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Geological research (and a vast amount of birding too … ) in the mountains of Oman, sometime around 1976.
Here is our campsite, two tents, the vehicle, and rock – rock everywhere – with the bare mountains all around. I’m slouching in the shade of the vehicle on a camping stool, with my sweat-soaked hat on my knee after a long day’s work – and the photographer is my colleague Don.
It was extremely interesting exploring the interior of a country which was only just opening up to the outside world. The interior was wild, I remember many apparently ancient sites lying open on the surface, but the going was tough. The days were hot, I wore two pairs of socks inside stout boots to keep the heat away from my feet, and the vehicle’s bodywork was burning to the touch. Picking up a rock to examine it often involved juggling it around in the air to cool it down a bit. There were no tarmac roads, and indeed very few roads of any size at all; we often found ourselves driving across country, or up into the many deep wadis that radiated out from the mountains’ flanks.
The Land Rover was rugged, tough, very basic and an absolutely wonderful vehicle for these conditions. There is a jerry can visible in the roof rack: we carried most of our water and spare petrol up there above our heads – which in the case of the petrol was distinctly unnerving, but luckily we never turned the vehicle over. The water was solely for cooking and drinking, washing being a luxury that had to wait until we got back to our base at Sohar, on the Batinah coast.
The terrain was mentally as well as physically taxing, since nearly the whole landscape was in shades or brown or maroon, so much so that the rare patches of greenery, near water, were often quite shocking, even strident, to the eye. Flying home, the endless greens of England were a definite shock too.
Before going to Arabia, we had been trained to give and receive intravenous injections of serum that would counteract snake bites and scorpion stings. I can’t recall seeing any snakes, but scorpions were common under stones, especially near water. During our training, the sight of the large, intravenous needle, and then having to stick it either into myself or someone else, to extract a little blood from the vein before injecting the serum, always made me pass out. I would feel my head getting tighter, and then wake up lying on the floor, looking up at a ring of laughing faces looking down at me.
And so the scenario was all too predictable – Don would be stung or bitten, and collapsed, flat out on the desert floor. I would rush up with the large needle, push it in – and then there would be two of us flat out on the desert floor … We were very careful, and this scenario never unfolded – the worst sting I had was from a hornet that landed on my neck.
The Looking at Cars series: looking back through the nine years of the FATman Photos archives (and some new images too), I’m posting pictures of cars in various contexts and styles. Earlier Looking at Cars posts are here: 1 (with context); 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 . Each post will open in a separate window.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – certainly recommended.
Technique: Don took this, and looking at it I would guess he used his Olympus OM-1 with a 135mm Zuiko telephoto.
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