GRANITE BATHOLITHS - BEDOUIN WELLS - ABANDONED VILLAGES OF THE ARABIAN
SHIELD
When things don't work out as planned, what should you do? Put a for
sale sign of your Defender and hope that a Bedouin with lots of cash shows
up to put you out of your misery? Sit around and feel sorry for
yourself because you are high-sided on the sand dunes of life?
I don't think so. If you don't have a snatch
strap, and you are all alone in the dunes, then it's time to get out the
shovel and start digging. Once the sand no longer touches the
chassis, you will be on your way. When plans
don't work out, you keep on digging, keep on fixing, keep on navigating,
and keep on driving.
I high-sided my red Defender on top of this dune because I was driving too
slow when I went over the crest. That's what happens when I live my
sand dreams. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I don't.
This time I didn't.
The one thing I don't do is complain about being high-sided in the dunes
of life. Of all the billions of people inhabiting planet earth, I am
one of the few people who have had the privilege of high-siding my
Defender on this particular dune in Saudi Arabia. It's a very
exclusive club.
If you don't want to have problems, you should drive your Defender into a
40 foot shipping container and move right in. Don't come out into
the real world where challenges and difficulties abound. And if you
want to be really safe, deposit your shipping container smack dab in the
middle of a meteor crater. The odds are astronomically low
that a meteor will strike twice in the same location. Talk about
being safe - that pushes the equation of safety to exponential levels.
You will also maintain the value of your Defender as it sits pitifully in
the 40 foot container. If you take enough antidepressants, you may
not even notice that you don't have a life.
But that's not what Defenders are for. They are for living your
dreams. You are supposed to get high-sided. You are supposed
to sink down to your chassis in the bull dust. You are supposed to
get up to your axels in mud.
One of the things I like about my Defenders is that they are all the same.
Some may have a diesel and others a petrol engine, but they are all dream
machines. Defenders are made for living my overland dreams.
Defenders are always up to the task, and they fit any size of dream.
That's enough about my Defenders. It's time to focus on my granite
dreams.
We left Riyadh and headed northwest into the Wahabi section of Arabia.
Heading up to Majaama, Buraidah, and points further northwest takes you
into the heart of Wahabi Land. Some expatriates are fearful of
traveling in this conservative region of Arabia, but our experience has
been uniformly good. We have found the people to be helpful and
friendly in all our encounters.
A Land Rover Defender sticks out like a sore thumb in the land of the
Toyota pick up truck. Bedouins prefer small Toyota pick ups that are
big enough to transport a camel and light enough to be proficient off-road.
Many of the pick ups have only two wheel drive, but they perform well even in the dunes. If you know what you are doing,
you can go just about anywhere you want with a two wheel drive Toyota pick
up.
A properly driven Defender can go amazing places with two wheel drive as well. We
traveled in the company of a Defender that had a broken rear differential.
The driver spent the morning removing the gears in the broken
differential, and then he resumed his trip after disconnecting the rear
prop shaft. He drove for an entire week in the
large dunes of the Empty Quarter using only front wheel drive. It's
amazing what you can accomplish when you don't listen to the naysayers and you
give it a try.
Green Defender fills up with gas before heading out into the desert.
Arabian gas stations may have up to twenty five gas pumps, and each
station sells Bedouin camping gear. Bedouins don't go to REI to get
their camping supplies. Their local gas station has it all.
Everything you need to survive Bedouin style is for sale. Cookers,
propane, tarps, clothing, water containers, fuel drums, knives, hardware -
it's all there.
Filling up our jerry cans and long range fuel tanks is always an
adventure. People stand around and watch us fill 13 jerry cans and
ask us where are we are going. We often wonder where we are going as well.
When fueling is complete, we lock the car and check out the
Bedouin camping gear at the gas station. It's tempting to buy some
souvenirs, but our car is already too full. If we get any stuff, it
will be on our way back to Riyadh after we have lightened our load by
camping for a week in the desert.
