Even as I sat ingesting deliciously bitter Arabic coffee, ready for Rafiki, my trusted 4×4, to be examined by Saudi Arabian border officers, I suspected my time crossing this huge nation could be completely different. When I did ultimately enter the dominion, my palms have been crammed with items: dates, water, camel milk, oranges and chocolate. From then on, I was handled with a kindness I have rarely encountered.
I spent most of my childhood residing on a small sailboat with my sister and two brothers. My dad was the captain and my mum was our trainer. After a tragic demise in my household in 2018, I realised that I nonetheless longed for the nomadic lifestyle of my youthful years – and that life was too brief to not act on that impulse. In the top, I would spend a complete of 9 months exploring the Middle East, the third leg of a solo expedition that started in Europe in the beginning of 2022 and took me by continental Africa, earlier than I landed in the UAE and drove down by Oman, looping round Saudi Arabia, overlanding by Iraq into Turkey and travelling again throughout Europe to my house in France, arriving virtually two-and-a-half years later. Rafiki and I clocked up greater than 80,000 kilometres, and most days have been spent sleeping and consuming in my beloved 4×4.
I would spend three months in Saudi Arabia – and the sweetness of its landscapes surprised me virtually day by day. From my very first night time tenting underneath a dense cover of stars in the Rub’ al Khali desert (or Empty Quarter), feeling just like the final particular person on Earth; to lengthy sun-bleached drives with solely passing camel caravans to maintain me firm; the huge mountain ranges and volcano fields that hovered simply past endlessly straight roads; the wild magnificence of the Red Sea coast; the patchwork greens of the mountainous Hejaz area; and the distinctive and mysterious rock formations that even now I hint in my thoughts as I go to sleep.