Always there is the desert sand and rocks, rocks and sand. Piling up and washing down. Sandy dunes and rocky plateaus. Sharp, flinty, dark escarpments above. Purplish mountains, humped along the horizon, here folded and there crissed crossed with fault lines or enbeded with fossils. The landscape vast and ancient.
The palms of the oasis are replaced by the many thorned acacias and the duff duff of hooves in sand is replaced by the irregular clatter over the rocky desert.
The shifting hues of the landscape whisper back to an ancient sea as a gentle breeze lifts the manes and tails of the horses. We ride in a southwesterly direction to pass under the black, shadow rimmed escarpment.
And there is bread and tea. Tea and bread. The bread is fresh today, a little sweet yesterday, tomorrow chewy, flour topped once, even day old but toasted lightly, the same but not. The tea, more herbal, less sweet, longer brewed never quite as it was before.
Jude