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Hi All,
I've been catching up with some overlanders in Adelaide while I'm here to attend a nephew's wedding.
One of them told me that she had heard on the trip that a girl had gone off for a shower somewhere in the Middle East - perhaps Jordan - and was never seen again.
I asked Dick, and he said that it was the first he had heard of it, so it definitely wasn't on a Capricorn trip. I hadn't heard of it either.
If it happened at all, it would have been in early 1979.
Has anyone heard of such a thing happening, or was it just an urban - no, overland - legend?
Mike
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Administrator
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I read the book "Not without my daughter" but I don't think that is the story you are after.
What are you doing in Adelaide and not catching up for a warm glass of water, or something else?
Vicar
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Silly me. Any suggestions as to when and where? Email me.
Best,
Mike
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Administrator
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Can't find your email address. Mine is graham.preiss@gmail.com
Vicar
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I vaguely remember something, but never with any veracity to it.
It sounds like the kind of story a courier would tell to help passengers understand the potential dangers.
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A courier embellish the truth a little ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,I find that hard to believe !!!!
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I agree, Silver. It's quite an astonishing hypothesis of Kit's. And yet, and yet ... there were rumours that such things did happen. Very rarely, of course, and with mercifully very few couriers. Heaven forfend that "couriers" and "bullshit artists" should ever be put together in the same sentence. Only the most fiendish of drivers would ever suggest such a thing.
Seriously though, I can recall many incidents that were sleazy, creepy, or even scary when it came to our female punters / the locals scene in the Middle East. Their not wearing a burqa was seen as a massive affront by some, a sexual provocation by others. But if such a thing as a disappearance under such circumstances had happened it would have caused a fuss that many of us would still remember, so in the absence of that, Silver ... I'm thinking that Kit's explanation may even be more credible!!!!
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Mike,
Have you read the book " The Vanishing Of Ruth " , a girl goes missing off a bus tour in Afghanistan.
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Hi Colin,
Yes, I have. I even put a review of it on Amazon.com, and the author wrote back to thank me.
It was a gripping read. The author was a punter on a Swagman's trip, if my memory serves me right.
Re this 1979 story, though: the absence of any confirmation here so far makes me think it was only a story as well.
I do remember another story from the road, though, that I definitely heard myself but never had confirmed. It was about a Magic Bus that used to stop beside a lake in Afghanistan somewhere, and let the punters go skinny dipping. So a passing local saw this girl naked, and, naturally, shot her. As you do.
Another one I had heard: a couple (Australian?) were driving overland and were again in Afghanistan and ran out of gas just outside a town, so the guy set off with his jerry can. Meantime, his wife took the opportunity to catch some rays. The petrol station was on the other side of town, so after he filled the jerry can he was walking back through town when he saw his wife's head on a stick.
Whether or not they were true, much worse things have happened since, so I presume they could have been ...
Best,
Mike
PS Later, when I was leading tours for Explore through a remote part of Mexico, there was this large church in a village. The trip notes said to insist that no-one take photos inside, so I did. That really got up the noses of a couple of investigative reporters on the tour, who complied but later gave me a severe lambasting about it. Fortunately, a passenger on that trip had also been on one of my overlands, and he gave them a proper lambasting back.
When I got back to the UK, there was a message for me to contact the reporters, so I did. They took me out to dinner, and to the green room to watch a documentary they had just aired about smuggling stolen antiques out of the UK. They could not have been more friendly.
They told me that they had used their resources to check up about the church, and had found out that a German tourist had insisted upon his right to take photos inside. Consequently, the locals had skinned him alive.
Again, as you do.
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Mike,
I reckon, if all of us drivers and couriers pooled their stories from our days on the Overland, we could come up with a best seller.
Col
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