Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [62]
We took stock of what we had found. On and near the coast, we had been hard put to find evidence of the People of 'Ad, but in the mountains, Ali Achmed had shown us their cave art, the work of an imaginative, literate people. And we had seen that the Shahra continued their incense-oriented way of life to this day. In both mountains and desert, we had puzzled over rows of triliths, monuments that Juris Zarins felt might mark the homeland of the People of'Ad.
Beyond Thumrait, though, there were no more triliths. And, for all we knew, no more of the People of'Ad, except for fragments of a road, which we hoped led to Ubar.
With no resupply possible beyond Thumrait, our plan was to strike out for the dunes to continue the search where our 1990 reconnaissance had left off. Ran and Kay worked out how much fuel, water, and food our Land Rovers would carry and estimated that we could be self-sustaining for five days. If nothing much went wrong, we could get to the border of Saudi Arabia and back. If we found anything of consequence, we would return to Thumrait, load up, and head back out.
Friday, December 13. Day 1: to the dunes. After a tasty breakfast of pancakes and fresh fruit ("the Last Breakfast," punster Juri called it), we packed our three Discoverys. Our team was joined by desert-knowledgeable Andy Dunsire and a lean, bespectacled fellow bearing a frying pan, two pots, and a battered suitcase.
"Mr. Gomez, our cook," said Kay, introducing him all around. "On loan from Airwork."
"I come here as a guest worker from the country of Goa. In Goa, all cooks named Gomez," he said, or at least that's what we thought he said, for he spoke very fast, as they apparently do in Goa. ("English on speed," cameraman Kevin O'Brien called it.) When Mr. Gomez accelerated beyond a sentence or two, which he now did, apparently listing some of his favorite dishes, it was ultimately only Kay who could understand him, and she admitted to catching only every third word or so.
As Mr. Gomez elaborated on curry in its various forms (or so we thought), someone wondered if we really needed a cook just now, but backed off when Kay asked, "You want to deal with these things?"
"These things" were fifteen sturdy cardboard boxes of Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) left over from the Gulf War. Though they had overrun their expiration dates, we had been told their contents would last forever. "Curry sounds wonderful, but I'm afraid we'll have to make do with these for now," she explained to Mr. Gomez,' then assured him, "You'll have real food to cook later on."
"Out in the Rub' al-Khali, will Mr. Gomez be comfortable in what he's wearing?" ventured Ran diplomatically, noting that at the moment Mr. Gomez was dressed in cook's whites and Chinese slippers.
"Most certainly, yes, why not?" Mr. Gomez was quick to answer.
It did seem a bit unusual taking a uniformed cook out into a place described by the normally calm Cambridge History of Islam as "the most savage part" of Arabia, "a veritable hell on earth." But in Mr. Gomez's words, "Yes, why not?"
The MREs were lashed to the roof rack of a Discovery, joining sand ladders, sleeping bags, and fifteen jerry cans of water and fuel per vehicle. Plus clothing, blankets, camera equipment, automatic rifles, and so on. We had an alarming amount of gear.
"It's a mystery," Kay said of our three Discoverys, shaking her head, "why they don't just sink down to China."
"Kansas," corrected Ron Blom. "From here in Arabia, they'd sink down to Kansas."
We shoehorned ourselves in among our gear and were on our way. Guided by Andy Dunsire, we picked up an old track that headed north across a vast, flinty, featureless plain. Our stout Discoverys, to our considerable relief, shouldered their loads well, churning on through deep ruts, then loose sand, then absolutely miserable ruts, and finally a mix of fine sand and gravel that allowed us to pick up speed and cruise at a surprisingly good clip, a steady forty miles an hour.
The landscape changed. A dreary plain