Chapter 823 Lost Oasis
“We’re finally here.”
At the top of the canyon, Bifang held his hat and stood on his camel. In front of him was a huge, magnificent and beautiful canyon with a winding black river and a huge number of wild camels gathered there to drink water.
The Mickey-colored expedition suit had faded after being exposed to the sun and washed for many days, and was almost white. The two sides of the Alpha were hung with a variety of trophies.
Yellow and white bones, animal teeth, and black and white ostrich feather capes hung on both sides. They swayed gently in the breeze, and the sound of animal teeth colliding could be heard.
[So handsome]
[It would be even cooler if it was a horse]
[Indeed, camels are suitable for the desert, but they are not as handsome as horses]
[Do you look down on me, Alpha? I’ll give you a headbutt! ]
【I'll give you a headbutt! 】
[Headbutt King Warning]
A few days ago, Bifang encountered a wild camel in the desert. Maybe it was because it had seen too many people or something, but the camel was not afraid of Bifang riding the camel and approached it actively. As a result, Alpha went crazy and hit the camel hard with his neck. If Bifang hadn't stopped him later, the situation might have been even worse.
Alpha is one of the largest male camels. The wild camel was caught off guard and was hit. It was dazed and kept its head down for a long time before it reacted, screaming and running away in panic.
After that, Bifang’s fans gave Alpha the title of “Headbutt King”, and they kept talking about it, until it became a meme that you can see every day.
"Go, go down."
Bifang pulled the reins and asked Alpha to turn around and walk down the canyon. There were groups of camels and naturally a lot of grass and trees below.
What's more, this is a rare landscape.
Guilta Dachi.
This eternal oasis, located on the Ennedi Plateau, is one of the most beautiful hidden treasures on earth, where camels often gather to drink water and rest.
Camel dung has washed down the oasis over the centuries, turning the water black and providing shelter for a variety of other animals, including Nile crocodiles.
Bifang rode a camel and ran along the cliff, looking for a path.
"There is an ancient town nearby, which the locals pronounce as Qadamus. It is an oasis city in the Sahara Desert."
"Not far from the city is an endless desert. Any sand dune in the desert would take a child a long time to climb up. Once you are there, if you look south, you will see countless sand dunes."
"In the middle of the dunes not far from the town there is an oasis surrounded by sand. Camels can drink water there."
"Yes, this is the one in front of us, Guilta Dachi, one of the most famous desert oases. It is located in the Ennedi Plateau Canyon in the center of the Sahara Desert, in Chad, hidden in a canyon."
“This is a legendary place.”
Many oases have left a significant mark in history, and Dutch is no exception.
This place is deep in the Sahara and was unknown to the Western "civilized world" until the 19th century.
“I wonder if any of you have played Uncharted Waters 2. In it, there is a fantasy city called Timbuktu that you have to go deep inland, run out of food and water, and kill half the people before you can reach it.”
"Dach is a place similar to Timbuktu in the game."
"If we say that Africa was once wetter than it is now, with more abundant rainfall, the desert area was not as large as it is now, and the climatic conditions in the desert were not as extreme as they are now."
"So the ancients roamed around and herded their livestock, and left petroglyphs on the rocks in the desert, indicating that there was still water and grass there at the time."
"In the large oases inside the desert, people settled and cultivated. Today, oases in the Sahara often still have ruins of Greek and Roman styles, indicating that it was not difficult for outside civilizations to enter these oases at that time."
Bifang walked along the path and looked up to see some marks on the surrounding rock walls.
Some are stick figures, some contain information, and some are just simple doodles.
These are what humans have left here for thousands of years.
"Later, with climate change, rainfall decreased, deserts became larger, oases shrank, and it became increasingly difficult to reach the interior of Africa, so these places gradually became unknown to the outside world."
"But this outside world is often relative. For local residents in Africa, these places are not mysterious, and the residents are not primitive humans who are untouchable and incomprehensible."
This is the case with the real Dutch. Although the "civilized world" is unaware of its existence, Africans know about it. There are not only trade routes and residents there, but also an academic center.
