A Man Is Not A Camel

 I finished preparing my pack and looked it over. It didn’t appear too bulky. Travelling light, it’s the only way to go, as the old song said, a long time ago. It’s certainly the way I like travelling best. I picked up my water bottle, hefted it in my hand, then put it aside till later: fixing it onto my pack now would make the pack too big and unwieldy, and, especially, too conspicuous. The Number One Rule of Being A Bum is Do Not Attract Attention. So I put it aside till later.

   I looked up to the dunes, stretching out black and mysterious in front of me. The track I was going to go down snaked out into the bushes and disappeared beneath the shadows of the overhanging trees.

   From behind me came the distant sounds of glasses clinking, voices, laughter, and, especially, music. Live music. Someone singing to the accompaniment of a guitar. Intriguing and attractive. So, on the spur of the moment, I delayed my bush-plans for a bit and wandered off in the direction of the music, a moth to the flame, an unwary traveller drawn to the irresistible sound of fairy music, sucking him into a warp of time and space. When I emerge it will be 100 years from now, and everyone I will have ever known will be dead. Maybe.

   I found the pub, the source of the music, had a beer, listened to the performer, had a bit of a yarn with people there, and, having spent an enjoyable little while, returned to my pack, shouldered it, and headed out into the dark unknown. There was no moon, so guided by starlight only I picked my way down a winding track, through a dry creekbed, up and over a series of sand dunes, and, ploughing through sand still warm from the day’s sunshine and baking heat, I made it onto the beach. There, stretching out in front of me for many miles, lay an expanse of dark-grey sand, silhouetted dunes off to one side, the distant tumble and murmur of the low tide a long way down the other side. We get big tides here, and when it goes out it sends postcards to remind people that it’s away at the moment but will be back eventually. Note for the 21^st century: what’s a postcard?

   I worked my way along the dunes for a long time, putting a good amount of safe distance between myself and any people who may be inclined to cruise along deserted beaches at night to cut throats, rape and rob unsuspecting passers-by, till, having judged it far enough, I scrambled up and over the first line of dunes, navigated through a low-lying swale, and got to my camping spot.

   I laid out my bedding roll, stretched out, and looked up at the stars. The Million Star Hotel. Forget about 2, 3, 4 or 5 star hotels. They can all go stick it. There’s nothing better, more sublime, than the million stars of the Milky Way. Or billion, trillion or gazillion, however many there may be. I fashioned a pillow out of my jumper, laid back contentedly, and, by the light of my torch, read my book while snacking happily on salted porkbelly crackling, nature’s own nutrient- and energy-dense superfood. It was while I was busily licking up the last stray bits of salt with my fingertips that it occurred to me that it might be nice to have a swig of water to wash it all down with. So I went looking in my pack for my water bottle, and it was then that I realised, with a sinking feeling, that I had left it behind.

   No water.

   As an experienced traveller in the desert, I never fail to very strictly adhere to Survival Rule Number Two: always forget your water bottle. Duh. What an idiot.

   So I sat up and scratched my head. I had two choices: retrace my steps through the long dark night to where I had left my water bottle, or stick it out.

   I gazed up at the stars to gauge the time. Orion stood mightily above me pulling valiantly on his bowstring, with his sword tucked into his belt, ready to lop off the head of anyone that came up to try to argue the point with him, whatever the point may have been. Scorpio curled its tail menacingly around, waving it idly to and fro, and stared aggressively into the middle distance. Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri shuffled around each other in embarrassment, trying to keep a polite distance from each other and from the Southern Cross, which was pointing at them with an accusatory hand, and a sneer that said “I told you so”.

   None of this told me jack-shit about the time.

   So I checked my watch instead. A good eight hours till first light. In other words, a decent night’s sleep. How hard could it be to go without water for eight hours, even on the edge of the desert, where the desiccation of the salt water meets the desolation of the dead sand? So I shrugged, laid down, and drifted off beneath the Milky Way into the dreamless and blameless sleep of innocents, fools and drunkards.

   I woke up at dawn with the first light crawling over the horizon, painting the thin clouds heralding the approaching onset of the monsoon season pink and orange, and yawned, stretched and scratched. What a beautiful night. I stuck my head up out above the line of dunes separating me from the beach, and admired the view. At night the super-high tide had come up to halfway up the dunes, leaving its tidemark there, after which it had bailed out again into the wild blue yonder, on another desperate search for a postcard in the 21^st century. Soon we’ll be introducing it to Instagram. We’ll never hear the end of it.

