Thread: Lets See The Transport havn a Oops moment

The Wife looked at the post above and reminded me, sternly, that other than taking photos of me struggling, she was glassing the surrounds for the shifta bandits that roamed the desert looking for numpties just like us. She’s also reminded me of a couple of other minor issues on that part of the trip.

We had had to wait in Isiolo before making the journey north to Ethiopia, as civilians weren’t allowed to cross the desert alone, you could only travel with the military convoy. So we waited a couple of days, reported to the check point at dawn on the allotted day, and left with the convoy. Which took off at an insane speed we couldn’t possibly keep up with, soldiers grinning and waving at us in a cloud of dust as they disappeared into the distance. So we crossed the desert alone, hoping a lot.

On the return journey, which was also characterised by disappearing a convoy, a steel jerry can in the canopy actually managed to rattle the lid open - that’s the tried and tested rattle proof lid design on jerry cans since WW2 or whenever. We smelt the fuel (petrol 4Y Hilux) which had sloshed all over our gear in the back. Easily our biggest ever brown trousers moment in 20 years of overland travel, and it just about finished me off nerves wise, that was a tough trip the Chalbi Desert alone.

After we’d cleaned it up and decided the risk of explosion was acceptably low, we took off and drove into the dusk, chancing upon two desert cheetahs chasing down a small antelope and making the kill, which completely blew us away and to this day is one of our top 3 wildlife experiences anywhere in the world.

Well after dark that night, we were trucking along avoiding rocks and bandits, hoping to make the safety of an upcoming nomad settlement we’d driven through a couple of months earlier. Out of nowhere we stumbled upon a most welcome and highly unexpected sight - a British Army (BATUK) squad on desert exercise, camped up with their Bedfords and Land Rovers at the end of a long exercise and about to go on R&R, complete with a great many crates of chilled Fullers London Pride. They were as surprised to see us as we were them, a pom and his jaapie chick covered in dust, stinking of petrol and looking like they were 2 clicks away from a nervous breakdown. We joined the boys (all completely unhinged) in an unholy beer drinking session which resulted in a couple of other stories for another time, we got that shit faced well into the next morning that Captain Thompson gave everyone the morning off and we only left mid-afternoon the next day.