Knowledge...?

If you travel a lot and live in different countries and societies around our planet, do you then learn more about life then the person who is staying home and living in the same place and are meeting the same people and is going to the same job everyday...?


I think so but at the same way I think the other guy is thinking the opposite!!! I heard ones a saying:

"If you discuss something with a person with lower knowledge and wisdom then you, he/she will win" and this also goes two ways: "If you discuss something with a person with higher knowledge and wisdom then you, you will win"...


Do I need to explain??? Hmmm...


Have you ever tried to talk/discussed with a guy who nevered has left his country, a guy who's only info-bank is the local-media and his local friends....


Or...


Do you remembered when you where a kid and you parents told you "don't do this and don't do that" you where of course very upset, because you where RIGHT!!!

In the end it is not who is right or who is wrong. The planet of ours has many rights and many wrong, and it is not one way or one book that is the correct one! It is like the Yin and Yang... It has to be a balance of everything...

Stucked in a minefield, a very boring and long day...

Sorry that I have been away for some time, Mai was not really my office months... Sometimes even time for a small blog input is not possible... Been travelling a lot... But I will get back to that another day...

During a very interesting day soon many years ago me and my military brothers where on our way out on a routine survellience mission... I was going to take a small shortcut to get up on the correct dirt road. The weather was fantastic and even if it was morning I my shirt was wet of sweat under the bulletproof west.

I was the driver that day and when I turned the big military vehicle up on the gravel road my tailgunner started to scream: "HALT"

I pushed the breaks max and we came to a sudden stop...

Out to the left in front of us was a pole-mine that was connected to a piece of thin cable that crossed the road. Behind us we saw another one with just the same kind of setup as the one in front.

My SGT went on the radio and reported the situation in to the base and the rest of us went up on the roof off the truck. After a couple of minutes he came up on the roof, with a sour face:

"We have to wait here until a EOD unit is available (EOD=Explosive Ordinance Disposal), and all of them are a couple of hours away..."

So what should we do on the roof of a APC = (Armoured Personal Carrier) for a couple of hours.

hmmm....

We had the following items available:

- 1,5 kilos of pistage nuts

- 15 MRE (Meal Ready to Eat)

- 95 litres of Water

- A lot of tobacco

- 10 magazine of the kind that boys likes sometimes... (you can decide what you think yourself)

All of us bored to death already the first hour, started to dig in to the nuts and water and food. The problem was that we had to behave and act proffesional due to the fact that this situation was seen as a "serious-issue" and a small mobile-crises-base was put up on the nearby hilltop overviewing our vehicle and the minefield, with company commander tent, medivac etc.

So the biggest question, how do you sit on the roof of an APC and look proffesional????

After some looooooong hours a british EOD team came and cleared the area for us and their first comment when they arrived to our vehicle:

- HAHAHA... THAT IS A LOT OF NUT SHELLS....

We said:

- 1,5 kilos of pistage-nuts creates a lot of shells, but it is ok no mines under the shells, what took you soo long...

We had during the time ate all the pistage nuts and of course created quiet a big pile of shells around the car...

When I look back to what we actually did on the roof this day I dont rememer really, I only can think about the nuts...

hmmm... Interesting...

Dreams.... From the past!!!

Dreams is always something intresting and can many times maybe show you a little what is mentally happening in your life. I almost always have dreams from my military background, most of the times it is not bad dreams, but it has an interesting military touch...

I clearly remember one specific dream that has been coming back to me over the years. The only differnce have been the different people involved. I will not use any names here but it always starts like this:

Everybody is in the big hangar preparing all the military gear but I don't exactly know what they are preparing for but I know it was for something big. The atmosphere is more like a big reunion and everybody is happy and smiling, it is people from all my life most of the times and I cannot really find any system in my head why these specific people are part of the dream. The dream always change smoothly but at the same time very quick...

