12th Class English Ch 2 Hitch- Hiking Across The Sahara Question Answer

Sahara occupies the complete width of North Africa. It is many times the size of great Britain. It would be difficult to find out England if it were placed in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Christopher was a naughty boy. His foster mother used to threaten him to send him to Timbuktu. The threat aroused in him a keen desire to visit this city.

The civilians were not allowed to travel in the military truck. But Christopher showed the officer a permit from the war ministry. In fact the permit had later been cancelled. But the officer could not see the stamp of cancellation. Therefore Christopher got a seat in the weapon carrier.

Flies were in plenty there. Food was completely covered with flies. Even the faces of children were with flies.

They placed steel mesh before the wheels of the truck to make a runway. The truck moved on this runway easily. In this way they drove the truck in the desert.

The driver told Christopher about three Englishmen who had died while crossing the desert. They drank from the radiator to quench thirst. One of them drank oil.

EI Golea was a true oasis. Its pools of water were shaded by trees. On the other hand . In Salah was fighting for its survival. The sand was engulfing it.

Professor Claude Balanguernon was a Frenchman. He was living at Tamanrasset. He was giving education to the Taured people. At the end he sent the Desert patrol to In Abbangarit to save Christopher.

Christopher and his companions were left without food and water. Thus they had to kill a camel to get water. The fluid they got from its stomach was greenish. It looked like blood.

The part of the desert where they killed a camel to get water was known as the Land of Thirst and Death. It was an area of dry wells. They faced a sand storm there.

At In abbangarit Christopher lived in a mud building. He did not have any bucket or rope to get water from the well. He tied the wire of his recording machine to a metal teapot and drew water from the well.

It consisted of vast barren sand plains. Its days were very hot. It had few water wells and little vegetation. Its larger parts were almost uninhabited. There were widely scattered towns and a few wandering tribes.

It is an ancient city in the heart of French Africa. It is near the river Niger in the extreme south of the inhospitable Sahara desert.

He started his journey form Boussaada. The city is known as the port of the Sahara. It is this city from where the desert really starts.

Three men Robert Christopher the driver and the greaser sat side by side in the front seat. The conditions were very painful. The truck moved at the speed of twenty miles per hour. In two hours the water bag was hot enough to make tea.

There all the time food was completely covered with flies. The people there were not hesitant to eat such food. However the writer was very careful in eating food.

Not realizing the intense heat of sand he jumped out of the truck barefooted. He felt as if he had jumped into a bed of hot coals . With a scream of pain he jumped back into the truck. Meanwhile his thirst became fierce.

He felt that everything was dead and dry and hot. His mind was foggy. He was on fire. His lungs were hurt from the hot air. He tried to faint himself but his head was pounding with so much pain which kept him conscious.

EI Golea was a fascinating little town. It was a true oasis with a plenty of water. It had defeated the barrenness of the desert. There was a little pool half a kilometer away from the centre of the town. It was shaded by palm palm-trees and fruit-trees. Cool grass was growing beside the pool.

Parts of the city were engulfed by the deserts. Palm-trees that stood so high were like bushes. Some trees were completely covered with sand. Christopher bent down and picked some dates off the palm-trees. People were leaving the town.

He had devoted himself to help the Tuareg people. He convinced them that education was useful for them. He adopted their habits and customs to provide them a natural way of learning. He did not ask them to adopt western habits.

Christopher was gathering stones to place them in fire for the pan to stand on them. He found a snake coiled under a stone. The snake struck but Christopher jumped back in time to avoid its deadly stung. The snake was killed by the guide’s slave.

First he tried to make a line by tying all the strings he could find. He even tore his turban into strips to add them to the line. But it made a line half down the well. Finally he used the wire of his recording machine as a line to draw water.

Robert Christopher was an American. His first adventure was that he went around the world at the cost of eighty dollars. He had a keen desire to visit the far-off city Timbuktu. He decided to travel right across the sahara from Algiers to Timbuktu. He hitchhiked the sahara in 1956.