Each of our camels has its appearance
Day: 33
Sunrise:
07:05
Sunset:
17:17
As the crow flies:
19,8
Daily kilometers:
22
Burakin Camp – 13.06.2000
We don’t leave until 11.30 am. According to the GPS, Sebastian is traveling at a speed of 5.8 kilometers per hour. Jo’s blisters are getting worse and worse and her entire heel has now turned into a single monster blister. Every day before we set off, I withdraw the bladder water with a syringe. In the meantime, Jo runs in sandals. Tanja is also increasingly plagued by blisters. Her back pain has improved a little since she has been walking without cameras. My knees are fine under the circumstances. Hardie pulls on the nose leash as ever and mixes up his colleagues. Hardie, who is without a doubt the ugliest of our camels, doesn’t have a particularly high intelligence quotient either. Often, when something goes wrong, he is the one who causes it. During the daily camel herding he is the one who runs off in any direction, he also gets tangled up with the rope around the trees, falls down rabbit holes or trips over branches. Hardie is simply our best laugh. But Hardie has a small, stocky body and can carry a lot. He also scurries to the ground quickly, of course because he is particularly lazy, but I have to give him some credit.
In the meantime, all our camels have made their appearance. Sebastian hit his knee, pulled like a camel on the nose line and rubbed his shoulders. I have already described Hardie. Goola, initially called Kadesh, also caused us a lot of excitement. Jafar has pulled his left front foot and Istan, our horse friend, is currently suffering from a shoulder strain. So it turns out that it was very important to start the expedition slowly so that people and animals could get used to the strain. It is also important to repair one or two weak points on the saddles and equipment. Speaking of saddles, I have to mention that Jo and I noticed a major design flaw. Goola bumps his knees against the saddlebags with every step. This fact will soon become a major problem for him. At the moment he is the only one carrying four bags. We will be running with a full load from Paynes Find at the latest. This means that all animals will be loaded to the brim. It is therefore a good idea to identify the problem areas now. We will take another look at the saddle construction when we reach our destination for the week, the town of Cleary.
We fight the strong wind all day and find a campsite behind the village of Burakin at 4.20 pm. We pitch our tents on a narrow strip between the tracks and the farm fence. On the other side of the tracks is the road and then the farm fence again. Although we are sitting here as if on a platter, it is a beautiful camp. I hear a single car on the street every hour and the trains don’t seem to be running that night.