"The trade route network across the Sahara has existed since the time when the pharaohs built the pyramids. It gradually developed after 300 AD, with large caravans passing through it every year."
"These caravans are not like the caravans that we see in movies that go to the Western Regions. They are just , lined up in a single column and can't even take up a sand dune."
"According to Ibn Battuta, a famous Moroccan traveler in the 14th century, I don't know if anyone knows him, but he traveled all over the world as it was known at the time."
"At that time, he recorded that a caravan had at least 1,000 camels, and the largest even had more than 12,000!"
[Fuck, so many? ]
[Fuck, they can even form a cavalry regiment! ]
[How much is this?]
Such an exaggerated number left the audience stunned.
But they did not doubt Bifang.
Some common sense has been overturned, and there are still people who like to argue, but when it comes to little-known knowledge and characters that no one knows, no one will stand up and ask back, as it is easy to expose half of their own butts.
"Even such a large caravan still has to walk on thin ice during the journey. The leading camel team must rush to the next oasis several days in advance and then return to replenish fresh water for the main team to ensure the safety of the journey."
"The first caravan on Ibn Battuta's journey brought back four days' worth of water from the Walata Oasis."
"Ibn Battuta himself was still proud of his life's wish in his later years, and he surpassed everyone in the world in travel."
[I think it is not as good as Fangshen (dog head)]
[Indeed, what does it mean to go to the Sahara alone? Tactical retreat]
[The country is peaceful and the people are safe. The emperor has been opened in Fang Shen’s live broadcast room! 】
【Boss!!!】
【Big Brother V50 Kaifeng dishes】
[Fang Shen has too many emperors to count]
In contrast to the audience, the barrage was full of boasting.
Arriving in Chad, the trip was already in the second half.
The so-called success of crossing the Sahara is imminent, which will add another legendary chapter to Bifang's resume. It is hard not to be excited.
What do these caravans sell?
[Yes, a camel carries 50 kilograms, which is 50 tons of cargo.]
【Really awesome】
Bifang thanked the audience for their compliments and rewards, and replied.
"Various raw materials, luxury goods and specialties, from the earliest obsidian used to process stone tools to the later precious metals, and of course the everlasting slaves and salt."
"North African countries imported slaves to use as domestic servants, while West African countries used them to train slave soldiers."
"These are recorded in many documents, including one in the works of Herodotus in ancient Greece."
"It starts in Darfur, Sudan, and goes north through a series of small, uninhabited oases, through the Khariga Oasis in Egypt, and ends in Asyut in central Egypt."
"This road is more famously known as the Forty Days Road. Every year, slave traders would drive 80,000 slaves on the road. After a 40-day trek, they would reach the slave market in Asyut. Generally, only 20,000 of them would make it alive. This trade route was not abolished until the Mahdi Rebellion in Sudan in the late 19th century."
At its peak, there were as many as 1,400 trade routes across the Sahara. These large caravans were not defeated until modern times by trans-African railway transportation, but such traditional caravans still exist in Central Africa.
They travel once a year to exchange salt from the outside world, but the scale is only a few dozen camels.
Traditional caravans still follow the Sahara trade routes that began in the Pharaoh era.
"If the situation gets worse, the oasis shrinks, the population decreases, and the water sources along the way disappear, then the caravan will not be able to move forward."
"People from outside couldn't get in, and people from inside couldn't get out. After a few generations, even the local residents of Africa couldn't figure out what was on the other side of the desert and who was there. That place really became a legendary place."
"But this doesn't mean that there are no people in the desert or that people have completely degenerated into primitive people. People still exist tenaciously and there are national organizations. You can't say that is not culture."
"This is the case with Dachi. It is located in a region called the Great Sand Sea, which stretches from Qattara in Egypt all the way west across the grassland we walked out of earlier. It is the second largest continuous sand-covered area on Earth, second only to the Great Oriental Desert in Algeria."