After driving hundreds of kilometers northwest on the main highway,
off in the distance we see granite batholiths rising out of the desert
sand. They look interesting, and it's worth a detour to check out
the granite. Camping in granite monoliths is high on our list of
perfection. We turn off the highway and pick a track that takes us
toward Granite Land.
Anytime we spot granite batholiths on the horizon, we turn off road to
check them out. A ten kilometer detour on a two thousand kilometer
trip is trivial. We might even discover a great adventure.
This particular patch of granite contains
approximately sixty square miles of batholiths and outcrops. There
is plenty of granite to go around. We won't run out of things to
explore any time soon.
This satellite photo focuses on a patch of granite that is about two miles wide and six miles long as
viewed from 37,000 feet. A smorgasbord of granite awaits Team Maxing
Out. In some areas, isolated small batholiths emerge from the
Arabian Shield. Small outcrops make awesome places to have lunch and to
make a quick climb to the top. Larger more complex batholiths
involve more climbing, but the added altitude offers a much better view of
the granite all around.
This patch of granite is about one mile wide and a couple of miles
long as viewed from 7500 feet. In just a few minutes you could
locate at least a dozen places to set up camp in the granite paradise.
You get the best of both worlds in these campsites. You set up your
tent in sand, and fifteen minutes later you are climbing on the granite.
Places like this reinforce my belief that there is no limit to how good my
life can become.
Our actual campsite is in a box canyon with a nice selection of
boulders for privacy among the acacia trees. Although it doesn't
rain often or long in the desert, the granite outcrop has prominent
grooves worn in the rock created by running water. Flash flooding
won't be a problem even if it rains during the night because we are
upstream of any flooding.
Just for fun, I loaded Google Earth and moved the cursor to Saudi
Arabia. I did not have the latitude and longitude of our campsite,
but
I knew that this particular granite field was about ten kilometers north
of the highway about halfway to Medina. We had never been here
before, and we knew nothing of this area.
I wondered if satellite photos could be used to locate our campsite.
I could not imagine any reason why Google Earth would have satellite
photos of this remote location. This would be a good test of how
well Google Earth covers areas of little apparent importance to anyone in
the world except a few Bedouins and a handful of curious campers.
I followed along Medina Road on the map, and I knew that the granite field
was north of the highway. I checked out a few possibilities and
within a couple of minutes, I located the granite field. Now the
challenge was to see if I could locate the campsite using nothing more
than the photographs that I took of the terrain.
There was a Bedouin village on the edge of the granite, and I used that to
orient the satellite photos as I searched for my campsite. In
less than ten minutes, I located our campsite. In this photograph, I
pasted a picture of our Green Defender into the satellite photo at the
exact location of our campsite. Comparison of the boulders in the
satellite photo with the boulders in the actual campsite confirms
that these are photographs of the same point on planet earth. The
white grooves worn into the granite batholith next to the campsite match
on both sets of photos.
The satellite photo shows the campsite from an altitude of 4100 feet.
The actual photo of the campsite with Green Defender is taken at an
altitude of 200 feet from the top of an adjacent batholith.
I have to admit that this freaks me out more than a little. I am
sitting in Phoenix looking at my campsite using satellite imagery.
It's amazing and creepy to know that detailed satellite images exist for every inch of planet earth. Using resources available to
everyone, I can view the finger print of planet earth. Imagine what
governments and superpowers can do with their satellite imagery. Bad
Boys don't have any place to hide. Of course, Good Boys don't have
any place to hide as well. I hope that all of this technology is
never turned against the good guys. Very scary.
There is a Big Eye in the Sky watching everyone every day, and the Big
Eye is not God. Top Secret Dudes all around the world are watching
planet earth, and they all have agendas that are probably different than
yours. These satellite photos are a potent reminder that all is not
well on planet earth, and the technology is already in place to make the
world a much different place than it is today.
If push ever comes to shove, and if you are on the wrong side of an evil
global agenda, there will be no place to hide.
Late in the afternoon we hear the sound of the call to prayer from the
minaret of a mosque in a nearby village. Sound travels a long way in
the desert, and we hike up to a granite ledge to look down on the small
village.
