andras, well frantic on Ashraf’s side anyway, Andras is cool as a cucumber and smiles pleasantly. We all hold our breath, but Andras works his charm of quiet confidence, and before we know it Ashraf is agreeing uncertainly and we are trundling our way on into Sudan.

We take the less familiar Eastern branch of the wadi, and after a few kilometres spot a small, inviting, sandy ravine at one side. It looks like a perfect spot for base camp. We stop the cars in the gully’s entrance and gratefully pile out. I scramble straight up the side of the ravine, keen to get a good view of our surroundings. From the top I can see the darkening shape of Jebel Uweinat silhouetted against the descending sun before me, and the trees of Karkur Tahl bending their way through their sandy winding home below me.

After a while I am joined by Andy. We watch the sun drop exactly behind the peak of the mountain and the sky darkens into deep pinks and blues. In the last of the fading light we turn back into the gravely plateau behind us and curve round to meet the head of the ravine that is to be home. We pick our way down through the big boulders that break up the sandy floor and reach camp to find that the bar has just opened.

Tonight’s sundowner is gin and tonic, and while we sip them we try to make a supper involving tinned turkey sound nicer by putting it into French. Consequently we later sit down round the fire to dine on dindon avec champignons et sauce brun, all served with puree de pomme de terre.

Everyone relaxes with the knowledge that we will not be moving again for more than a week. Even Khalid is starting to look better. The only person who is a bit of a nervous wreck is Ashraf who paces around anxiously before going early to his bed. We would be a bit more sympathetic but he has changed into what appears to be a pair of pyjamas and none of us can keep a straight face long enough to look at him for long. Salama and Zayed make their finest batch of desert sand bread or ‘gors’ as they tell me it is called. And later, much later, as the others drift off to bed, they offer me a glass of their strong sweet tea. I sip the hot, thick liquid and watch the embers until I am sleepy.

Wednesday 23^rd October 2002

Dawn light has already crept into the ravine when I wake, but all the tents up and down the gully are silent and, over my feet, I can see no movement down at the cars. We all indulged in a bit of a late night and as a result are indulging in a bit of a lie in. I soon stir myself and make my way down to the main camp with my enamel mug, it’s amazing the motivation the prospect of a cup of coffee can stir in me. I sit by the low fire with Zayed as the others gradually appear. The plan for today is to explore as much of the eastern wadi as possible looking for new paintings and engravings.

The group make their way along the valley floor, while I scramble along looking into every nook and cranny 20 - 30 metres over their heads. There are many places here that look like the rock shelters in the southern wadi, but my efforts are totally unrewarded. The others see many engravings of giraffes and cows and figures at ground level and occasionally I slide down to enjoy one.

Coming back down a small side wadi I find myself on a ledge high above the others, and calling out a greeting to them the sound shivers from the rocks as though we are in a church. “Give us something from Aida.” Shouts out Raymond jovially. “I don’t know any Aida,” I call grinning, “I could muster some Puccini I expect.” “Go on then.” He says encouragingly, and they all stop to look at me so I sing ‘O mio bambino caro’  very badly.

They all whoop and clap when I finish, and I grin and scamper away over the rocks.

We walk and walk and walk. At one point I fall in to step with Ashraf, “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” I say, hoping to engage him in a relaxing conversation. All morning he has desperately been trying to keep tabs on where we all are. “I can’t think this beautiful.” He replies. “You understand, this very difficult for me, this my job. For you this good, you walk, you look, this good. For me this not good. This very dangerous place, this Sudan. If we found here, then very bad. You understand?” “Sure I understand,” I say, trying to be reassuring, “But really Ashraf, it’s fine. Nobody comes here. There is no one for hundreds of miles around in Sudan. Andras is just about the only person who comes here. It really is safe.” “I not sure,” he says “maybe people come here. If they come, it very serious. I will be taken away, and I responsible.” “Look,” I say, “you saw the entrance of the valley when we arrived, it is the only way in here, and the only tracks there were tracks made by Andras over the years. It really will be fine. Andras is very experienced.” He looks at me unconvinced and I can see that this conversation isn’t ever going to get anywhere, so after a while I drift away from the nervous Egyptian.

All the time the temperature is growing in intensity. As the wadi narrows Magdi and Raymond turn back to camp. Kit turns up a small side wadi and I move forwards up the main valley with Andras, Bernie and Andy. Soon it narrows into an impressive deep ravine no more than a few metres across. As we climb all together up through it, Bernie spots the first painting of the day, the figure of a man in the mouth of a small cave.

A short time later the wadi levels out into a flat quelter and branches, Andras and Bernie push on up the main wadi and Andy and I take a look up the side branch. My curse is still well in place, and despite several promising looking shelters, we find nothing. Only a few hundred metres away in the main valley, Andras and Bernie are making one of the most exciting discoveries of the trip, some very unusual round headed figures as previously only seen in the Tassili region in Algeria. Andy and I never see them.

We are tired of the stillness down in the valley bottom and decide it’s time to get some air. We climb up the side of the wadi and out onto the level ground above. Then, wanting to get a good look at the main massif of the mountain and the route that Andras is planning to lead us up in two days time, we climb to the top of a steep gravel hill on the plateau’s surface.

Andras showed us the proposed ascent route on a satellite image on his laptop last night and it looked quite straightforward. Now we sit and study the real thing from many miles away. In the intense afternoon heat it looks like quite a challenging prospect. However, we can see that it should be manageable and are encouraged.

We decide not to descend back into the winding wadi, and strike off in a straight line back to camp across the gravel plain. Andy’s GPS tells us that it is only 2.5 kilometres, but it takes us some time to pick our way over the maze of rocks and old stream beds. By the time we arrive back in camp Andras and Bernie have beaten us by twenty minutes, and are full of their exciting news. To celebrate Andras prepares a special lunch, which in its unexpectedness seems like the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. Tinned quails eggs, mixed with sweet corn, chopped cucumbers and real mayonnaise. Absolute heaven.

The heat is incredible now, but only an hour after we arrive back unquenchable Andras is preparing to leave again on another excursion. Andy and I are very tired and decide to stay in camp. Andy disappears off up into the rocks to find a shady spot to sleep in, and I settle down to chat with Magdi and Raymond. Magdi is feeling desperately frustrated about her back, which is no better at all, she can’t bear not being able to go off exploring with Andras, and is frantic at the thought that she might not be able to climb the mountain in two days time. We try to keep her cheerful and positive, what else can we do, but it doesn’t look good. I feel so bad for my dear friend, I want her to be well more than anything, it is awful to see her sad. After a while she goes off for a sleep and Raymond and I amuse ourselves trying to remember arias from Carmen. Everyone in camp sits huddled together in the limited shade, looking out into the impenetrable sun. Only Salama is out braving it, trying to fix some broken electrics on one of the cars.

When the car is fixed Salama drives Magdi and Raymond back up the valley we walked up this morning to see the exciting round headed figures, while I opt to stay and relax a while longer. I climb up with my notebook into the cliffs above camp, looking for a shady, breezy spot where I can see out across the main valley and write. I find Andy reading on the perfect ledge, and join him for a quiet hour. Oddly enough Andy has discovered a single painted cow and some engraved giraffes that have been up here looking down on us the whole time.

At about 4pm when the terrible heat is leaving the sun, we decide to go for a walk to the other side of the valley. We make for a deep, dark cave in the base of the far sandstone cliff. Andras has already said that there are no paintings in it, but it still looks worth exploring. When we reach it we find the entrance protected by a small semi-circular dune and behind it is a snug hidden place to camp. Sadly the ground is littered with cans and rubbish, it looks like it has been used by smugglers rather than tourists, certainly whoever they were didn’t care much about their surroundings to leave such a hideous mess, I mentally decide to come back and clear up before we leave. (NB. I never did!! So really will have to return to Karkur Tahl soon to perform my neglected household chores!)

We pick our way west along the cliffs, moving along ledges and cracks, looking into each one for signs of prehistoric life. We know that there is a really spectacular rock art site somewhere here, but have no idea where exactly. We meet a big slab high up, jutting out horizontally. Andy climbs up over it and I opt to go under, down a steep rock fall. A little way down I am able to slip under the rock and I find myself in a small sheltered cave filled with the nicest paintings I have seen on this trip. There are cattle and figures hunting and, my favourite, a little figure clearly carrying a bucket. I love these reminders that these people were following a simple everyday life, quietly going about their business. Sometimes these images are so personal. Andy follows my calls and joins me in the cave, and we sit beside the paintings looking out at the lengthening shadows of the trees on the sandy valley floor. In the soft light of evening we cross back over the wadi and climb up over the rocks. Circling round on the plateau, we return to camp by dropping down into the home ravine from behind.

