"It has really only just become possible for me to do this kind of trip, now that Saudi Arabia is opening up for tourism and welcoming non-Muslim tourists.... [A]t the border with Jordan... [w]e were planning to camp in the desert but when the farmer Abu Saqqar heard what we were doing he exclaimed, 'What God wills, what God wills, I must slaughter a sheep for you!'... This was my first taste of the Saudi hospitality that was such a delight on this journey.
All the district notables were invited and we sat on the floor together to eat. I was the only woman so asked the men if they minded if I ate with them. They all politely invited me even though it may have been uncomfortable for them.... [T]he flat plains of pastel desert... were deeply soothing to the spirit.... The final stage will be a totally different experience as I head to the cool, misty mountains of the south, where the men wear flowers in their hair.... [T]he Saudis I have met on the way have been universally excited by the quest and desperate to show hospitality.... 'May God make you strong, may he bring you success, may you reach your goal if he wills it' are the words that will linger in my mind...."
ADDED:
Here are some nice photos of those "Flower Men." The area is called the
Asir province.
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People crossed it by foot for thousands of years. Recency bias
"People crossed it by foot for thousands of years. Recency bias"
I think the London Times would have fact checked that. Probably the old trade routes were more east/west. Not much reason to go from the extreme north to the extreme south. Plus, I think people rode on camels much of the time, not on foot the whole way.
Alice Morrison referees numerous times to camels, for example, seeking permission for camels to go where they have been forbidden, consequently her declared aim to cross Saudi Arabia on foot is not quite as advertised. Many people have walked across the United States, I personally know one who rode a mule from coast to coast. These would have been astonishing feats 200 years ago, but now when a long distance walker can be completely resupplied by retail vendors conveniently arrayed all along his route, the stunt loses much of its punch compared to the experiences of the Oregon Trail pioneers. The same applies to Morrison's project. Though the cited article avoids the logistical questions I would but to her, it is evident she plans to transport her vital supplies by camel, in other words, a caravan. Big Whoop, as if caravans have never crossed the Empty Quarter before. So she's not going to ride, but instead walk the whole distance and claim to be the first. Perhaps we should consult the shades of the ten thousand yoked and chained slaves who walked that desert before her.
Dromedary camels (the one-humped Arabian type) were not domesticated until well into the Bronze Age, around 3000-4000 years ago. A few thousand years before that, circa 6000 BC, the Arabian Desert as well as the Sahara were green and verdant, with flowing rivers that harbored hippos and crocodiles. There's no way to tell now, but it beggars belief that no one crossed the whole thing by foot in all the hundreds of thousands of years of human prehistory.
People have been going north to south in Saudi Arabia for millennia. The old fabled spice road ran south from Jerusalem and through the "empty quarter" alongside the coast of Saudi Arabia next to the Red Sea, mostly north going in a south south east direction until it reached a place in modern Yemen, where it turned mostly east and went across the peninsula until reaching the Persian Gulf.
And I think George Potter in modern times did this trek in the 1980s or 90s. He certainly also claimed to have been one of the first to do that route in a very long time, but he was retracing the old, ancient paths.
...circa 6000 BC, the Arabian Desert as well as the Sahara were green and verdant, with flowing rivers that harbored hippos and crocodiles.
Though we tend to associate the Middle East and North Africa, these regions are quite different geographically. For instance, the desertification of North Africa proceeded from south to north, with the Mediterranean littoral, the breadbasket of the Greco-Roman world going to waste in historic times, whereas the Arabian peninsula was largely wasteland when Sumer was a power. The cause of Arabia's desertification is a topic of debate. The courses of prehistoric rivers have been charted from space, fossils have been dug up and classified so there is no doubt, Arabia was once a semi-arid woodland, but When? is in question. The predominate dating method that's been used is potassium-argon. (Saudi Arabia is pockmarked with extinct volcanoes.) However the half-lives involved are too coarsely granular to relate the Arabian desertification to the known prehistory of the transition from neolithic pastoralism to the settled agriculture that spawned the first civilizations. Some scholars sought to blame the domestication of the goat as a decisive cause. However, recent thinking emphasises shifting seasonal weather patterns caused by the retreat of the glaciers at the close of the Younger Dryas and the subsequent rise of sea levels. Who knows? Perhaps it was an unknown butterfly beating its wings in some unidentified place that dried up Arabia.
Typo alert: Though the cited article avoids the logistical questions I would but to her should read "Though the cited article avoids the logistical questions I would put to her, it is evident she plans to transport her vital supplies by camel"
Ah well maybe she oversells the "first" time bit--but still it's a nice long walk and she should be applauded for it.
Is she being paid to do this by a us funded NGO?
[w]e were planning to camp in the desert but when the farmer Abu Saqqar heard what we were doing he exclaimed, 'What God wills, what God wills, I must slaughter a sheep for you!
Indeed. Many a lonely desert traveler has found great comfort with the sheep.
There is a woman from the Netherlands who is riding her motorcycle solo around the Middle East. She is currently riding through Saudi Arabia.
I think the YouTube channel is called "itchyboots".
Extremely naive to think that in the land of bedouins and the first region humans traversed out of Africa that no human has ever done this before. I would even call it racist and that’s not a word I use often. You might want to look at a book called “Born to Run” which argues that thesis that humans are the most efficient land animals on Earth. We can outrun every single animal, even horses and camels, over the longest distances because of our unique biology (e.g. our ability to sweat, the shape of our gait). Just because white people can go to Saudi Arabia now doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done.
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