14. Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

I am pretty sure I bought this from the dollar bin outside of S.W. Welch.  I have read a few more travel books than I ever would have suspected.  I am not a fan by nature, but am interested in the ones that happen in times and places of the fiction I enjoy.  I think also that this was a nice Penguin paperback also motivated me to pick it up.

Wilfred Thesiger is one of those British dudes who just have to explore and in his case especially the desert.  The beginning of the book, he writes about how he felt drawn to the emptiness and the simplicity as well as the companionship that is created by difficult journeys.  Another ongoing theme is his sadness of how oil exploration and civilization will inevitably destroy the life and culture of the Bedu who live in the desert.

I don't pay close attention to geography of travel books, but I do like to have a rough idea of where people are. The maps in this book were badly printed, too dark to see the paths, so it made it hard to follow along the actual journey. The descriptions of the dunes and the limestone flats and all the varied sand and stone environments were vivid and did make me want to see them.  The hardships of their journey and the stresses were equally vivid and equally discouraged me.  I can see that despite the thirst and hunger and discomfort, there is a kind of freeing fatalism in this kind of trek.  The people of the desert, whose lives are tough, are portrayed as being very accepting of their fates when it turns bad and very appreciative of small things, such as a bit of rain that will not produce any green until the next year when they may not even be there.

Sadly, the pages started falling out of the book as I read it.