Another early start, with some rough road to travel before we reached Shisr. Fortunately we found fuel, and duly topped up before carrying on to Fasad (which is now called Hashman according to a local we met). We arrived at Hashman (formally known as Fasad) around 1100 and had some lunch in the shelter of an oasis plantation complete with a falaj system and a holding tank, which although looked remarkably clear had a bloated floating carcass of dog in it.
After lunch we headed north having decided to follow a main track to as close as we could to N19E53, then try and straightline it. However we were now in an area of large dunes, and given that we only had two vehicles there was now some element of risk involved. Streaky does have a winch on the front as well as a Pullpal, and provided we drove carefully without taking any undue risks, the sand driving would probably be fairly straightforward. We carried on and found the locals that we had met in Shisr working on a series of boreholes where valves had been inserted to control the water flow, and it was remarkable to see water gushing out vertically from the desert.
About 40Km from the confluence point we left the tracks and headed into the dunes, and four hours and two minor stucks later found us at the confluence point, which fortunately was in the subkah plain and not up on a dune.
As it was close to sundown we decided to camp up on one of the dunes over on the eastern side overlooking the confluence point, and to avail of shade in the morning. Even at 1800 the temperature was 41°C, and we had been running for the last 4 hours with no AC in order to preserve fuel. The area we chose however was overrun by some rather annoying flies, which necessitated the use of my hat mosquito net in order to make life bearable.
A cool beer inside Streaky’s tent was our first priority, and as soon as the sun had gone down the flies disappeared and we could safely walk around without buzzing noises in our ears.
Once we had the fire going and prepared supper we were visited by a number of critters including several camel spiders, scorpions and a very friendly preying mantis.
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