...We are now in hostile warzone with craters and everybody is hiding along a line of trench holes. The atmosphere is changed, everybody is scared and I am trying to keep everybody calm and ready for what is coming, but I dont know what is coming... Me myself is not scared only frustrated that I feel that i miss something, that something in my gear i not there or something that is not hundred percent ready... I feel stressed and at the same time that I try to keep everybody calm Im trying to find the last pieces of my own gear.

Suddenly enemies is coming over the hills but my gun is not working, it is clicking... The enemies is getting closer and closer but my gun does not start to work... It feels like that gun is breaking up and is now more like a slimy fish that is moving in my hands and I cannot really keep the grip of it anymore... The funny thing is that Im not scared, only stressed and frustrated...

After this I wake up and of course it has not been the best sleep of the week but the dream is still hanging on for some minutes or two before it disappear together with the morning yawn...

This dreams always come in moments when my daily life is putting a lot of pressure on me from different directions and disappears when things are calming down again...

Back to work...

"The last 40 km through the desert"

Sorry to keep you hanging so long before to get the opportunity the find out about the end of the story but I have never really been writing this expedition down and the more I think the more I want to explain. Well back to the story...


The sunset came at around 6:30 and it turned the surrounding desert reddish, it was a totally unbelievable view. Camel who is a faithful Muslim positioned himself for prayer with the setting sun, the desert breeze and the reddish colour around him, everything was like taken from a movie! I tried to film it but it did not come out as I wanted it.

Sitting outside the hut of Kazim, my feet where busted up, my legs started to feel the long walk and the mind was still suffering from the memory of the grizzling heat during the day. I checked the GPS and after this point we had like mentioned before around 40km of desert before reaching Douz and the oasis hotel with a nice bed that waited. In this area there where no Bedouin camp of any kind which means if we got stucked/hurt/sick we where FUBAR... (Military expression, but I will not teach you the meaning but please google it if you want)


The plan was to sleep at Kazims and start in the morning at around 4 but due to the situation we decided to walk during the night, and keep a lower tempo to save the strength. We started of and the darkness soon surrounded us and we put on our headlights. We decided to walk 10km and then have a 10 min break and so on after that.


lights from the oasis Douz was filling up the sky 40km in front of us and this made us not take it as easy as we planned and the first 10km we did in a little bit more than 1,5h which is a crazy speed at this part of the march, soon after the next 5km the calve on my right leg locked it self in cramp and I screamed in agony.... Not good and extremely stupid of me not to fill up with important salt and water during the march.


We took something like 15 minutes extra pause in the dark and I was sitting down when suddenly Camel told my in his relaxed voice to stand up because I have a scorpion behind me! I flew up as a rocket and after that we did not sit down during the rest of the night. The scorpions was everywhere and it was like a scary movie with them walking around our legs all the night. If we would have been bitten by one depending on the size and colour we would have been forced to take the antiserum and then try to get to Douz as soon as possible.


After the next 10 or 15 km the calve on my left leg called in as well and the tempo really went down. Every step was a torture and every little movement where extremely painful. Camel was also suffering and I think we look a little bit like penguins with our rocking slowly walk in the night. The last kilometeres took many hours...


When approaching the oasis we realized in our happy frenzy that I did not now where the hotel was where we should sleep and panic came. As we approached the city border sign, DOUZ, at around 3:30 in the morning we had been walking for 23,5h and was in terrible need of rest, shower and a bed.


Camel had a low low signal on his phone and I called my agent at the northcoast and tried to explain to him to call the hotel and make the send a taxi to the city sign so we could get to the hotel.


The taxi came after maybe 10min and of course he did not believe us that we had been crossing the desert that they but we did not really care at this moment... We were smiling!


We were finally at the end of our journey....


Thanks for having patience with me...


//Your explorer

Last part... Maybe... "A walk through death in the desert where time never moves"

We started up at 4 in the morning on the 5 of July and started out even before the minarets started to call for prayers. The dark night was hot and the winds from yesterday kept pumping in hot air in our faces. I was in a terrible mood and people who know me can of course recognize my morning temper so Kamel was not talking.

The first hours in the night I was not feeling good at all, my boots where edgy, my backpack heavy and wrong proportioned... It was a a very bad morning...

