Talk:Arid region safety

I found this on the NPS site -

https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/hike-smart.htm

Some of it's applicable here, but it seems to be more general. 22:19, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

And with some searching I found this - https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/safety.htm ,

will be incoporating some of it soon. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:25, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Desert Safety

Swept in from the pub

Do we have an article? was wanting to link something in an article I recently created. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:42, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

No we do not have that yet (I think I'd noticed), but I think having it would be good. If you know something about it, you are welcome to create an outline. I think it would be quite easy to write enough for it to be useful. The general guidelines of Hiking in the Judaean Desert could be used as a starting point. --LPfi (talk) 18:43, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

As the furtherest abroad I've ever been is Paris, I'm probably not the best person to write a 'desert' article. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

But you might be the right person to start it.  ;-) If you can get the page created and a couple of sentences into it, then {{ping}} me and remind me to help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:37, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Arid_region_safety - Went with this, because it would also cover some areas that aren't strictly true desert, but where a similarity of advice might be applicable. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:58, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I have added a bit about safety. My experience is that of being a paying guest on a commercial trans-Sahara trip in 1980. I have added a few tips that I learnet from the tour leader and also from general reading. Martinvl (talk) 20:49, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Arid region safety

Swept in from the pub

Do we have a docent from an arid region? I started this outline, but wasn't sure what it needed, what's in it so far is based on my very limited knowledge. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:14, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Until someone who knows more about arid regions finds this, there is perhaps a thing or two worth bringing over from the Stay safe sections of articles of the places mentioned in Arid region safety#Understand. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:00, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Advice link from South Austrlia

https://www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/Safety/desert-outback-wise

Might be worth seeing if anything can be added from it. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:29, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

List of deserts

How does a list of deserts contribute anything to safety? Suggest we keep this at a very high level. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:27, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

It does not. We do however not have a Deserts article, so this article might be used as a substitute. I also prefer having the list short, that article should be created if needed (perhaps merge, but only if it gets enough real content). --LPfi (talk) 07:40, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Why do we need a list of deserts? For what purpose? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Yup, there is the comprehensive w:Desert article, with a helpful 'top 10' desert list which already shows the lack of substance to be afforded a dedicated desert travel article. You might want to list some activities that one could undertake in a desert, but visiting a big empty space for the sake of it isn't relevant for travelers. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 09:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I am not going to argue, as I am not going to write the article, but I'd certainly appreciate a desert tour, even a long one, if having the time and a good guide when nearby, and I could make a voyage specifically for the purpose (except that I avoid flying for environmental reasons). People go to Antarctica and the Greenland inland, why not Atacama or Sahara? --LPfi (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I think the best approach would be for people knowing a desert and appreciating travel there to write about that desert as a destination. If we ever get such articles, listing them in a travel topic article, and extracting some of the common features as main body of it, would be sensible. Until we have those articles I think a travel topic article is useless. --LPfi (talk) 15:15, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, Antarctica is a desert :) In any case I think we are alligned that a list of deserts is not helpful, but dedicated travel articles on a particular desert are. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:28, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

List taken from main page

• The Sahara, covering Northern Africa. The Sahara is the world's largest desert and comparable in size to the United States or China.
• The Namib, bordering South Africa.
• The Kalahari in Namibia and Botswana.
• The Outback desert regions of Australia.
• Parts of the Southwestern US (perhaps most famously the Death Valley), and parts of the Mexican Interior.
• Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest place in the world.
• Gobi desert in Mongolia and northern China, Asia's largest desert region.
• The Arabian desert, making up most of the Arabian Peninsula.

Dust Storms

w:Dust_storm - Mention these here or is there a more appropriate article for them? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:54, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Off-piste?

The term "off-piste" was added in recent edits. Is that an established term in this context? Isn't "off-road" good enough? What's the difference? Or are we using the Wiktionary definition of the figurative sense: "Deviating from what is seen as correct, usual or conventional"? If we are going to use the term, it needs to be explained. –LPfi (talk) 06:58, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi:. I was a paying guest on a trans-Sahara trip in 1981/2. A book that I bought shortly before make the trip describes the piste as "A desert track which is essentially not [my emphasis] a made-up road but a commonly used "direction" of travel. It may be several kilometres wide in some sections". If you are travelling along a piste you might meet a few travellers going in the opposite direction. If you leave the piste, you can easily get lost.

The piste, as I remember it, was a track through the desert with no surfacing whatsoever. It was marked by two 200 litre oil drums, one on top of the other, every 500 metres. If the track got too rutted or sandy, people moved a few metres to the right and started another track. During my trip, I saw a number of rally cars at the Algerian border post going southwards on the Paris-Dakar rally. When we finished our trip in Tunis, we heard that Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret Thatcher, who was on the rally, had gone off-piste and was lost for six days. Had his mother not been as well-known as she was, he and his crew would probably have died. You can read more about Thatcher's exploits [1].

Does this help? Martinvl (talk) 13:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, it does. But it needs to be explained in the article, if the term is to be used. I don't think this sense is widely known outside these areas (and perhaps the global community of desert off-roaders). –LPfi (talk) 15:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I have given a brief explanation of what a piste is. Martinvl (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Stay safe advice

I think the current Stay safe section is odd. Why should you specifically check travel advisories of the mentioned three countries? Why do we need to mention those advisories in this article? Where is sleeping in the vehicle a necessary or sane safety measure? Why do you need to be discreet in following local advice?

I suppose these pieces of advice are meant to counter specific threats, which should be discussed for the reader to be able to evaluate whether they apply to their destination.

–LPfi (talk) 06:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I travelled across the Sahara in 1980 as part of a commercial tour. We spent most nights in the wilds and it was there that I noticed the tour leader always slept in (or on the roof of) one of the two Land Rovers in the party. As an aside, when our party enterd Algeria from Mali, we saw a number of cars in the Paris-Daka rally travelling southwards and a week later learned that Mark Thatcher should have been in one of those cars, but had got lost trying to be "clever".Martinvl (talk) 14:28, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

OK. But would you do it in Atacama or Taklimakan? Would you sleep well there? If it's for somebody stealing your vehicle, what would you do when you wake up to somebody starting the motor? –LPfi (talk) 18:55, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Your presence would at least disuade the opportunist from taking things that might render you immobile in the middle of nowhere. I also noticed that when out tour leader chose a camping site in the middle of the Tanazrouft, he selected a site that was a kilometre from the piste and close to a sand dune that ran at right angles to the piste.This was to avoid the possibility of lorries that were "more or less" following the piste crashng into the camp. Martinvl (talk) 08:07, 19 May 2024 (UTC)