Tonight’s delicious sundowner is Southern Comfort and fizzy orange, sweet and decadent after our simple daytime fare. While Andras prepares my favourite desert dinner of sweet and sour turkey with pineapple in it, served on rice noodles, we all lie back on the sand and gaze at the incomprehensible mass of stars. So clear, so bright. The Milky Way floats from horizon to horizon like smoke. It fills the eye.

Andy and I argue about the position of the pole star, and hope that we never get lost in the desert together at night, as we will both try to walk in different directions. He and Bernie try to bait me at supper by speaking German and glancing furtively in my direction. Funny Bavarians, I like them very much indeed.

I discuss favourite travel writers with Kit and Raymond. They are both incredibly well informed and there doesn’t seem to be a single book they haven’t read between them. I feel like an intellectual dwarf beside them, but they are fascinating and they are both so charming that I never feel left out.

Soon everyone has drifted off to bed except for me and Magdi, and I present Salama and Zayed with two powerful head torches that I brought them as gifts from England. They seem delighted, examining them carefully and shining them out into the darkness around them. “Ques! Ques! Shockram Hannah! Shockram!” They repeat again and again. “Afwam! Afwam!” I reply grinning.

Zayed tells us to wait and runs to the car, returning with a wallet filled with pictures of his friends and family. His two sons Abdullah and little Mahmoud are beautiful and I feel really honoured to look into his private world.

Thursday 24^th October 2002

The plan for today is to drive into the southern branch of the wadi and walk up one of its side tributaries right up to the watershed. From here we will cross and drop down on the far south eastern side of the plateau into Karkur Murr and try to find the reported spring, Ain el-Brins, marked by Clayton in 1942 on his map that we still use today. It will be a fifteen kilometre walk over rough terrain in extreme heat, so we are each to carry three bottles of water. We all pile into the car and bump our way down the valley and up into the new branch as far as Salama can take us. We are shouldering our packs when I see Magdi in anxious Hungarian discussion with Andras. She is still in pain, but the plan had been to leave the car here and all walk up to the watershed together, and then if necessary for her and Raymond to turn back with Salama. Now I see she has realised that even this is going to be too much for her and is going to wait alone with the car. I can see her eyes beginning to glisten as she sits watching us prepare to leave.

I feel dreadful but there is nothing I can do. I hurriedly pull my notebook full of pictures and stories and oddities out of my pack and press it into her hands with a sorry little smile. I can think of nothing to say. I hate to part with the book, it usually goes everywhere with me, but I want her to have something special while she waits alone, and I can think of nothing else.

I start up the wadi feeling rotten, as I’m sure does everyone else, it feels so wrong to leave someone behind, but before too long my attention is diverted by the spectacular scenery.

There are many paintings to be seen in this area, and probably many more still to be discovered. Knowing how I love to climb, Andras soon has me running up and down the cliffs on either side of us to check out this promising shelter or that interesting crack. Usually I discover nothing, which is becoming a bit of a joke, but I could clamber about like this all day. I love the feeling of the rocks under my hands and feet, and of course the higher you go, the more magnificent become the views of the ravine.

Near the top of the wadi Andras leads us to a rock art sight he discovered last year. The shelter is a little unusual to contain paintings as the roof is so low. I expect the usual selection of cows, but when I shake off my pack and slide on my back under the overhang I am startled by what I see. In amongst the, in themselves very fine, examples of cattle and figures are strange and beautiful abstract shapes the like of which I have not seen before. There are really lovely spindly stars, and then, harder to distinguish, shapes which I can only describe as like jellyfish, but the longer I look at them I can’t deny that there is something familiar about them, something I can’t put my finger on.

The terrain is imposing but not difficult and when we reach the point near the top where Salama is to turn back to the car, Raymond decides to continue on with us. We reach the gravely watershed plain at the top of the valley by 11am. The day is incredibly clear and bright and the jebel towering over us suddenly seems very near. The details of its cliffs and ravines stand out sharply in the morning light.

Almost immediately we drop into a shallow gully which, as it descends into the mountain side, will become the deep and long valley of Karkur Murr. We descend at a leisurely pace, scrambling here and there to look at the paintings scattered like ancient secrets among the rocks. In one enormous shelter there are dozens and dozens of faint figures, all but destroyed by thousands and thousands of years of wind and sand.

I sit on the cool sand in the shadows and think about the rough, dark hands that patiently painted the flowing lines over my head. Who was he, this forgotten artist? What songs did he sing? What word did he use for ‘river’? I think about the speed of his brush, his concentration as he applied the paint to the stone.

What songs did he sing?

Later when I try to put this into words Kit and Raymond tell me that when they look at the paintings they look at them as a tiny detail in a much larger historical picture, a clue to a greater anthropological mystery. I am obsessed by the detail itself, the individual, the moment he locked into time when his brush touched the stone. As important to me as the paintings, is to turn my back on them and look out of the mouth of the cave. To look with his eyes at a view that is only a rumour of what it was. If I sit long enough, I can turn the hillsides green and fill the dry riverbed with water, I can people the cliffs with placid, skin-clad figures and hear the stirrings of their herds.

Deeper and deeper, down through the rocks we go, and the constant character of this arid world begins to change. Almost as though I have managed to project my imaginings into some kind of reality, Karkur Murr starts to show green. We round a corner and are faced with a huge bush of date palm, which looks as though it has been cut out and pasted here from a different story. Our world is changing. If we find the spring I expect it to be either to be hidden deep in a pile of rocks, as Bernie has described Ain Dua to me or I expect an area of dry trampled mud with a claggy puddle in the middle. I do not expect what in the next few minutes we find.

Down a slope tufted with nibbled, but bright green, grass, round a final shoulder of rocks, and a cloud of little birds rise from the ground. They turn as a single shoaling flight, the sun catching on their wings and they flash silver against the bewildering bolt of colour.

Nestling in the heart of this rush of amazement, surrounded by softly rustling reeds, is a clear, square pool of water. On one side a sandstone step drops neatly down into it and on the other there is a gentle grass slope. One big boulder dressed all about by reeds casts its cool shadow across the precious liquid. The pool is no more than three feet across.

Sitting on the step I pull the boots off my hot feet and dip them cautiously into the cold water. I watch them floating beneath the surface over the murky depths of the spring’s heart.

The water tastes reasonable but is full of life so I take only a mouthful. Later back at camp I joke that if you arrived hungry and thirsty in Karkur Murr you wouldn’t need food, only to drink the water. With its high biological contents it would probably provide you with a hearty meal.

Bernie takes off his shirt and dips his hands into the water throwing it over his head and body. Raymond and Andy strip off to their underwear with the briefest apologies to me (as if I haven’t seen a man in his pants before!) and follow Bernie’s example. Andy gathers the water into his thick cotton shirt like a bag then stands and holds it over his head like a shower. All at once we are children and the challenges of our hostile chosen environment melt away as of no importance to this happy moment.

The heat is at its very highest now so we pick our way back up into the rocks and find a shady place to relax. Andras and Bernie decide to take a look up a big ravine off the main valley, while the rest of us stay in the shade to have lunch. Not long after they leave it becomes clear that all is not well with Andy. He begins to cough persistently, then he gets redder and redder and his eyes start watering. Over the next half an hour it gets worse and appears to be a fairly severe allergic reaction, we can only imagine that it might be being caused by something in the water. Andras and Bernie have been gone for an hour already, and although, as Andy struggles to breath, we all sit calmly and patiently, unable to help him more than we have already, I know we are all anxiously wishing them back.

“I thought they said they would only be half an hour.” Says Raymond. “I didn’t hear.” I reply “But they could be back as late as 3pm which is when Andras said we would have to start back to camp.” We all fall silent and thoughtful once more. After a while Andy seems to improve a little and says he thinks he will feel better if he walks a bit. Thinking he shouldn’t go off on his own, I offer to go with him and suggest we walk a little way up the valley that Andras and Bernie took, hoping very much that we will meet them returning.

We tell the others we will be gone for 20 minutes and start off. We walk up the valley in silence, I’m focussed on the sound of Andy’s breathing behind me, but to my relief each breath begins to come easier. It suddenly occurs to me that we have probably already been walking for 10 minutes, and I ask Andy how long we have been going. “I don’t know I have no watch.” He replies. There is no sign of Andras and Bernie yet, so we walk to the next corner to see if we can see them, still no sign. Then we guess our mistake. They must have made their way back by another route and are probably waiting for us. We quickly hurry back and meet them at the bottom of the wadi coming to find us. We have been gone nearly twice as long as we said we would and Andras is rightly not very impressed with us. We need to start heading back to camp immediately as we only have an hour and a half of daylight. As we pick up our gear I apologise to Andras, and a little while later I feel forgiven when he presents me with a beautiful old Tibu snare.

