HAIL, 6 August 2006 — Khaled Al-Muneef and Ali Al-Marshad have probably thanked God a few times by now.
An innocent shortcut through Al-Nufud, a vast desert in the north of the Kingdom, almost resulted in the deaths of the two men. “We began in the middle of the afternoon,” said Al-Marshad in an interview published in Al-Riyadh newspaper. “We took a new road that was still under construction. Part of the road was complete and other parts were not.”
He said the road ended at the edge of Al-Nufud. Thinking they had their bearings straight, they presumed they could pick up the main road on the other side.
“Instead, we got lost,” he said. “I think we headed south right into the desert’s heart instead of going toward the main road.”
The two men wandered for about 80 kilometers without seeing any sign of pavement. Evening was approaching. The temperature was likely well above 45C (114F). Then, just as one could imagine happening: they blew a tire.
With darkness quickly approaching, the two men decided to spend the night there and fix the tire in the morning.
The following day, after patching the tire, the two men encountered a Bedouin family who pointed them in the right direction.
“The Bedouin guided us to the location of the road, which was about 40 kilometers away,” said Al-Marshad.
But shortly after picking up the road, which was still essentially in the middle of nowhere, the car overheated due to a radiator leak. For two hours the men didn’t know what to do. The temperature continued to rise.
Finally a driver appeared in the distance, and it wasn’t a mirage. The man helped the hapless travelers fix their radiator.
But an hour after they parted ways the radiator exploded. In the middle of the blazing desert afternoon, the two men began walking, hoping that civilization would appear where the road disappeared into the shimmering horizon. “We thought that we could walk, but after two hundred meters we collapsed,” said Al-Marshad. “We thought death was near. I looked at my friend Khaled and he was unconscious.”
But for the grace of a passing Bedouin camel shepherd, the two men would have met their demise. The man offered the lost and dehydrated Saudis food and water from his pack. He loaded the two men on the backs of two of his camels and brought them to his desert abode.
That night the two men awoke in the safety of a Bedouin tent. The shepherd took them to a police post where they called home to inform their families that they were alive and well.
Al-Marshad and Al-Muneef said they learned a hard lesson on traveling in remote parts of Saudi Arabia. They also didn’t mince their words when they criticized the Transport Ministry for inadequate warning signs when remote desert roads end.
