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Lost... in the Desert of Dread

Page 6

by Tracey Turner


  The end.

  Click here to return to the beginning and try again.

  The sun isn’t yet over the horizon, and it’s still cool. You walk steadily, without any idea of where you’re heading. You hope you’ll spot something that might help you find other people soon.

  Suddenly you do spot something: a movement by some rocks in the distance. In the half-light you can’t work out what it is. Maybe animals . . . maybe people.

  If you decide to go and investigate, click here.

  If you decide not to, click here.

  You don’t have to go far to find some more large rocks to give you shelter from the sun. You carry out a careful inspection to make sure there aren’t any more creatures like that revolting thing you just saw (it was a solpugid – see here). After a thorough investigation, you’re satisfied that there aren’t, and you can’t see any snakes, scorpions or other creepy crawlies either.

  You spread your blanket on the floor and put your backpack down. Before you lie down you have an idea: you gather a big pile of stones and spell out SOS in huge letters on the desert floor. You never know, a passing helicopter might spot them. You finish just as the sun starts to go down.

  Click here.

  The lights of an oasis twinkle in the darkness. Palm trees sway in a gentle breeze. It’s the most welcome sight you’ve ever seen.

  You’re almost crying with relief as you get closer. You call out, and two people come running. They offer shelter, food and water, and promise to get you back to your friends and family the next day.

  Soon you’re home. You’ve survived your amazing Saharan adventure.

  The end.

  Click here to find out more about oases.

  Click here to discover some more amazing desert facts.

  Oases

  • An oasis is a fertile area in a desert, fed by a source of fresh water. It might be just a few palm trees around a well, or much bigger. For example, the Kharga Oasis in Egypt is 160 kilometres long, and has a population of more than 100,000.

  • Underground water sources called aquifers supply most oases. The water might come up to the surface naturally, in an underground spring, or people might dig wells to get to the aquifer.

  • Palms are planted all around oases to keep out the desert sands. People also plant crops, such as dates (which grow on certain types of palm tree), olives, figs, oranges, lemons, and cotton.

  • The Nile River is the only permanent river in the Sahara. The rest of the region’s water lies in underground aquifers.

  • There are about 90 major oases in the Sahara, but travelling between them might take days.

  The People of the Sahara Desert

  People are totally dependent on water, so permanent homes in the Sahara are limited to oases, and the towns and cities on the desert fringes. But some people who live in the Sahara don’t have permanent homes: nomads spend some of the year travelling through the desert and the rest in the mountains or at an oasis.

  Nomads live by herding camels, sheep and goats and trading between oases and cities on the edge of the desert. Salt is important for trade because it’s in short supply in the Sahara, so for hundreds of years the Tuareg nomads have transported it on camel trains. In Niger they still do – the Tuareg cross the desert to the Bilma oasis, then transport it, packed into cakes or cone shapes, for trade elsewhere. In the past they traded in gold and spices too. Today, there are around a million Tuareg people in and around the Sahara – some of them still lead a nomadic lifestyle, while others have settled in towns and cities.

  Sahara Mountains

  There are several mountain ranges within the Sahara Desert. The Air Mountains in northern Niger rise to more than 1,800 metres and cover more than 82,000 square kilometres. Mount Emi Koussi, in the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad, is the highest peak in the Sahara at 3,415 metres high. The Tassili n’Ajjer mountain range in Algeria covers 72,000 square kilometres and is famous for its prehistoric rock art, which reveals that the Sahara once had a very different climate: hippos and crocodiles lived here during the Stone Age.

  Expanding Sahara

  The Sahel borders the Sahara Desert to the south. Changing patterns of rainfall, clearing land for fuel, and intensive farming have led to the spread of the desert. Areas that were once green and forested are now dry and lifeless.

  Other Deserts

  Deserts are places where there is very little rainfall. While all of them are dry, not all of them are hot. The Antarctic is the largest desert in the world, more than half as big again as the Sahara. It receives an average of 200 millimetres of rainfall per year in its coastal regions, less inland. It’s the coldest place on earth: the temperature plummets to as low as -89 degrees Celsius.

  Deserts take up around a third of the Earth’s land surface. Other deserts around the world include . . .

  • The Gobi Desert stretches for nearly 1.3 million square kilometres across China and Mongolia. It’s a cold desert, though temperatures in some areas can reach 35 degrees Celsius. Like the Sahara, it has vast sand dunes, but most of the Gobi Desert is bare rock.

  • The Atacama Desert in Chile is high above sea level, and the driest place on earth after Antarctica. In some parts of the desert rainfall has never been recorded, and there the desert is completely barren.

  • The Mojave Desert in North America spans California, Nevada and Utah. It includes one of the most famously hot and inhospitable places on earth, Death Valley, where the temperature can reach 54 degrees Celsius in summer.

