We all get on with each other. Our group has bonded over hotel dinners, camel rides and the long, jolting drive into the desert. But the conversation around the fire is, well, stilted.
The problem isn’t social. It’s acoustic.
Our camp lies in a natural amphitheatre bordered by low hills and sand dunes hundreds of feet high. We are at least 200 miles from cars, towns and any manmade sound. The air is dead dry and super silent.
Result: anything you say sounds as if you’re in the world’s biggest IMAX theatre with state of the art surround-sound.
That puts the pressure on. You feel your every utterance should contain some great truth – not, “Bit chilly now, isn’t it?” and “Wonder if you can get frankincense-infused gin in Soho?”
Pouring the tonic sounds like a distant waterfall. You bite into a crisp and it’s like a thunderclap. As for calls of nature or unexpected gastro-colic sounds – well, you get the idea.
We are in Oman. This is Rub’ al Khali – the Empty Quarter – 200,000 square miles of sand stretching across the heart of Arabia. It’s a fabled wilderness that still hadn’t been properly explored or mapped by the middle of the 20th century, within living memory.
In the early 1950s, the British explorer Wilfred Thesiger set out to do just that. But his book, Arabian Sands, is not recommended reading before you head to Oman.
Sure, it’s a detailed and poetic description of some of the places you’ll see and the people you’ll encounter. But it will also make you feel like a rather pampered 21st century traveller. Thesiger’s journey was all grit, danger and thirst; yours is – well, sipping frankincense gin and tonics while someone rigs up your solar shower and four poster bed.
We’re on a tour organised by Oman Expeditions. We have driven in our Land Cruiser due north from the coastal town of Salalah towards the…