The desert is often a ready-made road.
-Egypt and the English, With Chapters on the Delights of Travel in the Sudan, 1908, Douglas Sladen
Maybe so, but not equally in all directions. We pointed them north, while a few rode east to Omdurman and not one that I saw went west or south. Yes the desert permits a rider to go anywhere, to the Cape or to Cairo, from the Muhīt to the Bahr, the Ocean to the Sea. But the tracks pointed us to Egypt on the Sirāt, the Path, the Way, or as the Quran has it, Sirāt al-Mustaqīm, Path of the Upright, which in a camel saddle is as one must always ride.