We are far enough away from the village, and we are tucked up in our box
canyon far enough that we probably won't have any visitors from the
village. It's rare that anyone approaches our campsites even when
we are near populated areas.
When visitors show up at a campsite, they park off in the distance, and
you go out to greet them. That lets you know that they are curious,
but not aggressive. They are happy to meet you if you want
to meet them. If you show no interest, they will probably drive away
without connecting.
We were taught that when you go out in the desert, you never drive up to a
Bedouin tent. You keep your distance and allow them to make contact.
The traditional teaching is that if you are stranded in the desert, a
Bedouin will take you in for three days to help you get organized, but
after three days they have no moral obligation toward you. Although
it's unlikely that they would allow you to perish in the desert, it is
traditional for them to take you in for three days.
Some adventurers make it their business to meet and spend time with
Bedouins in the desert. We always enjoyed our contact with the
people of the desert, but we never sought them out.
Our tents are tucked in behind and beside some boulders. Unless
someone drives up this blind canyon, they would never know that we are
here.
The desert blooms green from recent rains, and acacia trees line all
the watercourses. It's easy to tell where all the flash flooding
will occur in heavy rains. All you have to do is follow the acacia
trees that line the dried up wadis.
Our camp is on the south side of the granite field, and tomorrow we
will drive north into the heart of the granite outcrops.
Pitching a tent in the sand next to granite batholiths requires that
you scout out your proposed campsite with a rebar tent peg. We drive
a rebar tent peg into the ground, and if it strikes granite, then we must
move our camp further away from the edge of the batholith. The sand
may only be two inches deep, and shallow sand will not hold our tent pegs
in place. When we can drive a tent peg ten inches into the ground
with our small sledge hammer, we have identified our campsite.
Our tent pegs are twelve inch long steel rebar like that used in
reinforced concrete. Rebar is the standard tent peg for the desert.
We camp mostly in the sand, and our ten pegs need to be at least 12 inches
long so they go deep enough in the sand that our tents will not blow away
in a sandstorm. Toy tent pegs used in America are a joke in Arabia.
You would be chasing your tent across miles of sand dunes if you used
western style tent pegs during a sandstorm.
A sheet of granite at the head of our box canyon forces us to camp
near the opening of the canyon. You can't drive rebar tent pegs into
granite. The little blue dot in the center of this picture is one of
the tents in our campsite.
Our private canyon offers small granite outcrops that are easy to climb.
Anyplace else on planet earth, this would be a national park. For us
it is simply another campsite in the pristine desert.
The next morning we climb the granite overlooking our camp. A
large patch of green desert occurs in a basin that collects water runoff from
the outcrops. Green grass like this would warm the heart of any
shepherd who must tend a flock of sheep and goats. A Bedouin herder
will be able to park himself under an acacia tree, turn on his I-pad and
visit Maxingout.com all day long while his critters eat to their heart's
content.
As we explore the granite, I discover a special perch that I christen with
the name "The Camel's Mouth". I am sitting on his lower lip as his
upper lip gets ready to chomp on Landrover Man - leader of Team Maxing
Out. To either side of his lip and nose are giant camel eyes.
 
I relax in the Camel's Mouth grateful that I am spared the challenge
of camel breath. Wendy takes her turn in the mouth of the camel as
well.
After we break camp and load up Green Defender, we pause to take a
picture of Team Maxing Out. It should be a day of discovery and
adventure. There aren't any park rangers and nobody to tell us what
to do, so it's time to rock and roll. We are making up this
adventure as we go along. I love it when a non-plan comes
together.
Camels roam freely in the granite fields. These are not wild
camels. They all bear a brand and everyone knows to whom they
belong. It's unwise to steal somebody's camel.
An abundance of grass and fresh acacia growth means these are happy
camels. They have a good size hump on their back and their fur looks
great indicating healthy camels.
 |
We venture into the granite outcrops stopping whenever we spot something
interesting. It might be a place to climb a smooth batholith just
for the joy of climbing, or maybe to scout out the countryside to see
where we should explore next.
