Both vehicles now had about half a tank of fuel, so we broke into our reserves and used three 20L jerries each, I still had three in reserve and Streaky had two.
Feeling rather elated at having now completed two of the three confluence points, we consulted the map and calculated that perhaps we could in fact go straight to the third one now should be reach the tracks easily.
Exiting the dunes proved to be a lot easier then getting in, and we had decided to follow the subkahs south hoping to reach some obvious tracks. After 45 km of very easy sand driving we were back on the graded track not far from Hashman (formally known as Fasad, and still marked as such on all the maps we had).
We tried in vain to locate the road running south of Hashman, and eventually decided to return to Shisr, where we could re-fuel and head to N18E53. We used a lot of graded track and it was becoming rather bone shaking to say the least, however we managed to maintain speeds around 90Kph, but had to be very careful as there were areas where the track just turned into a sand pit, and there were some other slow moving users too.
When we reached Qafaa, we found a sealed road which appears to be coming from Mudayy, but we only used this for a few km before heading into Wadi Aydim, and here we encountered some different off roading, which included some rock crawling on rather dodgy areas as well as some sand driving over a rather mixed topographical area, and was fast leading us to believe that the confluence point may not be in such a good position as the previous two.
Fortunately we found N18E53 on very flat level ground in the wadi, and after taking the mandatory photos we set off the easy way out along the wadi bed, which proved to be a fantastic drive with some of the best scenery so far with a discovery of some hyena tracks in one area.
Once on the blacktop we set off on our return journey to Shisr, but Streaky’s Disco cut out for no apparent reason and after some poking around it started okay and we reached Shisr well before sundown allowing us to find a good camping spot in an area close to the nest of a pair of falcons, who kept a wary eye on us.
*****
