At the top of the canyon, Bi Fang held his hat and stood upright. In front of him was a huge, magnificent and beautiful canyon, with black rivers meandering and a huge number of wild camels gathering here to drink water.
The Mickey-colored adventure suit became a little faded after being exposed to the sun and washing for many days, almost white, and Alpha's sides were covered with dazzling trophies.
Yellow and white bones, animal teeth, and black and white ostrich feather shawls hang on both sides. The breeze blows, gently swaying, and the soft sound of the collision of animal teeth is heard.
【handsome】
[It would be even more handsome if it were replaced by a horse]
[Indeed, although camels are suitable for deserts, they are not as handsome as horses]
[You look down on me, Alpha? I’ll give you a headbutt! 】
【Give you a headbutt!】
【Headbutt King Warning】
A few days ago, Bi Fang met a wild camel in the desert. I don't know if it was because he saw too many people or something, but he was not afraid of Bi Fang who was riding a camel. He took the initiative to approach it. As a result, Alpha went crazy and shook it.
He gave the camel a hard blow on the neck. If Bi Fang hadn't stopped him later, it might have been even worse.
Alpha's body size is one of the best among male camels. The wild camel was smashed without any precautions. It was full of bruises. It took a long time with its head lowered to react, and it screamed and ran away in fear.
After that, Bi Fang's fans gave Alpha the title of Headbutt King. The more they talked about it, the more enthusiastic they became, and it became a meme that can be seen every day.
"Go, get down."
Bi Fang tugged on the reins and asked Alpha to change direction and walk down the canyon. There were a group of camels below, and naturally there were vegetation.
What's more, this is a rare sight.
Guelta Dutch.
This timeless oasis, located on the Ennedi Plateau, is one of the most magnificent hidden treasures on earth, where camels often gather to drink water and rest.
Camel excrement has washed away over hundreds of years, turning the oasis water black and providing shelter for a variety of other animals, including the Nile crocodile.
Bi Fang rode a camel and ran along the cliff, looking for a path.
"There is an ancient town nearby, which the locals pronounce as Gadamus. It is an oasis city in the Sahara Desert."
"Not far outside the city is the endless desert. Any sand dune in the desert can take a child a long time to climb up. After climbing up, if you look south, there are countless sand dunes."
"In the center of the dunes not far from the town there is an oasis surrounded by sand. Camels can drink there."
"That's right, it's the one in front of us, Guelta Dachi, one of the most famous desert oases. It is located in the Ennedi Plateau Canyon in the center of the Sahara Desert. It belongs to Chad and is hidden in a canyon.
"
"This is a legendary place."
There are many oases that have left a mark in history, and Dutch is no exception.
This place is deep in the Sahara and was unknown to the Western "civilized world" until the 19th century.
"I don't know if any water friends have played "Age of Discovery 2". In it, you need to go deep into the inland, and then run out of food and water and kill half of the people to reach the dreamy city - Timbuktu."
"Dachi is a place similar to Timbuktu in the game."
"In ancient times, Africa was wetter than it is now, with abundant rainfall, the desert area was not as large as it is now, and the climate conditions in the desert were not so extreme."
"So the ancients roamed around grazing animals and left petroglyphs on the rocks in the desert, indicating that there were still aquatic plants there at that time."
"In the large oases inside the desert, people settled and cultivated them. Today's oases in the Sahara often still have Greek and Roman-style ruins, which shows that it was not difficult for external civilizations to enter these oases at that time."
Bifang followed the path and looked up to see some marks on the surrounding rock walls.
Some are simple drawings, some are messages, and some are just simple graffiti.
These are what humans have left here for thousands of years.
"Later, with climate change, rainfall decreased, desert areas became larger and larger, and oases shrank. It became increasingly difficult to reach the interior of Africa, and these places gradually became unknown to the outside world."
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"But the outside world is often relative. For the local residents in Africa, these places are not mysterious, and the residents are not primitive humans who are inaccessible and incomprehensible."
This is the case in reality. Although the "civilized world" does not know its existence, Africans do. Not only does it have trade routes, there are residents there, and it even has an academic center.