Acacia trees survive in the desert because they know the location of
water. A row of acacia trees means that there is a wadi with flowing
water in the line of trees. Water runoff from the granite creates
hundreds of small unnamed wadis.
Water quickly filters down in porous sand recharging the aquifers of the
granite fields. The visible granite is the tip of an igneous iceberg
hiding beneath the desert sands. These outcrops all merge together
beneath the desert floor creating valleys that filled in with blowing sand
millions of years ago. The granite has been here for billions of
years, and the sand is a Johnny-come-lately. The impermeable granite
creates an underground reservoir - aquifer - covered by sand, and those
who dig wells find an abundant supply of water. Wells don't dig
themselves, and the rewards go to those who dig.
Granite aquifers aren't worth very much unless you have a way of getting
the water to the surface. Bedouins have two ways of drawing water.
The old bucket on a rope method works good if the well is only ten feet
deep. But these wells go down eighty feet, and hauling up water in a
bucket from such a great depth is hard work and is not practical when you
want to fill up a water truck.
The Bedouin answer is a one cylinder thumper diesel engine connected to a
pump by a flexible belt. You hand crank the engine to get it
running, and before long your water truck is full to the brim.
Bedouins like clean water. They cover their wells with mesh to
prevent birds from flying down into the well and polluting the water.
They also don't want sheep or goats to fall into the well. Nobody
wants to lose livestock to a well, and they especially don't want to
poison their well with dead carcasses.
In ancient times, enemies sometimes poisoned the wells of their adversary.
Fighting with spears and bows and arrows is dangerous, and can be
completely avoided if you poison your enemy's well. Without water,
your enemies have to flee or dig new wells.
David peeks over the edge into a very deep hole in the ground.
If the water truck empties it's water into the hole, you get a very small
Bedouin swimming hole. But that is not the case.
A Pakistani expatriate stands next to the pump that he uses to fill his
water truck. He places a barrel of diesel fuel on cement blocks and
feeds the diesel engine by gravity. No lift pump needed here.
He flicks the compression release lever on the single cylinder diesel
engine, and then starts turning the heavy flywheels by hand. For
about a minute he spins the flywheel faster and faster until he closes the
compression release lever, and immediately the one lung diesel starts
firing. This low RPM diesel will probably pump water for the next
hundred years as long as somebody changes the oil every now and then.
One cylinder diesels are awesome. No computers or wiring complicate
your life when it's time to pump water.
David and Wendy climb a large outcrop and survey the
valley below. When you see how close the granite outcrops are to one
another, it's easy to understand that we are looking at the peaks of
granite mountains that pierce the desert floor.
Climbing granite is particularly easy in Arabia. The granite has
a coarse grain, and a good pair of boots easily grip the surface as you
ascend. You have plenty of traction for scrambling up the outcrops.
The only thing you must watch out for is onion-skinning on the surface of
the rock. Onion-skin granite can let go and take you for a ride.
The bottom right of this picture has some typical onion-skinning.
I can't imagine any better place in the world to play air guitar than
on the top of a granite batholith. Life is good.
On top of a collection of sloping batholiths, an elevated sand valley invites
explorers to pitch their tents. Our Defender would have to drive up
one side of the outcrop in order to camp here. We could easily spend
a week camping in this granite paradise.
Further to the north, the granite field abruptly ends in a sea of flat
sand. It seems strange that these batholiths emerge from the desert
sands in an area of otherwise flat terrain.
Looking off to the south, we see a Bedouin camp
in the distance. We are not alone in the granite fields. His
camp consists of several tents and pens for his animals. A solitary
water truck is parked on the edge of his camp.
The dark black areas in his camp are created by sheep and camel manure.
In some Bedouin camps, the animal pens may contain sheep manure several
inches deep.
Wendy and David descend the coarse granite outcrop so we can get into
Green Defender and explore another section of the granite field.
Wendy takes her turn at driving. You may notice that there is a
smile on her face. Landrover Defenders are excellent smile
generating machines. Every time I get behind the wheel of my
Defender, I can feel a smile come across my face as well.