As the sun started to rise my mood started to lift aswell and the bad language that went through my mind started to disappear. The landscape started to appear with the sun in front of us and soon we left the mountains behind us and entered the open, flat and yellow desert in front of us.

The temperature was rising and rising and before 10:00 it was already over 40 degrees in the shadow and over 50 in the sun. We started to really feel why people don't normally do stuff like this and why no life could exist here. We where approaching my first possible shelter point on the GPS where it was supposed to be structures.

We arrived at the place around 11:30 if I remembered correctly and the place was empty. We went in a very rustic structure made of palm leaves and old carpets. Inside it was an old tent bed and some mattresses that had to work for a little rest.

Our body felt OK, but I started to feel that my feet was starting to be more and more swollen in the heat, and maybe my choice of boots was not the correct one, I tried to cool them down and tried to level them high so the blood would stop pumping so hard in them. We ate bread with tuna and a lot of nutella on crackers and when finished we tried to get some rest before we should continue.

I woke up sweaty and warm 30 minutes later and could really feel the extreme heat outside the thin carpet wall. At the same time a felt a bit stressed up and woke Camel up and we when went out to continue. We had at this time made the first 40km...

The heat was the worst I have ever experienced and at the beginning I was walking and laughing but after 30 minutes it was not funny anymore. The temperature was at this time over 52 degrees Celsius and my mind started to play with me. We had from the little break around 20km to the next real stop possibility and it was only harsh and boiling desert between us and this point...

I started to see some crazy stuff and at one point I saw some oil drilling stations with fire in the top, and a couple of days after I found out that it does not exist in Tunisia... I have hard time remember all with my boiling brain, but I think we walked in to Kazim and his goats at around 16 or 17 in the afternoon and this amazing Bedouin look like he had saw a couple of ghosts when we came in.

We sat down in his small structure of concrete and he came with fresh goat milk, it tasted like fur but went down easy at this moment due to our fysical status. Kazim started to talk with Camel and started to laugh with the answer he got and after that he was quiet for some 10-15 minutes before he started again and Camel said to me:

- He says that, first of all we are out of our mind crazy to walk in the Sahara during summer time and especially today with the south winds. But that now after survived this, nothing would ever kill us in life... hmmm... At this time he did not know that we intended to continue for 30 something kilometers more... hmmm...

He was a very interesting man and as a thanks for his hospitality I gave him my billabong flip flops I had with me for the day after when we where finished with our torture.

.... And tomorrow I will finalize the end of the expedition because now I'm tired again of writing...

so....

TO BE CONTINUED

"A walk through death in the desert where the time never moves"

The continue the story from where I left yesterday...

The first date that we put up was in the end of April, but that was postponed until first week of June, but that was also postponed until the first week of July and to be more exact the 4 of July. We decided to take the local bus down to the town/oasis of Matmata that is positioned in the lower end of the desert mountain called the Matmata mountain. The funny thing about this place is that the first of the Starwars movies was filmed here and we actually spend the night in the place where LUKE SKYWALKER was staying in his home planet of Tatooine. So as a well beaten StarWars fan a one note was check off in the BUCKET LIST!!!!

The evening the 4th of July in Matmata we where planning the last details of the expedition and we soon became the biggest happening since 1976 when GEORGE LUCAS was filming in the area. With Camels language skills we could finally get some scorpion anti-serum, from a local doctor who was driving around for a couple of hours before he could fix it, freeze it into a brick of ice so we could keep the temperature down of the serum. We only got 100ml but it was said to be enough. We also got the locals to point out the positions where there was permanent Bedouins positioned and where we for sure would get some cover of the sun during the hottest hours.

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"A walk through death in the desert where time never moves"

I first come to Tunisia, a country on the north tip of the African continent and the southern coastline of the Mediterranean ocean, in 2008. I learned that thirty percent of the country is covered by the Saharan desert, and I thought WOW, I will have the possibility to see the biggest desert in the world and to experience an area of the world where the endless sand create an emptiness that is stopping time!!! FANTASTIC!!

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