"The wind has formed huge sand dunes that stretch for hundreds of kilometers in the Great Sand Sea. It is easier to walk north-south, but you have to climb over the dunes one by one if you walk east-west. The western slope of these dunes is relatively gentle, while the eastern slope is steep and covered with quicksand. If you insist on climbing over them from east to west, it is much easier to walk east than west. Therefore, it is almost impossible to enter Daqi from Egypt and Sudan on the eastern coast. This place is semi-closed by nature, and even the indigenous people of East Africa don't know of its existence."
Until the 19th century, central Africa, especially the desert areas, remained mostly blank on maps.
"Mechanized vehicles had not yet been invented, and all travel deep into the desert was subject to the same factor: the extreme endurance of the camel, which was equally applicable to indigenous people, caravans and explorers."
"A camel caravan could travel 300 kilometers in the desert if it carried spare drinking water. This means that explorers at that time could advance 150 kilometers from a known oasis. If they did not find a new water source, they would have to turn around. If they insisted on moving forward without encountering a new oasis, they would only die in the sea of sand."
[It seems that Fang Shen is still a bit better hahaha]
[No map, cross the desert! 】
"In addition, there were a series of pirate states in North Africa at that time, and Europeans could not explore from the north. Therefore, European explorers at that time could only learn about the Dutch from old papers and legends passed down by word of mouth by residents in East Africa."
Once you enter the canyon, you will see wild camels everywhere.
Bifang didn't dare to get too close to the Black Water.
Looking at the "dead wood" hidden in the Black River, you can understand that there are crocodiles in the Black River.
This is one of the few oases in the Sahara Desert where Nile crocodiles still exist.
If you get too close, you'll most likely be attacked as prey.
This is the largest crocodile in Africa, second only to the largest saltwater crocodile. It is the most studied crocodile by humans among all 23 species of crocodiles.
Bifang also had to be careful.
"In 1873, German explorer Friedrich Gerhard Rolfs, with funding from the Governor of Egypt, ventured westward from Dakhla."
"The journey across the sand dunes was too difficult for the camel caravan. About 190 kilometers southwest of Dakhla, a sudden heavy rain fell, which brought them timely fresh water. Rolfs then named this place Regenfeld."
"But due to the influence of quicksand, the camels could not climb up the eastern slope of the sand dunes, so they had to turn north and walk along the valley to the Siwa Oasis in northwest Egypt. The exploration ended in failure."
"In order to pretend to be an Arab, Rolfs even circumcised himself."
"It was not until five years later that Rolfs was commissioned by the German African Society to go to Wadai in Chad in central Africa. This time he went south from the northern coast of Libya and finally arrived in Dachi, becoming the first European to reach this place."
Thanks to his own memory forest, Bifang can easily come up with such short stories and can even remember the years clearly.
This ability really shocked many fans.
[Damn, how does Fang Shen know so much? ]
[It seems like I need Bifang’s brain]
[Will you become smarter if you eat Fang Shen’s brain?]
You will only get prions.
[This oasis sounds pretty cool]
[You can tell from the number of camels in the river that there are crocodiles in the river! ]
[A frequent visitor to the animal world, this is the only crocodile I can recognize]
"Every day, hundreds of camels come to the knee-deep water to drink and rest. The water has turned black from the droppings of thousands of camels over the centuries."
"We can only see a unique black river here."
“This is also one of the last remaining colonies of Nile crocodiles in the Sahara.”
The canyon is huge and the oasis is also large, otherwise there would not be enough space for a group of Nile crocodiles to rest and recuperate here.
Because it is large enough, the scenery here is varied and the audience even saw boiling water.
There are some oases in the Sahara Desert that survive by relying on the nourishment of volcanic hot springs. The Dachi Oasis also has a section with hot springs.
Fish began to live some distance . The inky black water was barely visible in the sunlight. A group of young tilapia followed their mother closely.
Further away, Bifang witnessed another hunt.
It was a young camel drinking water. It was bitten by a crocodile and dragged into the water, struggling constantly.
How could the crocodiles let go of such a delicious treat? Several crocodiles surrounded the camel, causing waves on the water surface. After a few death rolls, the little camel was dead.
Bifang looked at the bank of the Black Water River, which was less than three meters away from him.
Everyone was horrified.