We pass a couple of well fed white camels enjoying
a stroll in the granite. As you drive around the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, brown camels seem to be the dominant color. Here in the
granite fields, the opposite is true as we have encountered quite
a few white camels.
Camels have extremely tough lips, tongues, and faces. They love to
nibble on acacia trees that are full of thorns. They crane their
necks high in the tree to get the new growth that has occurred since the
last rains.
Tracks come in small, medium, and large sizes. Small tracks make
it easy to travel cross country, and if the track stays small, you end up
in Nowhere Land. On the other hand, if the track is large, it is
large for a reason. It will take you to a place of interest to many
people. Since we have not been here before, we have no idea where
this track will lead, but because the track is wide and well-used, the
destination could be a pleasant surprise.
The track takes us through a choke point in the
granite outcrops, and much to our surprise, the track leads to an
abandoned village. Acacia trees line both sides of the track, and
water runoff from the granite makes the desert bloom.
Granite is as hard as rock, because it is rock. But no matter how
hard the rock, water always wins out. Water cuts rock.
Although water erodes rock slowly, it is relentless.
If I ever got reincarnated and got to chose whether I would come back as
rock or water, I would choose water. Water rules.
An abandoned well with crumbling walls greets visitors to the village.
This well is relatively shallow, and there is no diesel pump to bring
water up from great depth. When you come for water, it is rope and
bucket time.
Small plastered water channels direct the flow of water to places where
animals can drink from troughs. The village has irrigation channels
to direct the flow of water that comes from the granite watershed.
Green Defender leaves the acacia trees behind and enters a group of
date palms in an irrigated portion of the settlement. From our vantage
point
on the granite, it's clear that the village used the watershed from the
granite to direct water into date orchards and to recharge their aquifers
and wells. In the right side of the picture, a large
earthen channel directs the water down into the village and fields.
Mother nature was kind to the people of this village. They are
totally surrounded by granite with natural water channels cut into the
rock that directs water into their community. A few dirt channels direct the flow of the water to where
they want it to go. This is a great example of living in harmony
with nature. The people who lived here chose a place where nature
was working for them rather than against them.
When it rains hard in the desert, this ditch carries water to the
village. The surface area of the granite surrounding the village
insures that the water table will remain high, and the villagers will
never run out of water. In rainy season they may have some flooding,
but that is a small price to pay for a reliable source of water all year
long.
Places like this can endure for as long as someone does not construct dozens of
agricultural pivots and drill deep wells that suck the aquifer dry.
This location can support subsistence farming and a reasonable number of
camels, sheep, and goats. Big agriculture destroys small farms by
stealing all the water.
Sand fills this water containment structure that formerly directed the
flow of water in the village. In 100 years, the desert will swallow
up and cover this ancient stone craft. In five hundred years,
archeologists will come and dig it all back up and get their fancy PhD
degrees writing about how clever the Bedouins were managing their water
resources in ancient times.
Did you ever wonder what happened to a palm tree when it doesn't get
enough water? Now you know. It deflates. Date palms are
different than oak trees. I have never seen a deflated oak tree.
If you deprive an oak tree of water, it may die, but it never deflates.
The first time I saw deflated palm trees was at the Iraqi embassy in
Riyadh just before Gulf War One. In the build up to the gulf war,
the Iraqi embassy was shut down in the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh.
Apparently the utilities were cut off to the embassy, and that included
the water. Outside the high embassy walls, the palm trees did not
receive any irrigation, and those trees deflated like the tree in this
picture. As they lost their water and dehydrated, the trees fell
over.
Donna peeks out the door of an abandoned adobe structure. The
door lintel is made from wood, and the top of the windows are wood as
well. Walls are constructed from mud, stones, and straw - the same
way houses have been made for thousands of years in the Middle East.
Roofs are constructed from tree limbs, palm fronds, and mud.
These adobe structures are in a state of disrepair. You have to
periodically plaster the walls and roofs of these buildings or they will
gradually melt away in the rain. Rain rules granite, but it ravages
adobe.
