![]() ![]() The Empty Quarter, or Rub’ al Khali, is the largest sand desert on Earth. Ever since I first read that book I had dreamed of making a journey of my own into the Empty Quarter. In reality, like all the best adventures, he was mostly doing it just for the hell of it. Wilfred Thesiger made a series of journeys on the Arabian Peninsula in the 1940’s, rather tenuously claiming he was doing locust research. Good trips often take a while to ferment and germinate.) It was there that I first read the great Arabian Sands. (Side note: it was at uni where I also hatched the plan of crossing Iceland. I had wanted to do a journey into the Empty Quarter desert since I was at university. Picking an expedition is never difficult for someone with a giant world map on his wall and bookshelves filled with adventure stories. And as I’md be paying, the budget had to be a smidgen less than a million. ![]() This new project, whatever it was going to be, needed to be up and running as soon as possible. We’d been preparing for the South Pole for five years. So, after a brief phase of feeling very sorry for myself and sitting alone in pubs at lunchtime, I decided to try to launch a new expedition as quickly as possible. My diary was empty: a depressing sight for a self-employed person, but a glorious sight for anyone itching for adventure. ![]() I found myself fit and eager but with nowhere to go. Sadly we did not accumulate sufficient sponsorship in time, so the trip did not happen*. In September last year I was training hard for an expedition to the South Pole. ![]()
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