Downstream lie the swamps of the Sudd region, a stumbling block for numerous explorers of previous generations as they were often found to be impassable. The meandering channels, lagoons and sodden fields of the Sudd cause the Nile problems too. Flow rates drop as the river thins into marshland where excessive amounts of water evaporate. A later junction with the Sobat River soon increases the river’s surge.
The White Nile and the Blue Nile meet in Sudan and conjoin to head northwards towards Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The construction of the Aswan Dam in the 1970s brought an end to the annual floods and the destruction they occasionally wrought by controlling the waters of the Nile. In building the dam, Egypt provided itself with a reliable hydro-electric supply, although major hydro works in Ethiopia, the Sudan and other Nilotic countries could still affect the behaviour of the river.
Curiously, the Nile has existed longer than the Mediterranean Sea that it pours into. Distant millennia ago tectonic movements caused the Straits of Gibraltar to silt up, leaving the Mediterranean Sea to dry out. Water from the doomed Med evaporated, ultimately to fall as rain in the newly formed Ethiopian highlands, and from there began to carve the path of the Blue Nile. Rifts caused by earth movement following the last ice age already provided a path for branches of the Nile. While it has long been a home to crocodiles, the Nile is still a young river in geological terms.
Although it is mostly associated with Egypt, less than a quarter of the river runs within that country’s borders. In its different guises the Nile touches ten other African countries during its 6,695km (4,160 miles) length: Tanzania, Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea and Uganda.
It is the enigma of the river’s rise that has motivated exploration for generations. Even modern explorers are drawn to it. In 2014 former paratrooper Levison Wood walked the length of the Nile, travelling through six countries on an expedition often at risk from warring factions en route.
APPENDIX IV
The Suez Canal: A Nutshell History
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal was immediately a key waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
The idea was first conceived some 4,000 years ago and on several occasions the Ancient Egyptians devoted considerable time and effort to the construction of just such a short cut.
Napoleon Bonaparte was also intrigued by its possibilities, but he abandoned the notion of a canal when he was assured that there was a large disparity in the heights of both seas. In fact, French engineers later proved that to be wrong.
By 1854 Ferdinand de Lesseps persuaded the Egyptian authorities to allow the building of the canal – which has bends but no locks as it links the coasts in Asia and Africa. De Lesseps didn’t take the most direct route but connected several lakes on its 168-km (105-mile) course between continents.
Cutting into the desert landscape without the benefit of modern tools exacted a huge toll among the workforce, which was made up of thousands of Egyptian peasants. The difficulties of construction left the canal a modest 8 metres (26 feet) in depth, 22 metres (72 feet) wide at the bottom, and never more than 91 metres (300 feet) wide at the surface. Passing places were built in because it was not big enough to accommodate more than one ship at a time, so procession along the canal was ponderously slow.
Still, it represented a huge reduction in the length of time that sea journeys took, an advantage keenly felt by British ships on their way to colonies, including India.
Inevitably, having eyed the project with some suspicion from the outset, Britain seized an opportunity for greater involvement. In 1875 the hard-up Egyptians sold their national stake in the company that ran the canal to the British for £4 million, although the French remained the major shareholders. This meant that the canal now brought fewer direct economic benefits to the Egyptians than previously as Britain and France received the lion’s share of the levies being paid by ships.
But, as oil assumed greater importance than ever before, the British had a swift sea route to the Persian Gulf. Indeed, Britain was given sway over many of these crucial sites at the end of the First World War after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which had once been the region’s controlling power. Yet the pendulum was still swinging away from imperial powers.
Between the wars Britain’s colonies began pressing for independence, and in 1922 Egypt was given a measure of autonomy. A later agreement permitted British troops to be stationed in the Suez Canal zone until 1956, with an option for renegotiation.
As it played out in North Africa, the Second World War brought a series of threats to the security of the canal, but in the event it remained out of German and Italian hands.
But if Britain thought that it could return to the position of unrivalled influence that it had enjoyed in Egypt for decades, it was mistaken. There had been a sharp upturn in the level of nationalism in Egypt, accompanied by a desire to see British troops removed from Egyptian soil.
In public the two countries appeared cordial enough. Behind the scenes, though, there were manoeuvrings by both sides that heightened tensions. By the mid-1960’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was in charge in Egypt; for years he had been an agitator against colonialism who was happy to trade with communists as well as the capitalist West.
As for the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, he was an arch opponent of appeasement and was also opposed to any goodwill gestures towards Nasser. It was the era of the Cold War and, together with America, Britain stood firm against Soviet encroachment anywhere in the world, but particularly in strategically sensitive areas.
The withdrawal of British and American funding for the planned Aswan Dam was sufficient for Nasser to take direct action. He announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal in order to raise the money needed for the dam project.
By the time that Britain and France responded by concluding a secret agreement with Israel, Egypt’s enemy, Eden was Prime Minister.
Israel, which had already been at war with its neighbours since its creation at the end of the Second World War, would attack Egypt so that Britain and France could send troops in, apparently legitimately, to safeguard the canal.
