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160 in a Lada Riva....hmmm

Well you all know from my first post. I grew up in the mountains. There wasn’t much to do. At the weekends we would all put our money together and buy a scrap car and rally it until it died. There was this one mountain road many people used to rally scrap cars on. Google Benbradagh army base if you’re interested. It was a single track road but it was tarmaced. There were no houses on the road so it was a 2-3 mile stretch people could go and have fun with no worry of police coming. I had been going there for years. Never had any trouble. I was like 14-15 at the time. One weekend we bought a Lada Riva for £50 (250 dhs). Brought it to my dads shed and welded the diff so it was a drift machine. My granny beat my ass for driving past her house at 160kph but that’s a different story. Anyway, this road was open and always empty so everyone went there to have some fun at the weekend. We decided to bring this one guy with us one weekend. He paid his £10 share. When it was his turn to drive, he veered off the road at every opportunity and smashed every farmers fancy wooden gate. This incident lead to the whole road being blocked off by a massive steel barrier at the bottom. That guy hecked up fun for a hundred young petrol heads in my area. I will tell the digger story at a later date. Needless to say he was ostracised and ignored and had to move to the city.

When I was first starting off my safari career and I hardly could drive on sand. There was a big group and right with all the senior management also in the camp which was very rare to see things went smoothly, but as soon as the guests arrived the camp generator died and there was a huge panick and no matter what it refused to come on. There was a spare generator but that was at a new camp site being built and none of the drivers knew the location of the new site. I had been there only once seeing this as my chance to prove my worth ans to make inroads into company to get more work. I said Ive been there and can bring the generator. I had been there once, but hardly knew my way around the desert or knew how to drive on anything but tracks So the manager handed me his keys and like a super hero I took the land cruiser pickup both fuel tanks topped up as far as the needle can go because he had a company fuel card and kept what ever car he was driving always topped uo anyways so started up and got on my way. Our camp was exactly on the spot where emarat petrol pump on maliha road is after the bridge and the road ended at the bridge, but the road to maliha was being constructed and the bull dozers had just leveled out the sand on what today is the maliha kalba road. Me being a noob had no idea how soft bulldozed sand is. Less than a km out I got on to the bulldozed track and the pickup sank up to its axels in powered sand. I had seen a few peope rocking the car to get out so tried that to self recover. Nothing I tried and tired but nothing, dug as much as I knew but. Car wouldnt budge, dunno how much time had passed but it was quite dark by then and I knew even if I got out now I woild for sure get lost in the dark as I barely knew my way around in the day. And if I called someone to help me out I knew it would be the end of my safari career for doing something as stupid as jeopardizing such a big operation. I heard the call to prayer over my car radio and I made a very deep prayer that please god save me skinand get me out of this situation and save whatever credibility I have left. And gave it one more try and like a miracle the car came out but by now it was pretty dark and alot of time had gone by I knew I still wouldnt be able to get the gene. Then my phone rang...gulp. I picked it up out safari manager asked where are you I said Im almost at the new campsite. He said no need now as they were able to fix the generator and get it running and told me to comeback eveb though I lied and said I can bring the other gene just in case because I was almost there. TOTAL LIE, but he said no need come back as the pick up is needed. I also knew our manager was a very smart fox. So what I did was put the car in low and really ripped around the sand in 1st and 2nd for a good while until I had used up half a tank of gas and then went back to the camp and handed him the keys back.He thanked me and said good job. But I kept my eye on the car and later in I saw him checking then fuel gauge on the car. So that was ne saving ny safari career before it ended by lying through my teeth and some devine intervention. Oh and just for reference the new campsite was in the area opposite the bidayer shops where you take the tunnel underpass to head into the desert. So quite a drive from Kalba gas station to there, specially for a newbie on his own And this is just one of the many stories I have in this field. Sometimes I think I could write a book just on such events.