We climb up the side of Karkur Murr and I snatch one glance back at that haven of green. Then we are on the plateau and the small mountain behind camp is a clear beacon to guide us home. I stride out across the plain, my feet pounding the flat, stony ground in a strong steady rhythm. The kilometres roll away beneath me, I could walk like this all day. When we take a breather on top of a big rock, Kit tells me that this is my Stalker’s Gait, the pace that you naturally fall into, and will carry you all day up hill and down dale. My long stride carries me far ahead of the others in the faltering light. The mountain at my back. The open plain surrendering under my boots.

Friday 25^th October 2002

I love the mornings here. The air is cold and fresh and I dress under my sleeping bag. I pull on a jumper and my boots and tramp down through the sand of the little ravine to the main camp. Here Salama and Zayed will already have coaxed last night’s embers into life and the big tin kettle will be on the boil. I fill my mug with hot black coffee and crouch beside them at the fire, lifting my rough cold fingers to the flames. We speak very little, but there is a close bond here This morning as I make my way down I can hear Kit and Raymond roaring with helpless laughter, when they have regained the power of speech Kit explains. Raymond appeared with two jam covered crisp breads and placed them on his little folding chair before tromping off to get his coffee. He came back and sat down and started to look around him for something. “What happened to my breakfast?” He says, getting up and turning around. Kit burst out laughing while Raymond turned round and around, quite bemused, and completely oblivious to the fact that he had one jam covered crisp bread stuck to each cheek of his bottom.

The story is told with great joy to each of us as we arrive, and it is generally agreed that from now on Raymond is to provide us with an entertaining cabaret every morning.

We drive down the valley, through the acacias and turn up the southern fork, and stop in the mouth of a pretty much unexplored wadi going off to the west. We locate a shelter documented by Winkler in the 1930s (?) with an unusual round-head painted figure inside. A little further up we come to a large flat quelter ascended by broad grey rock steps, made smooth by millions of years of flowing water. We clamber up one side, then another, peering hopefully under each flat sandstone overhang, but apart from a few engraved cows on the steps themselves we find nothing else.

Kit discovers an old clay Tibu pot, round like a huge egg, hidden in a crack beside a large shelter. How many hundreds of years has this fragile object been sitting, waiting, abandoned? We gingerly lift it out for examination, before gently placing it back into its sandy bed for goodness knows how many more hundreds of years.

The air is still, and the heat builds without mercy. Kit, Raymond and Andy stay in the cool shadows of the rock shelter, while Andras, Bernie and I pick our way up into the labyrinth of huge smooth rocks and boulders carried down from the mountain by unimaginable waters. The two men soon draw ahead of me, and after a couple of kilometres I decide to stop and rest in the shadows and wait for them to return.

The clicking of Bernie’s walking sticks fades into a silence as thick as milk. In the close heat, I draw the stillness of the rock into me. I don’t know how long I sit. Minutes? Hours? Something inside me has sat in this cradle of stone for thousands of years.

Eventually I drift back down the narrow valley and join the others to wait for Andras and Bernie. The heat is like a fever on us. Idly I bury Andy’s leg under small stones, like a child at the beach. He doesn’t move or even open his eyes, but every so often an almost imperceptible twitch sends my work sliding onto the ground.

Andras and Bernie return to us beaming with joy and chattering with enthusiasm. They have discovered one of the finest rock art shelters Andras has ever seen. We make our way back to the car and from there up to camp for lunch. When we arrive I hurry up through the strung out line of tents looking for Magdi, I find her lying in the shade of a big rock. I begin to tell her about our morning and Andras’ discovery up the wadi, hoping to make her feel included, but I only make her miserable. What an ass I am. I fall silent, unable to think how to cheer her up. In the evenings she is her dear old self, laughing and teasing and talking with great animation. It’s the days that are hard, when we leave her at camp, for our adventures. After lunch the others set off to unpick the secrets of another unexplored valley near the first, but I am still tired after yesterday and decide to keep Magdi company for the afternoon. We gather our things, climb together up into the cool cliffs and settle down in a comfortable shelter. We have a wonderful girly afternoon relaxing and talking easily. She is the best possible company.

We decide to try and attack the pain in her lower back and right leg with a really deep muscular massage. Unfortunately we discover that the focus of the pain is situated deep inside her right buttock. Consequently, after dark I find myself engaged in a comedy half hour, kneeling beside her on the sand, earnestly pummelling her bum. It sends us into fits of giggles, and I promise to save her modesty by not writing about the incident in my journal… Sorry Magdi, I lied!

Supper tonight is a bit of a sensation. Andras slices up the tinned turkey into burgers and grills them over the fire, ingeniously using one of the steel sand sheets as a barbeque. Served with mash potatoes, this is a delicious and fortifying meal. We are going to need it. Tomorrow we climb the mountain.

Saturday 26^th October 2002

We wake up very early and just before dawn Kahlid drives us once more up into the Southern branch, up as far as it is possible for a car to go. In the dawn light we shoulder our packs and start to walk up the cool wadi. The Group is Andras, Bernie, Kit, Salama and me. Magdi, although feeling a bit better after our comedy massage efforts, is just not fit enough to come with us, and will stay in camp with Raymond and the Egyptians. It is so sad to be leaving them, we should be all together for this great adventure, but sense prevails and our dear friends stay. We plan to be on the mountain for two days and have to carry everything we will need on our backs. We are each carrying 6x 1.5 litre bottles of water, a sleeping bag and a sleeping mat, warm clothes for when we reach the higher altitudes and some dried fruit, crackers, salami and cheese.

Photo by Andras Zboray

Each pack weighs roughly around 15kg and as we start out it is my biggest worry. I know that I could be fitter, and I can imagine the pain that this weight might inflict on my back and shoulders later. I really don’t want to hold the group up by being slow and, concentrating on keeping my muscles relaxed, I promise myself that however much I start to ache I will ignore it and keep going. Almost as though to cement my resolve I set off ahead at a good fast pace, determined to make the most of the cool morning temperature.

After half an hour we come to the first and largest of the magnificent Belgian rock art sites. We can’t resist stopping and crawling under that great shelf 20m long, to look at the mass of cows and deer and figures swirling over the rock in wild uncontained creativity.

As the hours pass the valley climbs up a series of huge steps towards the distant mountain. Andras is still keenly looking out for new paintings and prefers to travel along the floor of the great wadi. The valleys feel claustrophobic to me today and I prefer to take height where I can get it, picking my path with the others in turn up the sides of the valley, and walking, where possible, over the more consistent rocks of the ridges.

Salama seems to be everywhere at once, hopping from rock to rock with ease in his clear plastic beach shoes. He looks completely at ease with his red and white headscarf, his long white cotton robe. Sometimes he lifts the robe up over his knees to ease his progress.

At 10am we turn into the foot of a huge mountain pass. The great rift soars up before us, ending far off on a lofty coll between two peaks 100s of metres above. There is no floor to this valley, the huge broken rocks fill the steep V for the full 3 or 4 kilometres between us and the top.

The group begins to pick its way up the left hand side near the bottom, but gradually the path I pick takes me away from them onto the right hand slope. Wherever I can, I try to make height, seeing that if I can get high enough on this side, then when I near the top my progress will be easier along a series of rough ascending shelves.

Soon I am high above the others and I can see them picking their way like determined ants over the forbidding terrain. Progress is exhausting and painfully slow. Every 20 minutes we stop in whatever shade we can find, sitting in silence for a few minutes, taking a precious mouthful of water, and drawing the strength back into our legs. A trick of the mountains means that at times I can hear the others’ soft voices talking almost perfectly, but even if I call out quite loudly to them, they appear not to hear me. I am beginning to feel like a ghost.

I keep parallel with the others, but now I am far above them and far away from them, although the coll still seems unattainable high even above me. A stretch that we anticipated would only take us two hours is already moving into its third.

After each rest it becomes harder and harder to begin again. My legs are so heavy now, that all I can do is look up once to my next target, then drop my eyes to the ground, and lift my feet one after the other until I reach the spot.

The others are nearly matching me for height now, but they feel so far away across the mighty gorge. Sometimes they disappear from view behind the stones, and then I feel completely alone. At one of these times I judge that they must have stopped out of sight, but there seems no shade around me. A few more stumbled steps and I spy a small space under a flat rock and, shaking the pack from my tired shoulders, I crawl underneath and lie as still as the stone. Through my damp shirt, I can feel the mountain against my back. I can feel the steady rhythm of the blood pulsing through my body. I imagine that it is the mountain’s heart beat I feel.

I push on again. The coll is starting to creep closer, it seems attainable. It is also noticeably cooler at this altitude and my spirits should lift, but I long to be back with the others. This mountain is too much to face alone. Then, to my relief, just below the saddle, I see them very close, crossing towards me. Bernie calls out and waves, “Hello! Drago Hannah!” I grin back, pleased. His words make me feel brave again.