On 5 November 1956 British and French forces sprang a lightning attack, easily defeating Egyptian forces in the vicinity of the canal. But the politicians in both countries had reckoned without the loud opposition they received from America, the United Nations and at home.
A ceasefire came just a day later, at the insistence of UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, preventing what was turning out to be a military clean sweep. The canal was duly closed by the Egyptians until hostilities were resolved.
Relations between America and Britain were under strain following the adventure, although it turned out to be a short-term blip. Eden compounded his domestic difficulties by insisting that there had been no talks with Israel before its invasion. His health and his career soon collapsed.
But while Britain had been taken down a peg or two in the international arena, some things hadn’t changed. Soviet Russia was still keen to get a foothold in the Middle East. Britain would still provide the necessary buffer from strongholds it maintained in the region, to the satisfaction of the Americans.
APPENDIX V
Hot Deserts of the World
About one-third of the earth’s surface lying above water is labelled desert. A desert is defined by its lack of rainfall, which inevitably leads to sparse vegetation and limited animal life. Perhaps surprisingly, the two biggest areas that fall into the desert category are Antarctica and the Arctic, by virtue of having little or no rainfall. For the purposes of this book, we will bypass the polar deserts – and those considered as cold like the Gobi and Patagonian deserts or cool coastal deserts like the Atacama – to focus on those with sub-tropical environments, further down the league in terms of size but higher ranked as far as temperature is concerned.
For most people, the term ‘hot desert’ brings a brutal sandy expanse to mind. Dune systems are immensely helpful to scientists as
they can yield valuable information on past climate conditions. But that’s not the only terrain found in deserts, which can have rubble-strewn floors, mud-cracked riverbeds, salt pans caused by dried-out inland seas, rocky acres, gorges, canyons and mountains. Some have cactus plants, but many do not. The largest and most significant deserts are found in Africa, Asia, Australia and America. Europe has sandy and barren stretches. The Piscinas in Sardinia, also known as the little Sahara, has the continent’s tallest dunes fashioned by the region’s mistral winds. But none is considered significant in global terms.
Wind is one of the key factors in desert environments. With sands being shifted by anything from stiff breezes to gales, the boundaries of sub-tropical deserts have changed over time. Without a covering of vegetation a high wind can whip up dust and sandstorms capable of engulfing buildings and dramatically altering the landscape. A possible link between an increased number of dust storms and a lessening in the amount of rain in desert regions is being looked at by scientists.
Sahara Desert: Less than three inches of rain falls annually in the Sahara, which is the world’s third-largest desert at 9.4 million sq. km (3.6 million sq. miles), where sand dunes can be nearly 195 metres (600 feet) high. If that landscape was not eerie enough, the dunes of the Sahara are known to emit a whistling sound, probably as the wind plays against the hard edges of the crystalline quartz sand granules. In Arabic, the word Sahara means ‘sand and gravel region’. The Sahara straddles the north of Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, stopping in the north just short of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlas Mountains. Accounting for about one-quarter of the continent’s land mass, it has high points, like the 3,445-metre (11,300-foot) Mount Koussi, and low points including the Qattara Depression in Egypt which is 133 metres (436 feet) below sea level. Despite its chronic dryness, the temperature range can fall anywhere between 50°C (130°F) to a minus figure, depending on the season and the time of day.
Early this century scientists from the University of Cologne concluded that the Sahara was once a fertile savannah before a shift in weather conditions, starting about 6,000 years ago, left it arid and unyielding.
Arabian Desert: Covering an area of almost 2.33 million sq. km (900,000 sq. miles), the desert dominates Asia’s Arabian Peninsula. It is the fourth-largest desert in the world, and at its central and southern reaches lies the Rubh al Khali, the world’s largest sand desert, so hostile it is still partially unexplored. Also known as ‘the Empty Quarter’, it covers ground in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. There are some eighteen large volcano fields within its borders, no longer active but identifiable by the stony plains left behind. There is an area known as the Great Nafud which is typified by its towering red sands.
The date palm is the most familiar of the desert vegetation in the Arabian Desert, but it also hosts juniper, myrrh and caper trees. This is despite an annual rainfall figure of no more than 35mm, when the latest annual figure for London stands at 557.4mm.
Great Victorian: The largest desert in Australia and the third-largest sub-tropical desert in the world is surrounded by more of the same. The Gibson lies in the north, the Little Sandy Desert to the northwest, while in the south there is the Nullarbor Plain, and in the east the Sturt Stony Desert. Although it receives a modestly healthy amount of rain – perhaps 200mm or more a year – the deluges are unpredictable. It makes farming impossible as only plants that have adapted to the daily heat and nightly chill will thrive. But, in addition to red sand dunes, there are grassland plains, salt lakes, eucalyptus trees and spiky clumps of spinifex grasses. The desert is renowned for its lizard population that relishes the harsh environment. Also, invasive species, including feral cats, rabbits and camels, seem to tolerate desert conditions, while some native species have become extinct.
