Charlie is a hardy sort - but she tells me I'm way to trusting. in Oman we never locked the car (not that the 30 year old locks would have been any good) and the thing I was most concerned with was having things pinched in towns when we where sorting visa's and get supplies. I had locks on most things and the zippers for the rear flap padlocked onto chains so that you couldn't be tempted to just unzip and stick a hand in as you where walking past.
There was one incident that happened which spooked us though...
In mongolia we were settling into camping after a long day of getting stuck in swamps and crossing rivers when two young guys came over a hill on their little 125cc motor bike. They came over, as everyone does when they see new visitors to the valley and it was clear straight away that they where very VERY drunk. After a few minutes of being polite they told us to go back with them to their yurt to join them for the night with more drinking. If it was just me, or me and someone else I might have said yet - however me and charlie simply didn't want to go and tried to politely decline.
Now imagine a situation where two young blind drug men can not understand why a young english couple refuses to undertand their generous offer of hospitality. They started to throw our camp stuff around into the back of the car as they got more frustrated. At no time did them mean to get aggressive (in my opinion) but they where drunk and there was no common language. Difficult for people to understand who have not been to Oman, but no one - and i mean NO ONE, would EVER invade the space of a women you were with. If you wanted to be left alone all you'd have to say is "Please leave for my wife" and they would leave without being insulted. So when this guys starts getting very close to Charlie and grabbing items out of her hand, things feel wrong.
I changed tack and said we would love to go with them and me and charlie, understanding the plan, quickly packed away in the now pitch black evening aiming to make a speedy (landrover speedy, get away).
Once we're all packed up we climb in the car only to have one of the guys try to get in with us and push charlie out, telling her to get on the motorcycle. She's telling me to drive away, which I can't as he has a hand on her and I can't risk him / her falling out. His friend then starts to drive away on the motorcycle so we think we might be stuck with this guy. Flash of the lights and beep the horn and the motor cycle comes back - I tell the guys "quick, your friend wants you, your friend! your friend!" and lots of pointing. He steps off the slider and lets go of charlie and we take off in reverse.
It's now 11 o'clock and we drive re-tracing our route uin darkness sing the gps track, as charlie insisted we turn off the light. The guys don't follow us, after all they just wanted to keep drinking and never meant us hard in anyway, it was just one of those moments where no common language and alcohol make a problem. We then had to make it through the swamp that had got us stuck for two hours that afternoon.
Approaching it there was a car that was flashing it's lights way off in the distance and charlie was fearful that this was the guys somehow. Knowing that it was someone stuck in the swamp and we needed to help I drove close by and got out to take a look. It was a family van of 5 women and 1 man and charlie relaxed a little. We winched them out and then continued to drive for another two hours reaching the ferry bridge we crossed earlier in the day light. however this time the ferry bridge was on the other side of the deep fast river, which meant we where stuck.
It had now bee 4 hours, it was 3 in the morning and we where in no danger (we had been in little at the start truth be told) but charlie was still very uneasy. Then the family van turned up and the male driver jumped into the river swamp across the pulled the ferry back. Once we where over the river charlie started to calm down, knowing the if the boys tried to swim across the river in their drunkenness they would drown. On that soothing thought we camped for the night.
They didn't mean us any harm at all, and I think it was just the shock of find ourselves in a situation that we couldn't control which didn't feel good. But charlie was nervous wild camping for a couple of weeks after that, and made me check every small sound outside the tent each night. We reminded ourselves that we faced more drunken idiots on one night out in london that we did on the whole trip, but the difference is we could understand what they where saying.
But, what day of the week would you release each episode?...........