Before much longer we reach the top of the gorge and are able to look over the saddle into a large gravely plain beyond. Turning I notice for the first time how the world has opened up behind us. For the past four hours all my effort and concentration has been focussed on the few feet of ground in front of me, and I have not looked back. Now I breathe deep and draw the spectacular view into me, it turns my head light and giddy. The foothills stretch away for miles down below us, but out beyond the distant desert plain dwarfs them in its immensity.

We drop down onto the lofty plain and cross it to a welcoming bank of rocks, and collapse together into their shade.

We have been climbing for nine hours.

We each eat an orange and a little dried fruit, but we are really too exhausted to eat much. I lie down and doze unfeeling on the rough stones, they feel like the sweetest bed. I would happily never move again.

However, within an hour we are all feeling much recovered. The summit is still not visible behind its imposing shoulders, but in the last hour and a half of daylight we decide to press on up a steep wadi that curls around them towards our goal. It is uncertain whether we will find another level place to camp, but we are all keen to press on and take what valuable metres we can before dark. Our hope is to be on the summit at sunrise.

Luckily this wadi is much smaller and proves considerably more forgiving than the last, and in the dusk we clamber over its top ridge and look down into a sandy basin supporting two grimly optimistic acacia trees. It is as homely a place as we could hope to find up here.

Salama builds a fire and we settle down around it while he makes bread. The ring of cliffs about us fall into darkness, blacker than the night sky beyond.

Bernie jokingly asks if the bar is going to open tonight, expecting no positive reply. But Andras twinkles and reaches into his pack. Out comes a half litre of Cognac and we all exclaim our delight. The brandy is accompanied by cheese and salami and Salama’s bread, and the whole feast is finished off with comforting little glasses of the hot sweet Bedouin tea. At this moment I would not be anywhere else in the world but cradled on the back of this old mountain.

We have been chuckling about how cold it will be up here in just our sleeping bags, and I say we shall have to lie together like sardines (with me nice and cosy in the middle of course). When I explain the English turn of phrase to the two Germans they laugh and say that in German they call it ‘hamstering’, because of the way families of hamsters nestle all together into big fluffy balls, which is a much nicer way to describe it. In fact, there is no hamstering. Each of my companions moves away to his own little space, leaving me to rest by the fire. By 8pm the sounds of rustling and zips has all died away, and with only my nose peeping out of my cosy bag, I fall asleep with my eyes full of stars.

Sunday 27^th October 2002

I am awoken in the cold mountain morning by the delicious feeling of warmth at my back as Salama rekindles the fire. The cheerful flames flicker into the pre-dawn half-light. We pack up quickly, knowing that we won’t make sunrise on the peak, still 200m above us, but keen to get there before the sun climbs too high. We climb up the next steep stretch of wadi and find another basin of sand. I can imagine how once the mountain river would have linked these little lakes together, dropping from one to the other down through the jumble of boulders. From here we start up onto the slopes of the jebel’s topmost massif.

Photo by Andras Zboray

Not far above the last dry lakebed we climb into a long horizontal shelter and find paintings. What man was it that set his foot against this rock, and climbed and climbed, as we have climbed, to leave these unexpected marks of life so high above the world that should have been all absorbing to him? There are images of cows on that mountain in a place where no cow could ever have been, but stranger and more beautiful than these are two elegant figures, long and graceful, entwined into an embrace more touching than anything I have seen in these caves. I look at them, so far from safety, and feel a human warmth. It makes me smile to myself all the way up the next stretch of scree.

Now we are at the foot of the final plateau of the summit, but its sides are made up of towering piles of sandstone columns, and it takes us some time to find a safe route up between them. Bernie is a little twitchy about proceedings, and stresses again that he absolutely doesn’t want to do any climbing. He hates heights, but quite apart from that, he is right, even a minor injury could end up being fatal up here. It would be impossible to carry someone down from this height over this terrain, and being unofficially in Sudan, organising a rescue would be near impossible. However, Andy, the most experienced climber among us, goes calmly ahead and finds a manageable route, and 8am sees us walking onto the edge of the flat mountaintop plain. The summit is clearly visible now but is still some distance away. We can see that there are various deep gullies and fissures that will need to be crossed and we each pick our own route. I try to take a route that is slightly longer but means that I follow the contours rather than dropping in and out of the wadis. It proves very effective and by 9am I find myself at the bottom of the last short slope with Bernie. We look around for the others wanting to wait and go up together, but they are still far off, so we turn and walk up alone. We clamber onto the topmost pile of rocks and burst into grins and smiles, and give each other an enormous hug. There is a huge feeling of elation. I drop my pack onto the ground, light a cigarette, take a long draught of water and slowly turn 360° to look far out across three countries, Egypt to the north, Libya to the west and Sudan to the south. The air is really hazy, but the sense of space and distance is intoxicating. I stretch out my arms and feel the wind gently pushing against them, shifting my body weight back and forth with its mood. I imagine myself an eagle lifted effortlessly on great wings from the peak. An unrestricted inhabitant of Uweinat. Oblivious to countries and borders. The others begin to arrive and bring me back.

There is a big cairn on the summit, which was built by Bagnold in October 1932. Only a few expeditions have been here in the years since, two Belgian teams, one Italian team and last year in 2001 Bernie and Andras made the ascent from Libya. Consequently the cairn holds a select few messages. Last year Andras removed the crumbling documents and has now returned with fresh new copies of them to go back in the cairn. He turns to me and asks me, as the girl who writes a lot, to prepare something to mark this, our latest ascent. I tear out a page of my notebook and write…

Andras Zboray – Hungary

Bernie Loersch – Germany

Andreas Kühnl – Germany

Kit Constable Maxwell – England

Hannah McKeand – England

Salama Suleiman – Egypt

“Life shrinks or expands in direct proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin 

All the papers are then rolled up into a jam jar, which we ceremonially place back into the cairn. Rather excitingly while Andras is inspecting what appears to be a second, half-destroyed cairn he finds an extremely old broken wine bottle inside, complete with another roll of fragile paper. We daren’t unwrap it up here, so he carefully packs it into his bag, to take back to Hungary and examine under controlled conditions. The only expedition who didn’t have a message in the main cairn was the Italian team, so we guess this must be it. It is a real find. Then, having each enjoyed another small glass of cognac, we grow serious again, there is a big job ahead, we still have to get off this thing.

Andras has been studying the satellite images of the jebel for months and has selected us a shorter route home. Coming off the summit plateau on the northeastern side we should be able to drop down into a wadi that will eventually bring us back down into Karkur Tahl.

We edge our way cautiously down from the top plateau. The way is not difficult but the steep shale slides nerve-wrackingly under your feet at each step. Soon a whole new set of muscles in my legs are starting to object, my descent muscles.

There have begun to be signs of concern the lower we go, as it becomes apparent that there is an unexpected gorge between us and the valley we are making for. We descend towards it down a series of deep narrow gullies, no more than 2 metres wide in places, which open out into occasional small sandy basins. As we clamber forwards through the rocks on the far edge of the last of these, we are stopped in our tracks full of dismay. Having reached its edge, we can now see the vast mountain gorge we should cross in all its fearfulness. On every side we are trapped by a seemingly impassable fall of cliffs, plunging 300 metres down to the top of the next slope of scree. Bernie and Andy have been softly voicing their concern for some hours, since the first sight of the unexpected obstacle. They would rather have abandoned this unknown descent and returned by the considerably longer but at least familiar ascent route. Now at the sight of these frightening cliffs their faces grow very serious, and their quiet Bavarian voices are engaged in concentrated discussion.

Andras and Salama disappear from sight in one direction then another through the rocks, but each time return shaking their heads, having been brought up short once more by the dizzying drop. I sit and wait in silence. I have no experience in these matters, but in my heart I hope we will turn back, it would be a long and torturous return, but at least we know it. Even if we do get down these cliffs, we will then be faced with climbing the seriously uninviting far side of the valley, some 500 or 600 metres back up, and then, worst of all, hope to god we can get down the unknown descent route beyond that into our desired wadi. Our fear is that if we ever make the far crest ahead of us, we might only be faced with yet another set of hideous cliffs, perhaps that time completely impassable.

While these thoughts are being tentatively aired, Salama appears, beckoning us, “Tamam! Tamam!” he says, it’s fine, it’s fine. Andras confirms that they think they have found a route down. Dismayed, but obedient we move forwards, none of us wanting to question Andras’ generally excellent judgement. When we see the ‘tamam’ route however, we all hesitate, and Bernie visibly falters. We are to climb down a series of three vertical cracks that will ultimately take us to the top of the high valley scree.