It's easy to identify the kitchen in an adobe structure. The
location of the cooking fire and oven are obvious, and the
smoke stains on the dark walls confirm that thousands of open fires have
burned inside this kitchen.
Palm fronds hang down from the ceiling as this adobe structure slips into
oblivion. The kitchen has excellent ventilation with lots of
windows to bring in fresh air.
Bedouins don't bother installing a chimney in their kitchen. The
simply cut a hole in the roof for the smoke to exit.
Smoke stains the rafters and palm fronds on the ceiling.
A hole in the roof and well ventilated kitchens are simple things that
saves lives. Cooking without them means death from carbon monoxide.
Occasionally in Riyadh I read in the newspaper about Sudanese or Somali
expatriates who set up a hibachi grill on their apartment floor and cooked meals in a
fully enclosed room. They died from asphyxiation when they used up
the oxygen in the room and filled it up with carbon monoxide and carbon
dioxide.
One of the things I like about a Brownchurch style roof rack is that
it makes an excellent platform for photography. Getting a camera
twelve feet above ground level creates a completely different perspective
on your adventure. We wanted to photograph the adobe structures from
above. Wendy climbed up on the roof rack, and we maneuvered the
Green Defender in position so she could take pictures with an elevated
point of view.
I always put a ladder on the back of my Defenders because it makes it easy
to get up on the roof rack to take pictures.
These adobe structures won't last much longer unless someone comes to
their rescue. A thick coat of muddy plaster will keep the
buildings alive. The roofs of some buildings have areas without any
plaster, and gaping holes are starting to develop. Walls are rounding out
along their tops, and the mud walls are thinning to the point that they
crumbling.
Deflated palm trees frame an adobe structure that is melting away.
Like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz, adobe structures
melt when you throw water on them. On the other hand, palm trees
deflate when you don't throw water on them. Sometimes it's hard to
win.
The center of the ancient village features a large courtyard.
This would be where people come to buy and sell their wares, and to meet
up with the authorities in charge. A sheik would likely hold
a majilis here to settle disputes and dispense favor.
It would also be the place of punishment for people who committed crimes.
If you are going to get fifty lashes, this would be where it happens,
right in front of everyone in the community.
Anyone who believes that punishment is not a deterrent to bad behavior has
never lived in a place where public humiliation brings shame on yourself
and on your entire family. I am not saying that I am in favor of
public punishment, but it some cultures it is extremely effective at
keeping everyone on the straight and narrow.
The roof is coming down on this passageway, and it won't be long before
there is no roof at all. It's sad to see ancient structures dissolve
into the desert. It is a potent reminder of the transitory nature of
life, and it won't be long before we are all gone. It's important to
not become slaves to stuff and things that will quickly erode away once we
are gone.
Too often I work like I will be here forever, and I forget that
relinquishment is the overlooked law of life. All of my
accumulations and attachments are temporary, and I should spend my life
doing the things that I love rather than accumulating mountains of cash
and piles of stuff that is all going to disappear faster than
these adobe buildings.
Life is for living and loving, and if I accumulate a few things along the
way, that's ok. But stuff is not the meaning of life. I am
here to sail on the ocean of my dreams and to drive my dream machines
around the world.
Team Maxing Out is what it's all about. We get in our dream machines
and make memories that last a lifetime.
Life is good.
What
you listen to makes you into a different person. You need to turn on the
positive mind pump and fill your mind with positive things. Listen to over
200 free positive thinking podcasts by Dr. Dave on six different websites. Visit
Positive Thinking Podcasts.com
Positive Thinking Radio has powerful positive podcasts that will
supercharge your life. Push your mind in a positive direction with
Positive Thinking Radio.com
Say good-bye to depression and hello to a positive mind. Visit
Zero Tolerance To Negative Thinking.com
You must know what to say
when your mind talks to you, and what to say when you talk to your mind.
You have a lot of things to discuss with your mind. Visit
Maximum Strength Positive Thinking.com
Team Maxing Out sailed around the world on their catamaran Exit Only.
Now they have created the Positive Thinking Network, and you can cruise
the positive world wide web with them. Visit
Positive
Thinking Network.com
 |
