Travellers who intend to cross the desert usually halt at this place to make the necessary preparations for their onward journey. The stock of provisions should be laid in for a month, that time being required for crossing the desert in the narrowest part.
-Travels, Marco Polo
To make tea you need leaf and sugar, water and wood, and on the trail you need to carry them all. Sugar and leaf in cloth sacks, water in skins, fire wood tied to a pack camel. The skins sloshed along the riding camels’ ribs, the leaf and sugar sacks weighed almost nothing, the cedar logs were heavy to load as hell. Personally I could have lived without tea and sugar, I might have died without water, but the fire wood…that was for us together, sitting beside the dying flame at night, waiting up before sleep with stories and jokes, insults and laughter, some staying quiet but all awake until late.