Andy looks down, considering the first drop, then thoughtfully takes off his pack and removes a karabiner and about 10 metres of thin rope. He lowers his pack over the edge to goat Salama waiting below on the first ledge, and in an unspoken moment of commitment, we all follow suit. Smiling reassuringly and, with the gesture instilling a little confidence into us all, Andy fashions a makeshift waist harness out of a second piece of rope in Bernie’s pack, and begins to belay us one at a time down the crack. The climbing itself doesn’t actually concern me at all, I climb at home every week and this is well within my capabilities, no more than a 5a route in places, but this is definitely no thing to be doing with inexperienced climbers and no proper equipment. At each level Andy climbs down unprotected, but I’m not worried about him. After the second stretch even Bernie has relaxed and there is even the odd incredulous grin at what we are doing. In half an hour we are all safely at the bottom and the tension is temporarily relieved.

After a short break we set off traversing both along the valley and up its far side. The prospect of this climb in the hottest part of the day is soul destroying, but there is no option accept to go on and up, so, step by step, rock by rock, we do. The valley, we can now see, opens up broadly below us and falls down to the main plateau surrounding the mountain. I long to be heading down there and away from this jebel’s treacherous surprises, but it would bring us down on completely the wrong side, deep in the Sudanese south, and the mountain would still be between us and home. So, on we go, up and up, steeper and steeper, until, mounting a high ridge, we see we are faced with yet more formidable cliffs and scree, and we come to a stop.

Bernie has clearly had enough of this mountain and has no intention of tackling any more unknown climbing routes, Andras looks much of the same mind also, and the two of them move ahead a little way to discuss the alternatives.

We have two main problems. This unexpected valley has set us back badly on time and we now have only five hours of daylight remaining. We have little chance of reaching safety before dark. Our second problem is that this delay will ultimately leave us seriously short of water.

Andras and Bernie turn back to us in agreement. We will abort the original plan to cross this imposing ridge over into Karkur Tahl. Instead we will descend to the plateau on this side of the mountain, and walk the long route round it. This isn’t exactly an inviting option, but is less immediately dangerous than risking getting caught out at altitude again.

The distance to where the car will be waiting for us in Karkur Tahl is 12km according to the GPS, but that is as the crow flies and over the mountain, we are going around and I guess we may be covering as much as 25km before our work is done.

We scramble down the wadi onto the plain and as we lose height the air grows hot and still. When we reach the bottom, the full enormity of our task comes home to us. What looked like fairly flat and easy going from the mountain is, up close, a giant’s wasteland of huge rocky obstacles to navigate through, over sharp and cumbersome stones. The surface dips down then up repeatedly, in and out of awkward old watercourses. Once more, we creep like ants through the ruin.

I’ve been picking my own path until now, but I am more tired than I could ever have imagined possible. My legs wobble fearfully each time I lift them, and my brain is dull with looking at the stones. I can still manage going up reasonably well, but when faced with a descent I expect my legs to crumple beneath me at any step.

I fall back with Kit who is also struggling. He took a nasty fall late last night, just before we camped, and with hindsight it sounds as though it sent him into mild shock. In a brief moment we snatch together in the shade of a gully he confesses his legs have been jelly ever since.

Then, when we are really starting to wonder how we will get on, we come up to Andy, also resting. Kit falls in behind me and I fall in behind Andy, and he leads us like a quiet guardian through the nightmare. I can see he is also desperately tired, so our pace matches his without effort, but his brain is still in control. He scans ahead and picks our route, and I no longer have to think. For four hours I sit on his heels, two paces behind, placing my feet in rhythm after him. I don’t have the strength to look about me, all I see are his boots (the colour of which, I can’t tell you). My mind drifts, I am dog-tired. More than tired. Yet somehow beyond tired. I think that if I only had Andy’s feet rising and falling before me, and the click, click of his sticks in my ears, then I could cross the world without falling. Every 20 minutes or so, when we find a patch of shadow, we stop and drop into it in silence. After a few precious minutes, we force our legs under us and set off again. “We are your sheep,” I say, “do you know? What is shepherd in German? You are our shepherd. Our good shepherd.” “Shaffer.” He replies. “Shaffer.” I repeat softly, touching his cheek. “Mien Shaffer.”

As we reach the end of the mountain and start round its eastern end, the heat goes out of the sun, but it gives us no pleasure. Shortly after the heat, goes the light, and we are still far from home. I am sure we will stop and make camp, the group is on its knees, but darker and darker it gets and on we go.

It is 6pm and Khalid will have been waiting for us since 4 in the wadi. I wonder if Magdi is with him, and I’m filled with guilt and sadness at the thought of her building worry over the next few hours. What a lonely task we have set the ones we left behind. As hard, perhaps harder, than our own trial this night. With nothing better to do with my mind, and not certain I believe the message I have to send anyway, I focus on my friend far away, and send my thoughts out into the darkness to maybe reach her. “We’re ok. We’re coming. We’re coming.”

When the dusk makes us all but blind we stop and I hope beyond hope that we will crawl into our sleeping bags, but Andras pulls a head torch from his pack. He is getting us home, and nothing is going to stop him. Without protest, we follow suit, but Andy has no torch. “Now you must follow me Shaffer.” I say. “This little sheep will guide you home.” “Now I am sheep.” He grins.

We stick close together now. A little caravan of lights in the darkness. Andras goes first with the GPS, then me, then Andy, then Kit, then Bernie, who is fastest, so now, must fall in with our pace. By calling out every so often to Bernie, we know we are still together. If Andy has been Shepherd, then Bernie is our angel. All day he has powered along, always, somehow, distant, but there when you feel most alone. Now, I feel reassured with him at our back. Andras is leading us home with fierce resolve, and Bernie, with his protecting but merciless wings spread behind us, will make sure that when he gets there, we will all be right there with him.

We are heading for a GPS point at a beautiful rock art site in the upper reaches of Karkur Tahl, from there we will follow the wadi for another two kilometres, where either the car will be waiting or at the very least they will have left a water deposit for us. If we get into real trouble, a few kilometres earlier we could divert up into Karkur Murr and replenish our water supply at the spring, Ain el-Brins.

Salama has been missing for some hours now, but far from being worried, we don’t doubt that the nimble Bedouin, so much quicker on his feet than any of us, will be safe and well somewhere far ahead by now.

How can I begin to describe that terrible march? Eight hours through the darkness, unable to go for more than 20 minutes before stopping and falling down on the stones at our feet.

There is no pain. No feeling. My body is utterly numb. I lose all sense of time. How long have we been marching? Two hours? Ten hours? Our entire lives? I no longer know, I no longer care, I only know I must keep moving until we stop, then lie silent and motionless in a blind land until a dry voice whispers, “We should go.” And we all get up to repeat the pattern.

Sometimes the going is flat and level and you imagine that the small circle of light around us is a tiny, creeping spot on a huge tabular world. Then, great forms will loom like ghosts before us and with no way of knowing if the obstacles are a few metres wide or a few miles wide, we go straight into and over them, sometimes clambering onto the back of rocks like motionless elephants, or weaving our way through empty, sand passages between them, like a maze in a dream.

We are together, but each of us makes this journey quite alone.

At one stop, I open my eyes and, in the torchlight, can see my arm lying on the rock beside me and barely recognise it as my own. I can’t feel it or the rock beneath it. My eyes refocus beyond the arm and I can see my companions lying like the dead beyond. Dead. Are we dead?

A voice like the rustle of leaves. “There’s no discouragement, shall make him once relent, His most devout intent to be a pilgrim.” Is it my voice, or something in my head?

“We should go.” I take a turn at saying the words. We must share this burden.

Late on. Very late on, my brain turns over the fact that we have been descending. I’m not sure for how long, but we have been coming down. Down into Karkur Tahl, I think without emotion. At the steepest parts I have to pause and light the ground behind for my little sheep.

At the next stop.

Or the next.

Who can say? When I open my eyes in the torch light, I see paintings over my face. My wandering imagination has been full of such figures, but I fix on them, wishing them real and they stay. We are in the valley. We are close. Two more kilometres.

We shuffle along where two days ago we walked easily, talking and laughing and running up to this shelter or that to look for paintings.

There comes a time when we begin to strain our eyes into the darkness. The car should be here. Is it here? Where is the car? I start to think about trudging a further seven kilometres back to camp. I could do that. I have become a shell, a walking husk, and in my way, invincible. My legs stagger like a drunkard. My toes scrape as I push my feet forward. But I will repeat this movement now until I am home.

I know what it means to make a journey one step at a time.

The car is in front of me.

We are on the ground and there is Khalid and Zayed giving us water and cans of Schweppes, and talking with open relief to Salama, yes Salama is with us and has been for hours, only now do I remember. We start to revive and grin at them. They lift our packs into the car and then help us in after. We have been walking for 18 hours.

