Desert Soul

Hussam's Toyota and ex-Arafat's ex-Antonov (out of service since April 7th 1992) South of Matan as-Sara military base.

Waiting the wind to calm down. And the group to return from the work. January 30th.

The storage room is already pretty much relieved after Hussam took part of its burden onto his Toyota.

We also have a pet. We call him Sami. We liked it a lot. Especially a couple of days later. It's tied under the rear axle.

Tomatoes in the boxes, tomatoes on the floor, tomatoes under the feet, tomatoes in the shoes and under the oil cans. I prefer not to even start speaking of onions and jam.

28.1.2010 | Libyan Sahara

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It took us 6 and a half hours to get over the last 170 km to Kufra. Whom? Mohsen, the cook, destined for... cooking, what else, for the group we were to escort, Majid, in charge for the security issues, and me. Despite the worst road I saw in my life, the spirits in the cabin were high that night. We listened to Serbian Lepa Brena and Miami-based Gloria Estefan.

Gloria Estefan was actually on the menu for the following two weeks since the cd got stuck in the player during the sandstorm and we were extremely happy it kept spinning at all. Gloria Estefan - Greatest Hits. Conga; Bad Boy; 1, 2, 3; Although it was sometimes good to switch her off, more than 4 rounds per day weren't acting really favourably to our minds. But let's get back to that particular night. We were hitting the road from 7 am till 6 am. The last 100 or so kilometres before Kufra I was driving besides the thing some call a road. It was my lifetime's worst road, worse even of Albanian roads, although I'm not from the generation, nor branch, of the truckers that used to drive to Russia once upon a time, so I can't really compare it with those roads, reportedly being another infrastructural "jewel". Due to the fact we were late and it was at night, I can't even show you any pictures of it, but the tacho record from that night is more than eloquent (LIbya is UTC+2). I got stuck several times beside the road, so the tyre pressure got down to 3 bar once we reached Kufra.

After a 3-hour sleept I went to change the oil and load almost 1.000 litres of diesel and almost 500 litres of water, then Mohsen and I said goodbye to Majid and met the Italian clients, the other drivers and the heavy police escort that was to protect us on at times seriously dangerous areas next to Chadian and Sudanese borders.