Empty Desert

Just came back to Damascus today after spending a few days out in a camp. It started last Friday when I set off on a 378 km drive due East of Damascus passing through the ancient city of Palmyra, a journey that took 6.5 hours.

The final location is a base camp in the desert which was to be my home for two nights. I won’t specify what it is exactly but sufficient to say that it is to do with helping to find raw resources for this hungry world.

Life in the camp is real hard work. Everyone was already up at 5 am. A work and safety talk took place at 5.45 am with some 200 workers before they disappeared into the empty desert in some 40 vehicles.

I later followed to see the operation and headed South as far as about 90km to the Iraqi border. The terrain is quite rough with many jabals or high grounds to navigate through to reach the other wadis. At one instance we were circling on top of a jabal trying to find our way down. Eventually we found a tricky spot to drive our 4WD vehicle down the steep slope. Toyota Land Cruisers is no doubt the most reliable vehicle to work with in this kind of rough and hot terrain. The fact that the talibans in Afghanistan are also mostly using Toyota Land Cruisers are exactly for this reason.