Back at camp Magdi has been sleeping in Bernie’s tent, which is nearest to the cars, and when we arrive she climbs out and rushes forward to Andras, questions spilling out of her, not knowing, I think, whether to hug him or hit him, and then doing both at once.

Everyone disappears and I am left with Bernie and Andy on the long rock by Bernie’s tent which has become fondly known as ‘Bernie’s couch’. We each have a beer and a cigarette. Bernie, in his undemonstrative way, turns to me with his thick soft accent, “You did really good today. It’s rare to find a woman like you. You did good.” It is the most precious complement I have ever been paid. There are relaxed smiles on our faces as we lie back and look at the peaceful stars. We don’t say much. Words will come later. It is enough to be here, the shepherd, the angel and me.

When I crawl into my tent, I fall face down on my sleeping bag and, without even removing my boots, fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Monday 28^th October 2002

Oddly enough, I don’t sleep that much later than usual, but when I open my eyes my body is like stone. I haven’t moved all night from the position I fell in, and it’s like waking from a winter of sleep. The moment I try to move a groan escapes my lips, every inch of my body creaks with hot pain. It takes me an age to get to my feet, first onto all fours and then up, and I hobble down to the main camp like a suffering woman of 90. Magdi has been busy, and instead of the usual breakfast of pate, jam and crackers, there is a big pot of turkey and mushroom stew on the hob. I fill my bowl and slowly spoon the contents with clumsy fingers into my ravenous body.

Photo by Andras Zboray

The effort of eating is enough to exhaust me again and, together with Bernie and Andy, I climb to a little shelter up on the shady side of the valley and lie motionless all morning, sleeping, reading, then sleeping some more. My two friends are tired, and speak mostly Bavarian. It doesn’t matter any more, their husky dialogue is familiar, comforting now, I feel embraced by it. We’ve been to a place beyond words, beyond language and I will never feel left out again.

As the sun swings round and creeps towards us, we inch back away from it until the point where we have to face moving.

Everything hurts, so we hobble slowly back down to camp, eat a little more stew and climb up to the afternoon shelter on the opposite side of the ravine.

We are beginning to recover, and beginning to unpick the story of the last two days.

By 4pm Andy and I decide we should take a walk and try to loosen up our bitterly objecting bodies. We climb down from the cliffs and walk slowly up the valley away from camp. Zayed laughs his head off at us as we go, and I admit we probably do make a pretty ridiculous sight.

There is a big rock island out in the centre of the main wadi, half a kilometre or so from camp. We slowly make our way towards it, stopping only to look at a really nice painted shelter. I try to make Andy laugh by inventing interpretations of what the figures are doing. “This one is sky diving. And, these two are disco dancing, they were into disco big time back then.” I explain seriously. “And round here is the cow Christmas party. This one has drunk too much and feels sick, and this one has just snogged her boss.” He does laugh, but also looks at me like I’m completely mad, so I quit while I’m ahead.

We walk behind the island rock and spend half an hour doing some long and thorough stretching exercises, until we start to feel a little better.

We climb up to the top of the island to watch the sun set over our haven home. The acacias melt slowly into the shadows, and the mountain horizon all about us grows black against the pale pinks and deep blues of the sky. Darker and darker, the first stars begin to appear and still we sit, until a small warm flicker draws our eyes back into the valley. The Bedouin fire shining through the silhouettes of trees to call us and guide us home again.

This evening is an occasion for great celebration, and our trusty barman Andras rises to the challenge, by mixing up a batch of the infamous Bagnold Cocktails. One of these has me in full flow, two of them and I start to get silly, three and I’m rocking and rolling. It turns into a very happy and raucous evening. Andras prepares delicious turkey curry with rice. While Salama and Zayed let me help (or perhaps hinder) them make bread. I have a lovely time tapping it with the special stick, and pushing the embers back and forth over it, The Bedouin laugh at me a lot, but tomorrow, Salama promises to teach me the whole process properly. We have such a good night that I even forget that it is our last in Karkur Tahl, which would have made me sad. Tomorrow we must leave. Tomorrow will will say goodbye to the Uweinat.

Tuesday 29^th October 2002

We pack up camp without fuss. It’s a smooth operation and by 8am we are in the cars and bumping back down the valley. We come to the beautiful dune we camped beside in March, and Magdi and I look longingly across towards the dry waterfalls and the towering piles of stone that climb to the hidden amphitheatre above, but there is no time to stop. The sand in the mouth of the valley is soft and deep like liquid, and only a short way up the final rise we get stuck and have to push the car laboriously forward. Once Salama gets moving again he daren’t stop for us until he’s free of the slope, so we walk the last stretch through the heavy sand. The early morning sun feels good on our backs. Sometimes if you lay your foot flat on the new surface and shift your weight evenly onto it, the crust will hold and you can take an unlaboured step. But three times out of four it breaks and you find yourself ankle deep. It is a game I play, to see how lightly I can walk.

The officer is in visibly better spirits now we are back in Egypt, and walks cheerfully ahead discussing mine fields with Andras. Khalid reported that he’d been nearly hysterical when we were late coming off the mountain, and only a firm stand by Raymond and Magdi kept him in order.

He always insists that Khalid sleeps close by outside his tent. Khalid says he hates the desert, thinks it is a godless place, haunted by unnamed terrors. Long may he think it so, and keep his armies from it, I think.

Khalid is a lovely character with a delightful smile and an impish sense of humour. His English is excellent, and it is easy to talk to him, he is really helpful teaching me Arabic and translating for me and Salama and Zayed.

The desert plain is before us again and we drive slowly away from the mountain that has been so hard on us this visit, but that is still beloved in my heart. I was sad when I left this place in March, I thought I wouldn’t see it again. This time it’s not goodbye, this time, I know I’ll be back, there is no question.

The journey over the plain is uneventful apart from one burst of getting stuck up to the axels in a sand hole, and having to energetically employ shovels and sand sheets to save ourselves. To be honest we enjoy the exercise and the group’s mood is chatty and cheerful.

By 11am we are bumping along the edge of the Unnamed Plateau (Plateau Simon to his friends). In March we explored the main wadi on the eastern side, this time we approach from the west. We trundle into a couple of all too familiar, gravel filled wadis to see if any look like interesting places to camp. They don’t. Eventually we find a huge, wide wadi that’s floor is, if not exactly sand, at least fine sandy gravel. The view is broken up by large, cone shaped gravel hills, growing more solid and substantial the nearer they get to the broken edges of the plateau.

The unnamed plateau is granite rather than sandstone and its overall grey colour scheme does little to endear it to us. The landscape is undeniably impressive, but somehow it dampens your energy. It is hard to get excited about anything here. We stop next to a hill of huge, round, cartoon book boulders, and Andras announces we will stay here for the night. None of us reach for our tents.

I look around and try to decide what the most interesting thing is to do, and the only place that really seems worth going to is the top of the plateau. If the best view is always from the top, then that might well be the only hope for this place. It doesn’t look far to the nearest route up, just across an area of flat sand, then up the steep slope. I think it will take me about 20 minutes and strike out immediately. 20 minutes later I am only half way across the sand. Perception is somewhat at odds with reality here. Everything is twice as big as it looks, your brain tells you things are normal size and quite close, when they are really huge and some distance away. I feel like Alice In Wonderland.

I reach the foot of the slope, which towers over me twice as big as I had expected. I hesitate, I have not planned well, this walk was supposed to be a short, pre-lunch jaunt and I have walked away from the cars with nothing, no pack and most stupid of all no water. But I’m so close now…Just a 20 minute climb and I’ll be on top of Plateau Simon, oh damn it, I’m going up. I feel fresh, there is a gentle breeze taking the edge off the vicious sun and I promise myself to stop regularly in the shade of the improbably large boulders to keep cool. I am going up.

My legs are still aching like mad from the mountain, but the climb is easy. The big, smooth, curvy surfaces rise in a pleasant maze of steps, and I feel like a very tiny creature, perhaps a grasshopper, jumping from one to the other and creeping between them. There are many natural shady shelter holes in amongst the rocks, and, keeping my promise, I rest regularly in them and enjoy the expanding view. The Unnamed Plateau is becoming more beautiful.

Near the top, the ground becomes a gravel slope once more and as I walk up it towards the flat upper level, I look up and see Bernie grinning down at me like a gnome. “Hello!” He says. “Where are you travelling to? Cairo?” I nod. “Yes! But I seem to have taken a wrong turn whilst looking for an ice-cream shop, have you seen one?”

Bernie gives me a mouthful of his water and we sit for a while enjoying the much improved view. From a distance, in the slightly hazy and shimmering air, the island-studded plain looks soft and blue and mysterious. I’m starting to warm to the place.

