INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL SAFETY

THE IMPORTANT STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR VEHICLE

Lesson Number One

“There are bandits ahead on this road—very bad men! We can guide you past them.”

The driver of the 70-series Land Cruiser pickup seemed touchingly concerned for our welfare, as did his grinning friends in the bed, dressed in djellabas and carrying AKs and a single century-old Lee-Enfield straight out of a David Lean epic.

We were headed west from the Nile across the Egyptian desert, tracing the route of a 1912 Carnegie Institute expedition. The two Carnegie scientists had been on camels; there were eight of us in three Land Cruiser Troop Carriers hired in Cairo. Our expedition’s goal was to precisely replicate the scientists’ photos to document the changes of a century.