For an hour or two I sat on my camel waiting for the things of which I had been warned- camel sickness and camel boredom. The ground looked far away and I was a little puzzled by the thought that there was no manner of brake to use on a runaway camel, but I had no other worries.
-The Desert Road to Turkestan, Owen Lattimore, 1928
Owen Lattimore started crossing deserts as a 26 year old riding from China to India in a camel caravan. His Inner Asian Frontiers of China was the first book I ever took off my grandfather’s shelf. If I’d read it then I probably would have seen his essay On the Wickedness of Being Nomads, ironically titled from the perspective of farmers, and been even more intrigued by people like KhairAllah.