Blog

Given the fact the truck and I were giving a service, it wasn't all land flowing with milk and honey. Instead honey, jam, smashed fu***** tomatoes, hydraulic and engine oil would flow, all this spiced up with sand.

But of course there were also nice moments. We tried to overhear the way the choleric was communicating with the society and focus on the meaning of his messages, although it wasn't an easy job by far. In any case, the first two days were tough. We were in an incredible hurry and we were covering quite some distance (the second day 275 km as the crow flies, but among other things we had to make a detour around a quite extensive mined area over rocky surface). The machine was overheating and consuming oil, not too promissing while on an assignment deep in the desert. But we all made it quite well. In the cabin, besides me, Mohsen, the Tunisian cook, and Shukri, representative of the agency, followed by Hussam and his Toyota pick-up (with a 400-litre additional petrol tank), carrying also our Chadian immigrant Adam who was taking care of the tents and all the other jobs none of us felt like doing.

In a separate convoy, two passenger Toyotas, one Mitsubishi pick-up and three Police Toyotas left for assignments each day. We unfortunately never managed to leave the place earlier than two hours after they departed; the camp had to be picked up only after the breakfast. But on certain days we would reach the agreed point for the camp hours before the group arrived. This was when some things could be done around the vehicle, go for a walk around the camp, or listen to the silence and take some pictures.

The winch was finally used in a real emergency on this expedition; Hussam got seriously stuck and even I was about to get stuck when approaching him in reverse to pull him out with the rests of the rope I cut a few days ago when repeatedly pulling the two pick-ups out of feche-feche.

On this journey, one of the two hunter's knives my friend Robert Milič had given me when leaving for the 2007 adventure, was finally used. The guys liked it for its quality material and sharpness, so I got a couple of orders for the next time I return to Libya.

We also had to cross several lines of dunes, but unfortunately, when it's most serious, nobody parades around with a camera in hands. So the only pictures available are those taken after the serious business had already been done.