Syrian: A mix of desert and steppe, it extends from Syria itself into Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It is sometimes considered a natural addition to the Arabian Desert, but it is rocky rather than sandy, thanks to the lava left behind by long-extinct volcanoes. Once a barrier that posed a problem to travellers from the Mediterranean heading east, it is now bisected by roads and oil pipelines.
Kalahari: Rainfall varies across the Kalahari, with some areas receiving a respectable 500mm, although drier regions expect much less than half of that. For this reason, the Kalahari is more dry savannah than arid desert. The cool coastal Namib Desert to the west is a better example of a typical desert. However, it does not have the size of the Kalahari which, at 712,247 sq. km (275,000 sq. miles) covers territory in Botswana, South Africa and Namibia. And the Kalahari loses more moisture through evaporation than it receives from rainfall. In dry parts the desert floor is pocked with ‘pans’, which are shallow dips lined with cracked grey clay that gleams in the sunlight, revealing salt deposits.
Chihuahua: This is the second-largest desert in North America after the much colder Great Basin, and is the third largest in the Western Hemisphere. It includes mountain ranges which provide high, wet, cooler climates in parallel with the annual average temperature of 24°C (75°F). Covering some 362,000 sq. km (140,000 sq. miles) it straddles the borders of the American states of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before reaching deep into Mexico. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the Chihuahua Desert is at risk from water mismanagement, over-grazing by cattle and goats, and a lack of understanding of the desert’s fragile eco-system, but work is going on in the region to bring about improvements.
Thar: Also called the Great Indian Desert, this arid stretch falls into both India and Pakistan. It has mighty sand dunes, salt lake beds, sandy plains and barren hills. About 100mm (4 inches) of rain falls in the west, although the precipitation in the east can be four times that amount. The hottest months of May and June are also characterized by high winds.
Mojave: America’s hottest desert is known for two things – Death Valley and the Joshua tree. On 10 July 1913 a world record-breaking atmospheric temperature of 134°F (56.7°C) was recorded in Death Valley, which is the lowest, driest and most scorching region of the US. (Only a temperature reported in Libya nine years later has ever exceeded this, but this has not been validated.) Nevertheless, plant life, including the spiny Joshua tree – a member of the yucca family which is found mostly, but not exclusively, in the Mojave – flourishes here. Indigenous people have endured the heat for thousands of years, but it proved tough for settlers, including Mormons, who made their way across Death Valley on the borders of California and Nevada in the nineteenth century en route to Utah. Unusually for a desert, the wider Mojave Desert has been urbanized and Las Vegas is one of a number of cities within its boundaries. That has helped to make the desert into a tourist attraction, with visitors flocking each year to see dunes, rock formations and unusual vegetation. The Mojave is now a major centre for the production of solar energy. To the south lies the Sonoran Desert, which spans Arizona, California and parts of Mexico, through which would-be immigrants risk their lives to reach the United States.
APPENDIX VI
Climate Change: Some Comments
Hot places are getting hotter, and it’s generally believed that climate change is to blame. After the most recently gathered land and sea temperatures were analysed, figures revealed that 2014 was the warmest year on record. There is ample evidence to suggest that even the slightest temperature rise is statistically significant and will have far-reaching consequences.
At ground level problems appear to start in the Earth’s cold regions – far more sensitive to rises in temperature than other parts of the world – but the effects of global warming are not restricted to those regions. As the polar ice caps deplete along with mountain glaciers, sea levels rise at the coast because water takes up more space when it is warmer. And inland deserts expand.
So, in hot regions it is people rather than landscapes that suffer with the inexorable march of climate change. Supplies of food and water may one day be at risk. Desperate people tend towards desperate measures �
�� which could put world security at stake.
In simple terms, those bold assertions touch on a hugely complex matrix of variables. Although scientists talk confidently about different scenarios, there is little certainty about what lies ahead. Hundreds of books have been devoted to the thorny topic of climate change, while here am I toying with the topic in comparatively few sentences – so this is by no means a definitive view! And I am no scientist but, given my many journeys in the company of eminent scientific researchers, I do have a keen sense of awareness about this issue.
Man has, of course, burned trees since the earliest times. After the Industrial Revolution, tons of carbon dioxide were sent skyward by Western nations as they evolved sophisticated economies. Manufacturing, transport and population increases have worsened the issue. Now an estimated 110 million tonnes of greenhouse gases are dispatched into the atmosphere each day, where they trap heat and pollution and prevent the Earth’s natural cooling process. Deforestation has exacerbated the problem. Trees will absorb carbon dioxide, that problematic greenhouse gas, but there are fewer of them to perform this service than ever before.
And Nature is still a massively powerful source. The eruption of Mount Tambora on one of the Indonesian islands in 1815 brought perpetual winter to many parts of the planet for three years. In the most powerful eruption of the past five hundred years, an ash cloud that spread over a million square kilometres was propelled into the sky. The blast made by the mountain’s explosion was heard 2,000km away. One of the tsunamis it caused was two metres high when it hit Java, some 500km distant. Crops across the globe were left in ruins as untimely frosts and relentless rain disrupted the climate. A volcanic eruption like this is always on the cards.
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