Grains Of Sand

by Martin Buckley

Driven by a desire to explore the most remote, barren yet romantic places on earth, Martin Buckley set off on a two-year journey through the world's deserts. In the Sahara he was threatened with murder. In the Gobi, he hijacked a cycle-rickshaw. Dehydrating in the Sonora, he hallucinated fruit cocktails. Encountering the desert at its most extreme, he learned how to find water - and how to spit tobacco into a camel's nostril.Images of the desert exert a powerful grip on the human imagination, from Lawrence of Arabia to Star Wars. Deserts feel familiar, yet mysterious. The truth is that they are even stranger than we imagine.GRAINS OF SAND is a passionate, profound and frequently funny evocation of the world's deserts and the people who live in them; an extraordinary global adventure, and a personal voyage of discovery.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published March 29, 2001

Reviews

[The Final Chapter · Rating 2 out of 5]

High 2. This book had an excellent premise - to cicumnavigate the world around the belt of deserts in the southern hemisphere. Buckley does give vivid descriptions of the nomadic tribes, such as the Tuareg in the Sahara, and cast of fellow travellers of these inhospitable routes, but does not offer the reader any deeper insights into the political and social landscape in each region. Therefore, the book never lifts itself above an interesting travelogue.