Desert Life

Time : 1:30 a.m.

Place: Somewhere in the middle of the Arabian Desert.

No sign of human existence or help is around. The driver was carrying me to the base camp, and I was supposed to start my work by 6:00 a.m. My heavy eyes were dropping their eyelids. But I could not afford to sleep. I had to keep my driver awake to avoid any midnight mishaps. We were 60 km to the base camp when the wheel ripped apart. No torch, no tools. In the morning, I had to take a desert navigation lesson, and I learned about the required tools, equipment, and artificial nav-aid in the desert. Keeping all the materials back at the base camp, the driver arrived in the city to pick me up, and now we were busted in the middle of the desert.

Changing the wheel in the dark without a torch consumed 1.5 hours of the precious sleepy night. This was my very first taste of the desert. I reached the base camp at 3:30 a.m. Opened my room. It was only a portable cabin but neat and clean with a minimum of required furniture. This was going to be my home and office for the next few weeks. My job was to upgrade and formulate the intelligence for a few oil wells of the largest oil-producing company in the world.

Working in the desert is not an easy task. Definitely not. My operational area was 200 km in radius without any fellow humans or aid. To operate in such an area, you must mug up the map and study the desert. You must learn the navigation and orienteering without artificial nav-aid, especially for when you’re in a moving vehicle. You have to have a good sense of direction. You have to rely on the sun's position, wind direction, and the shape of the sand dunes to determine the direction during the day. You must understand the migration of the desert hawks and their evening flight paths to find a source of water or an oasis. Judging the distance in the desert causes 200-300% of the errors humans make, so you can not calculate ETA by apparent distance.

This all comes under worst case scenario, however. I was equipped with the most sophisticated GPS devices, maps, compasses, and scales for navigation, and I had satellite phone and radio for communication (the most important part is knowing how to use them). I had a solar charger for the batteries of each GPS and communication system. Tools are good, but I'm thankful to my desert mentor for teaching me navigational skills that don’t require aid, for teaching me to read the desert just with open eyes, to understand the desert and risks just by keeping all five senses alert. I wish I could mention his name but I can’t, for security reasons. He knows who he is.

Desert weather is an acid test. I arrived here in winter, and wind gusts and cold sandstorms are the real challenges to face. Two weeks have been finished. Every morning starts with a briefing which includes the weather report for the day, specifications and classification of an operational area, clarifications of all the questions regarding navigation, safety, and communication and, last but not least, the risk assessment. Once finished, it’s time to get started with the actual work for the day.

Sometimes I've faced extreme weather conditions even though the morning weather report was clean. Sometimes I've worked in such a hostile sandstorm that I have to shelter myself very quickly, as the gusts strengthen suddenly. After a few seconds, as I open my eyes, I find my laptop buried beneath an envelope of sand. The weather changes quickly and dramatically here. While one day might be very clear and cold, the next day can be extremely harsh with heavy to very heavy sandstorms. The next day can be a day of thunder and rain. It's an amazing thing to see rain in the desert and the way it washes the sand dunes. Day four might bring subzero wind chill factors. It's hard to forecast the weather and it's even harder to face it.

One day I was working at the well site, and my desert mentor had to move to another site. Before leaving he said, “Stay away from desert foxes”. I didn't understand. The only desert fox I knew was General Rommel of the WWII German army. Jokes aside, soon I found the fresh pugmark of a member of the dog family: literally, a desert fox. No doubt the marks were fresh because desert wind obliterates footsteps within minutes—f lowing sand erases everything printed on it. Well, I didn't see the fox, but it was still one of the best experiences to work alone for an entire day knowing that the desert creatures were lurking around me. They aren't really dangerous, anyway.

For the first time, I was alone in one of the most remote corners of the world. Over the course of time, I’ve become used to the work and being alone. My mentor just couldn’t be with me all the time, and when he’s not around, I experience the desert in my own style. Like sprinting to the top of a sand dune and then tumbling down. Burying my body underneath the sand. Enjoying self-prepared hot coffee (I use an AC power outlet available near the oil well to boil the water for my tea and coffee!) with cookies as a part of My Desert Café…but all alone. There is no one out here but me. I shout, I laugh out loud. Wind will carry my words to the outside world, or maybe my voice will be diminished in the air a few meters away from my geographic position. But who cares? This is the desert spice! And here I am, where I’m supposed to be.

My mentor now understands my desert habits. He never bothers me when I’m enjoying. Once he said “Blood is draining out of your veins. It's the sand that has started flowing. You are becoming a real son of the soil…sorry, I mean the sand”. I pass him the message and position over the radio to pick me up as I finish my job (and joy). While he’s on his way, I use the time to wander around with the map discovering new desert vistas and any creatures and vegetation that might exist. I don't think “flora” and “fauna” sound quite right in the desert.