"The trade route network across the Sahara has existed since the time when the Pharaohs were building the pyramids. It gradually developed after 300 AD, with large caravans passing through it every year."
"These caravans are not like the caravans that lead to the Western Regions in movies, which are just a few camels. They line up in a single column and can't even occupy a sand dune."
"According to Ben Battuta, a famous traveler in Morocco in the 14th century, I don't know if anyone knows him. He traveled all over the world known at that time."
"At that time, he recorded that a caravan had at least 1,000 camels, and the largest one even exceeded 12,000!"
【Holy shit, so many?】
[What the hell, they can even form a cavalry regiment!]
[How much does this cost?]
Such exaggerated figures left the audience stunned.
But they didn't doubt Bifang.
Some common sense has been subverted, and some good-hearted people are making excuses, but when it comes to such trivial knowledge and characters that no one knows about, there are no arrogant water friends to stand up and ask questions, and it is easy to expose their half-assed buttocks.
"Even such a large caravan still walks on thin ice during the journey. The leading camel team must rush to the next oasis a few days in advance and then return to the main team to replenish water to ensure travel safety."
“During Yin Ben Battuta’s trip, the camel caravan that set off early brought back four days’ worth of water from the Vallarta Oasis.”
"Yinben Battuta himself was still proud of himself in his later years that he had fulfilled his wish in his life and surpassed all people in the world in terms of travel."
[I think it’s not as good as Fang Shen (dog head)
[Indeed, what does it mean to enter the Sahara alone? Tactically fall back]
[Guotai Minan opened the emperor in Fang Shen’s live broadcast room! 】
【Big boss!
!]
[Dalao V50 just opens the dish]
[The emperors like Fang Shen are too numerous to count]
In contrast to the audience, the barrage was filled with boasts.
When we arrived in Chad, we were already in the second half of our trip.
The so-called success of crossing the Sahara is imminent, and it will add a legend to Bi Fang's resume. It is difficult not to be excited.
[What are these caravans selling?]
[Yes, a camel carrying fifty kilograms is fifty tons of cargo]
【Real cow batch】
Bi Fang thanked the audience for their compliments and rewards, and replied.
"A variety of raw materials, luxury goods and specialties, from obsidian for the earliest processing of stone tools, to later precious metals, and of course the everlasting slaves and salt."
"At that time, North African countries imported slaves to be used as domestic servants, while West African countries used them to train slave soldiers."
"These are recorded in many documents, including one in the writings of Herodotus in ancient Greece."
"Starting from Darfur in Sudan, it goes north through a series of small uninhabited oases, passing through the Kharij Oasis in Egypt, and finally reaches Assiut in central Egypt."
"The more famous name of this road is probably the Forty Days Road. Every year, slave traders drive 80,000 slaves on the road. After 40 days of trekking to the slave market in Assiut, only 20,000 people usually make it alive.
This trade route was not abolished until the Mahdi uprising in Sudan at the end of the 19th century."
At its peak, there were as many as 1,400 trade routes across the Sahara. This large-scale caravan was not defeated by railway transportation across the African continent until modern times, but there are still such traditional caravans in Central Africa.
They go there once a year to exchange salt from the outside world, but the scale is only a few dozen camels.
Traditional caravans still travel on the Saharan trade routes that began in the time of the Pharaohs.
"If the situation is worse, the oases shrink, the population decreases, and the water sources along the way disappear, then the caravan will not be able to leave."
"People from the outside can't get in, and people from the inside can't get out. After a few generations, even the local residents in Africa can't figure out where and who lives on the other side of the desert. That place has truly become a legendary place."
"But this does not mean that there are no people in the desert or that they have completely degenerated into primitive people. People still exist tenaciously and there are national organizations. You can't say that it is not culture."
"This is the case in Dachi. The location where it is located is called the Great Sand Sea. It extends from Qattara in Egypt to the west through the grassland we walked out of earlier. It is the second largest continuous sand covering area on the earth.
The Great Eastern Desert, second only to Algeria.”
"Due to the wind, huge sand dunes stretching for hundreds of kilometers have been formed in the big sand sea. If it is easier to go north-south, you have to climb over one sand dune after another going east-west.