   The ocean lay invitingly in front of me, albeit a very long way off. A broad, empty, dead flat beach between me and the low-water line, perfect for running. So I rolled down my dune, strolled down to the water, and jumped in for my morning swim. There’s nothing better than salt water, on your skin, in your face, in your eyes. I love it to bits, all day every day. I waded out, and set out on a run along the edge of the water. I ran for a good half hour, then, having gotten back to where I had started, jumped in again for another swim and a good old body-surf in the waves that were starting to form with the rising tide.

   These waves reminded me of the important item on the agenda for that day, and that was surf the hell out of them while they were there. So I packed up, and made my way back through the bush to where all my gear sat waiting in my car. It was only when I got back there, and finally found my water bottle, that I realised that I had gone more than 12 hours without a drink of water. And this included pigging out on salty pork, a half hour run down the beach, and two swims in salty water.

   And I never so much as had a thought for a drink. Never got thirsty. Not once. Didn’t even feel it now, staring at my poor neglected and callously abandoned water bottle in amazement.

   But, really, it’s no surprise.

   Is it all in the head? Is it a super-human, transcendental effort of mind-control over matter, of supreme spiritualistic disdain for worldly affectations and petty needs and wants, perfected through long years of intensive study and meditation at the bare and slightly smelly feet of ancient gurus in orange and piss-stained robes, muttering unintelligible gibberish in languages they don’t understand and don’t speak, designed to impress the gullible and convince them to part with cash?

   It is not.

   Just as well.

   It’s in the gut.

   It depends on what you eat.

   Everyone knows that humans need at least two litres of water per day to be able to maintain physiological health and well-being, and that this number preferably needs to be revised steeply upwards in a) the tropics b) the desert or c) both. As I found myself in a tropical desert I should have been dead, or, at the very least, be politely trying to die.

   But that only applies to people who eat what is generally considered to be a healthy, well-balanced, clean and nutritious diet, consisting predominantly of fruit, veg, whole grains and their products, and small and sparing amounts of lean meat and preferably fish, all of them utterly devoid of any hint of any kind of fat, least of all animal fat. And under those conditions the human body will indeed require a large amount of water, because all those things ultimately get converted to glucose in the blood stream, and consequently get turned into glycogen to be either used as energy or stored as fat, and water will be required for this process. Each gram of glycogen needs three grams of water to attach itself to. Therefore, if you eat those sorts of things, you need water. And if you don’t get enough of it, you’ll get crook, and dry up from the inside out. It’s like the human body becomes a giant sponge that sucks itself dry. Good luck with that.

   But that doesn’t apply to me.

   Is it because I am not human? Am I an extraterrestrial alien from out of space, fitted out with an internal bubblegum engine that keeps me eternally supplied with a neverending supply of Magic Mushrooms?

   I am not; I wish.

   But I am fat-adapted.

   I only eat animal products, and by preference high-fat ones, at that. In analogy with vegans, who only eat vegetable products, I am an animan. I live on fat, hence the pork crackling from the previous night. Moreover, as a rule I only eat once a day, and this is plenty to keep me going for 24 hours, at least.

   In the absence of any carbohydrates in my body, my liver produces things called ketones, particularly a thing called betahydroxybuturate. They are a product of the metabolisation of fat, and provide not only an alternative source of energy for the human body, including, importantly, the brain, but actually provide an energy source that is preferred by the body, especially the brain.

   But wait, there’s more.

   More to the point, and more relevant to this story, is that the metabolisation of fat produces an interesting and curious little by-product. And that is water.

   By virtue of metabolising fat for its energy my body produces water internally. Although I have never stopped to think about it, it seems that this water production is sufficient to keep the body hydrated, from the inside out. So, while no water passes the lips, from the outside going in, there is no dehydration, and no feeling of thirst.

   In terms of bush-travel on foot through deserts and other water-poor environments, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

   And this is exactly what camels do. These animals are famous far and wide, and have been for many centuries and millennia, for their ability to go days, weeks and even months without drinking, and not only surviving but coping quite well. This is not, as is sometimes naively thought, because they carry a large amount of water in the humps on their backs, like nature-made water tanks. These humps are not some sort of inflatable bring-your-own water container. Instead, they are made of fat. Huge, gelatinous clumps of fat. And as those camels traverse those deserts, from Alice Springs to Carnarvon across the Western Desert, or from Timbuktu to Taghaza across the Sahara, or from Samarkand to Shangdu across the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts, these camels metabolise the fat in their humps, to derive energy to keep going, and to get water from them to stay alive.

   And it would seem that is what I did for more than 12 hours.

   Whoever said that a man is not a camel.