My mentor is a genuine gentleman, and he’s the real son of the sand. He has spent his entire long life in the desert. He’s an expert desert reader and a loyal employee of the world's largest oil company for the past 33 years as a 'Maintenance Supervisor: Intelligent Field'. He knows when it’s time to let me be all alone in the desert and when to be with me. He has always reached out to pick me up, sometimes in the middle of my job, as he senses the weather change. I cannot argue with him; rather, I've got to quit working half way through the day. Just as he arrives, the desert gets dreadful and ruthless with intense sandstorms. I could die within minutes if he didn’t come for me. But he is always quicker and faster than the storms. I wonder how he reads the weather so perfectly miles away from my geographic location. I ask him many times. He only smiles and answers, “You need to spend all your life here to understand this. The desert has gone into my DNA.”

Many times while traveling we discuss religion and culture. He seems very interested in understanding Hinduism and its customs and traditions. We also discuss world politics, especially things related to the oil and gas sector in the Middle East. Sometimes we discuss our families. His only son is a field engineer with a reputable oil company, and he’s presently working in Latin America. My mentor wants to see the outside world, something other than a desert. Spending a holiday in Maldives is his long-cherished dream. He says that he'll roam all around the world after retirement. At the same time, he is happy for the younger generation (to which his son and I belong), as we get a chance to see various exotic places and cultures of different people around the world at a very young age.

Sometimes a flock of camels intrude into my workplace, but these outnumbered intruders never harm me. Instead, they are very friendly and cultured although their voices sound horrible (especially during the night). I dream of a camel ride every time I see them. They are unattended by humans; they seem to be wild wanderers of this vast desert, and they’re bigger than any of the camels I've seen in the desert of Rajasthan in India. One day I was working with my Schlumberger colleague when a herd of camels appeared. My colleague was 70m away from me configuring his system. I saw him dealing with one of the camels out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly, he discovered a stupid universal truth: camels don't like apples. Later he discovered another truth: camels don't even like dates. He was passing these universal truths over the radio in an excited pitch. I asked him to send these truths to my system over ModBus Serial communication, and the worst part was that he did it. It was silly, but this is the only fun you can have as you stand in the centre of the desert.

Another interesting part of my work is watching the low-flying jets. This Arabian oil field is an important asset of this nation, and its airspace is dominated by fast flying jets. These jets not only guard the airspace, but they also keep a close eye on every oil well. You must have a permit to work on a specific well site because any movement at the oil well is tracked from the air and reported back to Industrial Security, which guards the vast landscape of the oil wells. These security personnel then look into the database of the 'day's work permits', and they can get to the suspicious well within minutes for an identification of 'friend or foe'. I never carry out any work without a proper work permit, so I’m always safe in the eyes of these fighter pilots and industrial security personnel. Sometime a jet circles so low and slow above my work location that I can see the pilot inside the F-16's bubbled canopy braking hard just a few meters above ground level. Sometimes they fly near supersonic at this low level, and I don't understand what the damn do they capture at this speed and altitude. No doubt the roar of these jets brings some enthusiasm to the atmosphere.

My work permit for the day in the desert ends at 3:00 p.m. since, at 4:00 p.m., the dusk falls. Then I travel to the control room to test the oil well system's communication with the control room, to configure the software for the commissioned oil wells, and to solve any previous issues. Flow calculations and productivity indices are the most serious elements for the geologists who manage the oil reservoir as well as for production engineers who are responsible for daily production. Various parameters from each well enable these people to monitor the reservoir health for optimum production over a period of time. Nevertheless, to me, it's only the database handling, mathematics, and calculations to generate reports, graphs, and charts. It's boring but all so important, since this is the heart of the daily oil production which is then processed and pumped into the world's heart to keep it alive. The technical aspects of my job seem worthless compared to the desert experience that I gain.

Three weeks later, I feel mentally healthy but physically dented. Harsh weather and subzero sandy wind-chill has taken a toll on my body. My dry, dead skin needs moisture, and lungs filled with sand need a cleaning. A throat infection and swollen tonsils are starving me. Am I still not acclimatized to this environment? Well, I don't know. The words of Robin Esrock echo in my ears: “In harsh conditions where only the hardiest species survive, you really appreciate what it means to be alive.” Feeling the cold desert air exfoliate my skin with fine red sand, it's easy to understand the beauty in the vastness.
I'm not here for life. It's just a few weeks. And as long as I'm here, I’m enjoying every inch of the desert I walk on and every second of the time I spend.