The plateau top however, has very little of interest to offer and after a short time we begin to clamber down. I go skipping ahead easily from rock to rock, this is the first time my poor aching muscles have started to feel well again. The stiffness is almost gone and I can feel my strength returning. I am really enjoying myself.

I jump forward onto the top of a large flat boulder and my left ankle turns over hard with a sickening snap. Horror strikes me to the heart, but like a cat hit by a car, I leap straight back up and stumble three more steps before stopping. Searing pain shoots from my foot up into my calf. “Are you all right?” Says Bernie, coming up beside me. “Yes! Yes! It’s Fine! No problem! It’s Fine!” I babble, a little too brightly to be in any way convincing.

Oh God. Is it broken? Have I broken my ankle? What an idiot. “Is it all right?” Says Bernie again. I try to draw some sense back into myself, take a deep breath and say. “I’m not sure, give me a minute. It feels maybe serious. I’m not sure. I think it will be fine.” He grins at me. “Well, I’m not carrying you.” He says. We chuckle which makes me feel immediately better. For goodness sake, it’s fine, it will have to be. We both know all too well that the only way you get anywhere in this desert is under your own steam, no one else can do much to help you. I will bloody well crawl back to camp on my hands and knees if I have to.

I gingerly put the foot to the ground and try it out, something is clicking inside and the pain shoots through my leg as it moves, but apart from that it holds me. It isn’t broken, I am pleased with that at least and smirk at Bernie. We set off slowly back to camp with me limping pathetically and cursing myself for being such a fool.

I wonder what I have done. What was the snapping noise? What is it I can feel moving inside there with every step? Have I torn a tendon? Have I snapped a ligament? How would I know? What exactly is a ligament anyway? How long is it going to take to be better? I make light conversation with Bernie who sticks beside me faithfully, but these are the questions going through my head.

Back at the camping place (still no tents) I eat some tuna lunch. I try to be cool about the situation, but I feel so desperate and angry inside. I should have been more careful. Why wasn’t I more careful? I want to walk and climb. Whatever will I do if I can’t climb or even get about for the rest of the trip? I will go stir crazy. I keep quiet about it except to Magdi, who inspects the, now swelling, ankle and questions me about how it feels. I agree to put on the powerful cream that she has been using on her back to see if that will help. There is very little else I can do except rest with it elevated in the shade, and glare at it resentfully.

Andras cheers me up after lunch by suggesting that Plateau Simon really has less than nothing of interest to offer, and maybe we should press on the 120kms to Wadi Sura. Everyone is delighted with this idea, but a quick glance round reveals that Andy is missing.

There is a local search and lots of calling, but he is nowhere to be found. The trouble is, we said we were staying, so it’s quite possible he won’t appear until evening. He hasn’t eaten lunch, so perhaps he won’t be long. We wait and…………… we wait. The hours pass and our hopes of leaving start to dwindle. Perhaps we will at least make it half way to the Gilf and camp in the open desert, perhaps near dunes. Still we wait.

At 4pm Andy strolls nonchalantly into view, and walks towards us grinning. He is no doubt wondering why we are all staring at him like a naughty schoolboy. It seems a shame to burst his bubble and tell him what a pain he’s been, but we do. It’s all in fairly good humour.

We resign ourselves to the fact we are fated to spend a night with our old pal Simon, and decide to walk up into the gravel archipelago of hills and find a good high spot to enjoy the sunset. I am determined to go too, but I am slow and get left behind. Magdi stays with me, but I realise I’m not going to make it anywhere spectacular, so I send her on to catch up with Andras and the others. I hobble carefully up a small mound, but my view of the sunset is obscured by the larger hills around me. I sit for a while watching the shadows creeping up into the orange light, and when I am completely swallowed by them I start cautiously back to camp.

Once I reach the level sand I can walk reasonably if I go slowly, but the hills set the ankle shaking with pain. I bite back the urge to cry, there is no point, no one can do anything. I don’t want to be miserable in front of the others, so I lift my head and swear that I will be as fun and jolly as ever, and no one will suspect I am down. To help cement my oath I start to sing, a tried and tested method of lifting my mood, and with a little will power added in, I start to feel genuinely more cheerful.

When I reach the fireside Salama and Zayed welcome me, and feed me tea and hot, freshly baked bread. Things aren’t so bad.

After supper we all turn in early, and, abandoning my tent, I take my sleeping bag out onto the dark sand, and crawl into it in the open, under the stars.

Wednesday 30^th October 2002

I wake with the wind blowing fine sand over my face, and see the fire flickering into life some distance away. I get up and start towards it, but my ankle is completely stiff now and feels much worse. Ignoring it for present I get myself a big mug of coffee and sit by the fire to watch the others get up and potter around. Bernie shaves in the wing mirror of one of the cars and Andras appears sporting a rip in the bum of his trousers, which is verging on indecent. Ripping the arses out of our trousers has become a bit of a running joke on this trip. Mine were the first to go, a quite modest tear about the middle of last week. Next was Andy, again nothing too shocking, but still funny.

Photo by Lajos Nemeth

Then on the mountain Kit decided to outdo us all with his magnificent disintegrating trousers. All I can say is that by late afternoon I was very relieved that Kit was also wearing a respectable pair of blue pants. I am also glad that it got dark not long after that. Now we all try to stifle our giggles as Andras walks past, and he sternly announces that anyone who mentions or laughs at his trousers will not get any breakfast. His words fall on deaf ears, we can’t help ourselves.

The colonel had a rough night, but still has a sense of humour, he says he actually slept better in Sudan than Egypt and perhaps we should go back. We offer to take him to Libya, as we hear you get a really good night’s sleep there. He rolls his eyes in mock horror and walks away smiling.

The more I move around the better my ankle starts to feel. I keep at it gently, and as it loosens up I even manage to help bump start one of the cars. I feel much more hopeful abut it, and as we set off towards Wadi Sura Andy gives me a really solid ankle support that he was wearing at the beginning of the trip. Incidentally his bad ankle was caused by a trampolining accident with his children. What can I say? He’s 40 going on 14. I put on the support, which locks my foot firm, and I feel much happier about it.

Half way to Wadi Sura we come upon a really big dune field and my heart skips about with pleasure as Andras lets down the tyre pressure. The pure creamy waves stretch away from us in all directions.

Colonel Ashraf once more completely looses his cool. The sight of so much sand is too much for him. He thinks we are out of our tiny minds and that we are going to get stuck out here and die. He jabbers away hysterically to Khalid who listens politely, but apart from that he is pretty much ignored. We sail across the dunes on our soft tyres without any problems. The combination of Andras’ experienced eye and the skill of the boys as drivers, takes us floating up onto the backs of the dunes and down the far sides without pause. The gradients out here are virtually invisible and rising to the top each dune feels effortless, like flying. Nevertheless one cannot underestimate for a moment the skill required to make such a difficult crossing seem easy.

By 11am we have drawn close to the towering edge of the western Gilf Kebir, and are travelling slowly north along it. I concentrate hard trying to spot the invisible entrance to Wadi Sura, hidden behind its great sentinel stones. I can see the enormous cliffs I scaled in March with Georg and Claire, and even fancy I can make out the ledge where we watched the desert sea in silence, so somewhere just below must be the valley entrance. I fix on a spot that seems familiar, and indeed we gently bend towards it.

Then as we draw close, the rocks seem to slide apart, and we are right in front of the great guard stones. We weave our way between them, and the elegant dune where we will camp shyly appears. We pull up and pile out, we are surrounded by soaring stone, the plain is quite hidden from sight.

Everyone bustles about and starts to unload, but, glowing with the loveliest sense of contentment, I gather my gear and walk slowly down over the sand to the foot of the inner sentinel, and set up my old home in it’s shady, calm protection. “Tonight,” I say to the old stone, “I am going to sleep in the Cave of Swimmers.” It doesn’t reply.

I am soon joined by Kit who comes and puts up his tent nearby. When he is finished I suggest we take a stroll over to the cave. Half an hour later we are stepping up onto its sandy floor, and lifting our gaze to its crumbling walls. As our eyes adjust, the faint figures become clearer, and then they begin to work their charm.

We lie on our backs in the silky, soft sand and let our eyes drift across the rock. They’re not immediately spectacular, these paintings, you have to let them come to you. The more time you give them, the greater the reward.

These figures are more alive than anything at Uweinat. Figures talking, figures chasing each other, figures pulling at each other and, of course, figures swimming. There are so many stories here, so much being expressed. Kit is delighted, and I must say, so am I. Even though I knew what to expect, I had forgotten the deep character of these little people, and I can hardly describe the pleasure of sitting and taking the time to look at them again.

We wander back to camp deeply satisfied. I have christened the flat white rocks outside our tents the veranda, and shortly after we have settled onto them in the shade, everyone else joins us for lunch. Lunch today is a rare treat, tuna mixed with sweet corn and mayonnaise, spooned into our bowls in big dollops.