The western slopes of these dunes are relatively gentle, while the eastern slopes are steep and covered with quicksand. If you insist on climbing east-west, it is easier to go farther east than west.
Therefore, it is almost impossible to enter Dachi from Egypt and Sudan on the eastern coast. This place is semi-closed by nature, and even the indigenous residents of eastern Africa do not know its existence."
Until the 19th century, central Africa, especially the desert areas, remained mostly blank on maps.
"At that time, mechanized vehicles had not yet been invented, and all travel into the desert was subject to the same factor, which was the extreme endurance of the camel. This was completely equal for indigenous people, caravans and explorers."
"The camel caravan can travel 300 kilometers in the desert while carrying spare drinking water. This means that the explorers at that time could go 150 kilometers from the known oasis. If they did not find a new water source, they had to turn around and insist on doing so.
To move forward without encountering a new oasis is to perish in a sea of sand."
[It seems that Fang Shen still has a little bit in his mouth, hahaha]
[Without a map, crossing the desert!]
"In addition, North Africa was occupied by a series of pirate countries at that time, and Europeans were unable to explore from the north. Therefore, European explorers at that time could only rely on piles of old papers and oral legends passed down by the residents of eastern Africa."
Completely entering the canyon, all you can see are wild camels.
Bi Fang did not dare to get too close to the black water.
Looking at the "dead trees" hidden in the black river, you will understand that the black river belongs to crocodiles.
There are only a few oases in the Sahara Desert where Nile crocodiles still exist, and this is one of them.
If you get too close, you may be attacked as prey.
This is the largest crocodile in Africa, second only to the largest crocodile, and the most studied one among all 23 species of crocodiles.
Bi Fang also had to be careful.
"In 1873, the German explorer Friedrich Gerhard Rolfs received funding from the Governor of Egypt and ventured from Dakhla to explore westward."
"The journey over the sand dunes was too difficult for the camel team. There was a sudden heavy rain about 190 kilometers west-south of Dakhla, which brought them a timely supply of fresh water. Rolfs then brought
This place is named Regenfeld.”
"However, due to the influence of quicksand, the camels were unable to climb the east slope of the dune, so they had to turn north and follow the valley to the Siwa Oasis in northwest Egypt. This exploration ended in failure."
"In order to pretend to be an Arab, Rolfs even circumcised himself."
"It wasn't until five years later that Rolfs was commissioned by the German African Society to go to Wadi, Chad in central Africa. This time he went south from the Libyan coast in the north and finally reached Dhachi, becoming the first European to arrive here.
"
Thanks to his own memory forest, Bifang can easily pick up such short stories and even remember the year clearly.
This ability really shocked many fans.
[Damn it, how does Fang Shen know so much? 】
[It seems like Bifang’s brain is needed]
[Will eating Fang Shen’s brain make you smarter?]
[You will only be infected with prions]
[It sounds like this oasis is very interesting]
[Just look at the number of camels in the river and you will know that there are actually crocodiles in the river!]
[A frequent visitor to Animal World, this is the only crocodile I can recognize]
"Every day, hundreds of camels rush into knee-deep water to drink and rest. Hundreds of thousands of camel excrements have turned the water black over hundreds of years."
"We can only see a unique black river here."
"This is also the last remaining colony of Nile crocodiles in the Sahara Desert."
The canyon is huge and the oasis is also huge, otherwise it would not be able to accommodate a group of Nile crocodiles to rest and recuperate here.
It is also large enough, and the scenes here are varied, and the audience even saw boiling water.
There are some oases in the Sahara Desert that survive by being nourished by volcanic hot springs. There is also a section of the Dachi Oasis with hot springs.
Some distance away from the boiling stream, fish began to live. The dark river water could barely be seen clearly with the sunlight. A group of tilapia juveniles followed their mother closely.
Further away, Bi Fang once again witnessed a hunt.
It was a little camel drinking water. It was bitten by a crocodile and dragged into the water, where it kept struggling.
How could the crocodile let go of this delicious food? Several of them attacked, the water surface turned into waves, a few died and rolled, and the little camel lost its life.
Bi Fang looked at the Blackwater River, which was less than three meters away from him.