After more telephone calls home and exchanging seasons greetings with loved ones, we were back on the road, pursuing our quest for big sand.
We follow the main road, which is still in a terrible condition due to the flood damage. There is a short cut on a smaller road, on reaching the junction we opt for that. It is barely damaged at all and we all but have the road to ourselves.
The scenery starts to change as we climb up over this small pass through the mountains. At one point we spy what we assume is vegetation in the distance but as we get nearer it is apparent that the green colour we can see is not grass. We amend our assumption to some sort of lichen? Again wrong, it was the actual rock itself that was green! In the valleys there are sporadic oasis's, with tall date palms and meandering streams. Further still and the hills take on the look of an unfurled skane of tweed cloth, with ripples of green and brown. No big sand today but it has been a good route.
On reaching Tata we find a small campsite set in a palmery. There is just us, a Swiss couple, the sound of unseen insects chirruping and small unfamiliar birds tweeting. Some the size of large sparrows are jet black with white skull caps, other larger birds perfectly camouflaged for the desert by their sand coloured feathers. Our European Bird book can give us no clue as to their identity; something to google later maybe, till then we'll make up our own names!
No comments:
Post a Comment