  • The Namib Desert in southern Africa stretches for 2,000 kilometres along the coasts of Angola, Namibia and South Africa. It has vast sand dunes near the coast – the largest are 300 metres high and 30 kilometres long.

  How much water do you need to drink?

  The instructions on this water chart are merely a guide. You will need too seek professional help for a more accurate chart.

  Real-life Lost in the Desert Stories

  People really have ended up lost in the Sahara Desert. Not all of them have lived to tell the tale.

  The Marathon des Sables (Marathon of the Sands) is an extreme 254-kilometre marathon run across the Sahara Desert in Morocco over six days. It’s a gruelling race, considered the most difficult foot race in the world. Mauro Prosperi, an Italian policeman, was competing in the 1994 Marathon des Sables, when a sandstorm blew up. In the swirling sand, he was unable to see and became completely lost. Mauro didn’t have any water on him at all, and yet he survived for nine days. He drank his own urine (which is absolutely NOT recommended!), and ate snakes, scorpions, lizards, and some bats that he discovered while sheltering in an abandoned Muslim shrine. He wasn’t lucky enough to come across any wells or water holes, so it’s incredible that he survived. Eventually, he met a nomad family, who helped him and returned him to safety. He had walked 200 kilometres away from the course of the marathon. Mauro made a complete recovery and, surprisingly, he has since completed the Marathon des Sables many times.

  According to Ancient Greek historian Heroditas, an entire Persian army got lost in the Sahara Desert and never found their way out. In 525 BC the 50,000-strong army was sent into the Sahara by Persian King Cambyses II. Halfway across the desert, heading for the remote Siwa Oasis in Egypt, an immense sandstorm blew up. Not one of the men ever made it to the oasis. People have been looking for them, or their remains, ever since.

  Glossary

  adobe a natural building material made from sand, clay and water

  amoebae small organisms made of only one cell

  antibiotics drugs that kill bacteria

  aquifer an underground water source

  arid dry, lacking a water source

  carrion dead animals

  contaminated unclean

  crepuscular active at dawn and dusk

  disoriented confused, lost

  dysentery an infection causing diarrhoea

  epidemics diseases affecting large numbers of people at once

  e
rgs sand dunes

  escarpment a steep slope or cliff

  flash flood sudden, quick flooding caused by very heavy rain

  germinate begin to grow and develop

  hallucinations things you can see that do not really exist

  hamadas desert landscapes consisting of high, exposed rock

  hemisphere half of the Earth

  hyponatraemia a lack of salt in the blood

  metabolic rate the amount of energy used

  mirage an optical illusion caused by light rays bending to produce an image such as water

  nomads people who do not have one permanent home but move from one place to another

  oases isolated areas of vegetation in deserts

  parasite a creature that lives by feeding on another creature

  plains broad expanses of flat land

  proximity how close something is

  refracted light or other waves being bent

  regs rocky plains

  regurgitate bring swallowed food out of the mouth

  scavengers creatures that feed on dead animals or plants

  sepsis blood poisoning

  serrated having a notched or saw-like edge

  silt a grainy material that is a bit thicker than sand

  succulent juicy, water-storing

  tick a small parasite living on the blood of other creatures

  venomous capable of injecting venom

  wadis the Arabic word for dry river bed or valley

  Lost... In the Jungle of Doom

  You’ve survived the terrifying creatures and deadly dehydration of the Sahara Desert but can you make it through the dark and dangerous Amazon Rainforest in one piece? From ferocious jaguars to poisonous fruits, have you got with it takes to make it out alive?

  With danger lurking behind every corner, will you be able to make it to safety and escape the deadly perils hiding in the shadowy depths?

  Live or die – you decide.

  £4.99 ISBN 9781408194652

  Extract from Lost... In the Jungle of Doom

  You look towards the spot where you thought you heard the sound. You still can’t see anything. You decide to creep a bit further forward, taking care to be quiet, but twigs snap and leaves rustle as you move. You part the branches of a low-growing plant, peering into the greenish gloom of the rainforest at dawn . . .

  You think you see a movement. There’s something there! You look more closely at the spot and almost cry out in fear: a pair of yellow eyes is staring straight at you! You can make out the rest of the animal now – a huge cat, with spotted fur and a long tail. A jaguar. You gulp. The animal snarls, revealing long, pointed teeth. It looks as though it’s about to pounce!

  If you decide to run away, click here.

  If you decide to stand your ground, click here.

  Published 2014 by

  A & C Black, an imprint of

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  ISBN 978-1-4081-9466-9

  eISBN 978-1-4729-0749-3

  This electronic edition published 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Text copyright © 2014 Tracey Turner

  Illustration copyright © 2014 Nelson Evergreen

  Copyright © 2014 A & C Black

  Additional images © Shutterstock

  The rights of Tracey Turner and Nelson Evergreen to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

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