Kit and I nap through the two hottest hours of the day, and then I lead him up through the steep sand pass (narrow enough to touch both white sides in places) at the back of camp. We drop down into the broad cliff-lined wadi beyond and scramble about up and down the rocks, looking into promising shelters, then sliding down the soft sand slopes. My ankle still hurts like mad, but it is definitely improving and the support is holding it solid, so there is no way it is going to spoil my fun.

After a while we meet Andras and Magdi walking and join them to explore one of the side valleys. Andras sends me scurrying up to peep into a couple of high shelters along the way, but I still seem to be carrying my jinx, it’s become a big joke. I’m a walking Catch 22, the shelters need to be checked, but if I am sent, then there will be no paintings. Andras says I must be frightening them away and perhaps I should approach more stealthily.

The valley we are exploring is familiar to me, it’s the first part of the route that I took with Georg and Claire on our climb up the Gilf. When I come across our footprints next to one of Georg’s directional cairns, I place my fingers into them, thinking fondly of my two friends.

At dusk we return, walking into the sunset. The magnificent rock formations silhouette themselves ahead and the Gilf turns pink behind. Granite Uweinat is always blue, but the sandstone Gilf loves to dress itself in deepest rose.

We are all delighted to be here and decide to celebrate once more with Bagnold Cocktail sundowners.

Bernie is going to sleep in the cave tonight and I explain that I had had the same idea, and would he mind if I joined him. He graciously says, no, of course not, and we tuck into our second cocktail. Now the trouble with Bernie is, he can’t take his Bagnold Cocktails. As we start on number three he rolls over and says, “Three is too much of this!” and wanders off into the dark.

Dinner is a delicious chilli-con-carne, gobbled down cheerfully round the bright fire. Bernie doesn’t reappear and I suspect that he has already gone to bed in the cave a little bit drunk. Raymond and Andras discuss the early explorers with great animation and enthusiasm. They love to spar with each other, over matters of detail, it’s hugely entertaining for the rest of us.

I chat to Andy about his love for the Alps, and his long and devoted friendship with Bernie. They seem to have had a never-ending string of adventures. The pattern seems to be that they set out to do one thing, which goes terribly wrong, but they end up having fun anyway. A few of my favourites include; the skiing trip through a forest with hardly any snow; carrying their boat on a kayaking trip down a river with no water, the same trip that they got caught in a thunderstorm and had to sleep the night under the upturned boat; the expedition to build igloos, when they discovered how hard it is to ride bicycles on ice. These are just a few, every night they have a different story, and every night they have me rolling about with laughter.

Late, very late, I go to my tent and collect my sleeping bag and a bottle of water. Then feel my way out into the darkness towards the Cave of Swimmers.

The cave looms like a ghost and I clamber up onto its sandy floor expecting to find Bernie snoring, but I am alone. I snuggle into my sleeping bag and pick out the paintings overhead with my torch. The cave’s black entrance frames the star-filled night sky. Utter silence.

Thursday 31^st October 2002

I am briefly woken at 3am when Bernie comes into the cave. He had fallen asleep on the sand not far from the fire, but, having woken with the cold, felt guilty at abandoning me, and came over straight away. We are soon both fast asleep again. Waking at true morning, in the dim light, is the most gentle experience. The pale dawn slips into the cave. In waking stillness, my eyes alone creep over the rocks, touching each one tenderly with my mind. In this place, hour-by-hour, you see different figures according to the sun. Now I meet the morning people, some whole, some no more than fragments, but strong and enduring in their allotted moment of light.

Still snug in our sleeping bags, Bernie and I prop our shoulders against the back wall and smoke. Outside is fresh and cold and blue, we send grey curls drifting up to the roof and watch the sun breath new life into the day. All is silent, all is still.

Eventually we shake out our sleepy limbs and walk back through the rocks to camp. We are met by the smell of coffee, the flickering fire and the sounds of breakfast chatter. It is a perfect morning.

Andras’ aim while we are here is to use us to help him survey a large area to the north for paintings. During previous shorter visits, random finds suggest that there is much still to discover here, so, this morning we all set out together in one of the cars. We move slowly along the broken edge of the Gilf, driving up into each wadi and valley. Every kilometre or so we stop, and we all take a direction to explore, carefully examining each rock and cliff and possible shelter. Around mid morning we come to an area studded with clusters of rocky outcrops, and a low cliff bending round it in a rough horseshoe. Still carrying my jinx, but enjoying the climbing anyway, I make off round a ridge at the base of the cliff and before long, spot a large promising looking shelter. Not holding out much hope I climb up and slide under the big overhanging rock. I suck in my breath with surprise and delight. Figures! Faint, but dozens of tiny figures. I shuffle back out onto the ledge outside the shelter and excitedly look around for Andras, but only Salama is in view. He sees me grinning and waving and trots across the sand for a look. 10 minutes later Andras spots us in the shelter and calls out, “Anything?” “Yes! Yes!” I sing, dancing across the ledge like a cheerleader, “Paintings! Paintings! The curse of Hannah is broken!”

We have the most tremendous morning with everyone discovering something, including a magnificent discovery by Salama of some of the most fabulous cows and figures I have ever seen. I thought I was past ever getting really excited about a picture of a cow again, but these are truly spectacular.

We return to camp for lunch on a high, and Bernie and I set off enthusiastically with Magdi, Andras and Salama in the afternoon, to pick up the search where we left off.

In contrast, the afternoon produces almost nothing in the way of paintings, but the scenery is breathtaking. We leave the Gilf edge to explore a number of rock islands, ranging up to a kilometre from the main massif, and rising straight up out of the level sand. The rocks look like giant columns of mud that have been doloped down together in clusters before setting hard. The rippled sand plain about them suggests an absent tide.

The only real discovery of the afternoon, again by sharp-eyed Salama, is the desiccated body of an addax, lying preserved in the sand. The last report of a living addax in this area was some 70 years ago, this one could quite possibly be well over a hundred years old. Everyone is fascinated, turning its long, delicate, twisted horns over and over in their hands.

At dusk we climb to the top of the addax island to watch the dying sun turn the world to fire. Bernie and I climb to one peak, and Andras and Magdi, like little Hungarian lovebirds climb to another. The air turns cold precisely, with the setting of the sun and we turn for home. We drive with the purple Gilf at our eastern elbow and to the west the last light of day.

Let me write to you about a black horizon that stretches, smooth and unbroken, so endlessly far that the rumour of its ending is inconceivable. Let me write about delicate layers of light, fading upwards one into another, rose pink, into burnt orange, into soft apricot, into palest yellow, into gentle indigo, sweet purple and deepest darkest blue. If I were a writer of any worth, I would paint a picture of such beauty, you would ache with desert longing. If I were a writer of any worth, I would conjure this place with words, for you who would travel with my pen there.

Friday 1^st November 2002

In the mornings Salama and Zayed wake first and get the fire going and the kettle on the boil. Then, gradually, we start to emerge, wrapped up in coats against the cold. Sleepy eyed, we fetch steaming mugs of coffee and sit down on a sand bank or crouch round the fire, speaking in low voices. But, as the coffee takes effect and the sun begins to warm us through, the coats begin to peel off, and the first burst of laughter is not long in coming. There is always laughter in the mornings. Today after breakfast we set out to continue our detailed exploration north, but once again the search is pretty fruitless. Here the country is quite open so most of our survey is conducted from the car.

What few shelters there are, we can drive beneath, and Andras peers up into them with binoculars, it’s a bit dull. I am still sleepy after a late night talking to Andy by the fire, and the inactivity doesn’t help to wake me up. Before long, even when we do stop, Magdi and I lounge lazily in the car, reading and writing, while the others wander here and there.

Uninspired, we return at midday to camp and eat lunch on the veranda. Perhaps seeing that we need a boost today, Andras produces a very special treat indeed, a huge tin of peach halves in syrup. The next 20 minutes is like a desert Christmas and birthday both at once, and the contented silence is broken only by the slurping sounds of happy people gobbling down the sticky fruit.

After lunch each day we have taken to napping through the hottest hours, but today at lunch Andras tells me that Zayed has seriously cut his finger, so I go to seek him out. As is their habit for these quiet hours, I find him and Salama sitting in the shade of one of the cars with their tannin stained metal teapot and a bowl of bread. They invite me to join them and in return for the tea, I feed them Marlborough cigarettes. Communication is relaxed, but limited between us, so before long we decide to be proactive and the afternoon turns into an Arabic lesson for me. They point and gesture and draw with their fingers in the sand, softly repeating the strange, unfamiliar sounds again and again until I get them right. Eventually Salama smiles “Inharda hellas!” He says. Today enough! And he starts to describe how hi