Saturday 8/6/13 I did something I'd been wanting to do since getting a car in Kuwait. I drove this route to the Iraq border up Highway 80, the one Iraqi forces used for, and retreated on after, the invasion. It was a dusty day like many in Kuwait. You can see evidence of this in some of the photos. For example we drove by a military base with, of all things, a tethered blimp almost obscured by the sand. As we drove along it became apparent that this was not a regular annoying dust storm but more of a sand storm with blizzard like tendancies. As we drove up the western side of the famous Mutla Ridge we came across sand drifts along the side of the road and occasional curtains of sand reducing visibility to about 30m.

Generally it was an exciting drive north to the border, even though it was a fairly straightforward procedure steering along a largely straight multi-lane highway politely complimented with closely spaced streetlights all along the way. This reminded me of a couple of things. Of course it made me recall road trips north in Australia as a kid, for example driving to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Flatness to the horizon. Only thing is, this place is a different colour, and it is only sand. We have expanses of nothingness in Australia, but where I have been in the outback there is still usually a covering of saltbush or other plants (no, I haven't been across any deserts there). Here it was just beige sand everywhere as far as I could see. Every now and again there would be a rather comical looking little cinder block building which we surmised was a toilet although didn't stop to look. Writing this now, I am reminded of another thing - it actually more resembled the barrenness of Tibet when I went there in 2002. Here we would drive for hours through the mountains without seeing any living vegetation, if any at all. Of course Tibet has far more to offer terrain wise than the miniscule Mutla Ridge though, Kuwait's only bit of topographic relief ... a mere 100m or so in height.

Another thing this section of the trip reminded me of was the ride I did to the disputed Preah Vihear temple on the Khmer-Thai border last year. Despite the remoteness, the last 30km or so to the temple area is presented via a new, quite respectable tarmac road with a full suite of fresh markings. It seemed quite out of place from the perspective of how few people must go there, but from the perspective of the Khmer making a claim to the temple, it made sense to invest in the statement of a smart new road. The double lane highway to Iraq with streetlights all the way to the border of the country that had invaded them and created literally hell on earth in the form of the Kuwait oil fires came across similarly as a statement of ownership as much as answering a traffic problem.

In under two hours we were at the border. It was rather an outpostish place, very much about the business of getting out of there, not a place one would ever want to be stuck in. The term wind-, or rather sand-, swept applies. The best example of the circumstances is us refuelling a little way up the road before where there was no attendant to fill the tank, rare for Kuwait. The process for paying the cashier was to drive up as close to his window, we'd both then open our windows as little as possible for me to hand over the card as the wind howled, once done windows were shut for brief but necessary relief from the wind until the process was repeated after the payment went through.

I should also describe another sound. It was one I'd never heard before whilst driving. Sand. Blasting the car continually. It's different from rain - finer, constant. Here are some videos of us driving through it. There was a lot more of this to come. Now that we'd reached the border we were wondering what to do. In planning the trip someone from work had described a route taking him along a different road back to the city, along the border east and down through farmland, then back along the southeastern side of Mutla Ridge. On the way up we had agreed not to do this on account of the harsh conditions. Of course this agreement was broken though also on account of the harsh conditions. An adventure was presenting itself and it would not be acceptable as men to return without taking it on. Also because we were in a 4WD, which meant we were invincible.

So what was the big deal? Things were fairly tame for the first half hour as we wound through the roads between hedged paddocks and fairly dreary farm buildings. We did come across a fire station, which I dutifully recorded a waypoint of for updating OpenStreetMap, and a few brave looking old trucks. Then we came out the southern end of it and were presented with a road in dim view through the clouds of sand, not a soul in sight. I was reassured by 6 things. We had about 10L of water. Henry's phone was working well as a GPS. The road was tarmac. We had airconditioning. We had a full tank of fuel. It wasn't that far back to civilisation. What I hadn't taken into account was how quickly one feels completely isolated, small and vulnerable in the middle of a sand storm in the desert of a foreign country when you have told no one else about where you are headed.

Another thing. As we drove along, the nice and reassuring bitumin road was being interrupted by drifts of sand more and more frequently. As we drove along this 30km section I began to wonder, and then try to stop wondering, about what would happen if the car stopped, or got stuck in a sand drift. And how quickly. One particularly scary moment for me was when we drove over a sand drift perhaps a little too quickly and I felt a judder in the front left wheel. I immediately thought some sort of damage had been done but drove along hoping all was ok. It seemed fine and I realised that it was just the ABS reacting to braking on a loose surface. Another thing both of us started paying very close attention to was the oil pressure. It seemed to be going up. Time for another panic. It was about 50 degrees. There was a very strong, hot wind carrying so much sand visibility was in sections down to perhaps 15m. I became aware of how I knew nothing about the limitations of the car and was blindly trusting it would just drive through the toughest conditions I'd ever been in, air conditioning offering us a quiet delusion.

We stopped once for a leak. The wind and heat were palpable. It was necessary to stand on the leaward side for protection. It was necessary to get back inside straight away, the brief exposure offering a sense of total helplessness and a frank prompt that this was stupidity.

Nevertheless, as men we had to continue now that we had started, despite three clear signals not to in the form of vehicles we came across ... all going in the other direction and none encountered going where we were. The extremeness of the conditions reminded me of another trip in Cambodia, a moto ride with 3 others from Phnom Penh to Sen Monorom in Mondulkiri Province on the Vietnam border. This was through monsoonal rain where we lost one rider for about 45 minutes in the dark, feeling there was next to no chance of finding him again in the night and driving rain... especially if he had fallen off in a ditch, something quite probable given the extremely poor visibility. This was a similarly remote area, we were foreigners unable to speak the local language ... plenty of evidence of stupidity again. Oh, also the guy we lost actually did fall off and break a rib. And at the end of the trip we came across a military platoon mounted two-up on 40 or so 100cc motos on the way back from a successful mission to quell an uprising of the poor in Kratie Province, protesting against forced eviction from land they depended on for subsistence farming. We learnt on returning to Phnom Penh that they had just killed a 14 year old girl. They all looked pretty relaxed about it.

I remember the girl I brought along describing it as not being the vacation she had been expecting. Her expectation that the word vacation should apply at all to what we had planned was enough for me to feel satisfied that I had exposed her to some manliness.

I digress. We drove through it in the end. What a relief to come to a newly constructed highway not yet on the map. We dutifully detoured west back toward Mutla Ridge, our man points accounts increased enough for one day. This has been the most interesting review of a Mitsubishi Nativa you have ever read. I was also happy to take a nicely symbolic picture of my mission in Kuwait. Vacuuming in the desert. I like it. I should be in a Dyson ad.

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