Thesiger eventually had his book published after a grueling 10 years of writing about his adventure. However, the enormous stretch of nothingness that makes up the Empty Quarter now is eerily similar to what Thesiger witnessed there eighty years ago: the world's most deadly desert. Shezad Khan, a tower mechanic, and his coworker died this week in the same desert.
 
Five days earlier, Shezad, who was from telangana and had been employed for three years by a telecom business in the Al Hasa region of Saudi Arabia, traveled to the Rub al-Khali desert with a coworker. Their GPS stopped working. Their vehicle's petrol ran out. There was no signal on their phones. All of their attempts to get to safety ultimately proved to be unsuccessful. Hungry, thirsty, and many miles from civilization, the two men ended up being swallowed by the desert; the most dangerous in the world.

Why does the Rub al-Khali enjoy that reputation?
That term "khali" is key to the solution. void. This desert has nothing in it. It's the biggest continuous sand desert in the world. Thesiger traveled 2,50,00 square miles during the course of two years. Only two persons have traversed the Empty Quarter before to Thesiger: Harry St. john Philby in 1932 and Bertram Thomas in 1931. But their journeys were not like those of Thesiger, who took great pleasure in torturing himself while traveling.
 
Spell of the cruel land
Wilfred Thesiger was driven, in part, by his colonial privilege to seek out a life in the Rub al-Khali, where he found that "this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match."
 
It was 1940s times. The Second World war was raging throughout the globe at the time, but millions of meters away in the desert, Thesiger was getting ready to cross.
 
 
 


 
 
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Desert

S Venkateshwari

28/08/2024 11:03 AM