
Arabian Sands
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $27.46
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Laurence Kennedy
-
By:
-
Wilfred Thesiger
About this listen
Arabian Sands is Wilfred Thesiger’s stunning account of five years spent crossing the Arabian Peninsula by foot and on camels, with nomadic Bedouin tribesmen as guides. Travelling between 1945 and 1950, the British explorer treks through Yemen, the Empty Quarter, Oman, and parts of the then Trucial States, crossing and re-crossing around 250,000 miles of this most inhospitable terrain. He was the first European ever to set eyes on the dunes and wadis of these deserts.
Faced with constant challenges and trials beneath the punishing sun, his journey is also spiritual and enriching, as it requires the utmost courage, patience, generosity, and humor. In clear and evocative prose, Thesiger documents a journey of unimaginable hardship and startling beauty, as well as a time, place, and people on the cusp of change.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©1959 Wilfred Thesiger (P)2018 Naxos AudioBooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Marsh Arabs
- By: Wilfred Thesiger
- Narrated by: Laurence Kennedy
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a period of seven years, Wilfred Thesiger canoed through the marshes at the confluence of Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers, living among the native Madan tribes and their islands made of reeds. Now extinct, their ancient way of life is speculated to have existed for 5,000 years, going back to the days of ancient Sumer, and possessed a unique culture found nowhere else in the Middle East. Thesiger documents the tribes' conflicts, traditions, cuisine, relationships, justice systems, and art, and reveals how they built their unique water-borne society
-
-
Another great story
- By Taylor Allen on 04-10-23
By: Wilfred Thesiger
-
The Road to Oxiana
- By: Robert Byron
- Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1933, Robert Byron set off from Venice with his friend Christopher Sykes to explore the architecture of the Middle East. Their long and arduous journey took them from Cyprus and Jerusalem to Syria, Iraq, Persia, Afghanistan, and finally, Oxiana, a tiny country around the river Oxus, which snakes down from Russia into Afghanistan. They travel by any means necessary (truck, camel, horses, and foot), and encounter several setbacks, but their risks are rewarded as they encounter some of the greatest examples of Eastern art and architecture, many of which have now vanished forever.
By: Robert Byron
-
Lawrence in Arabia
- War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 23 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history - the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East. Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.
-
-
A Comprehensive, Compelling Biography
- By Lester Gesteland on 10-05-20
By: Scott Anderson
-
Wanderlust
- An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age
- By: Reid Mitenbuler
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater danger: his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him. If Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.
-
-
Amazingly in-depth look at an amazing person.
- By Dave on 06-18-23
By: Reid Mitenbuler
-
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
- By: T. E. Lawrence
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 25 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although T. E. Lawrence, commonly known as "Lawrence of Arabia’, died in 1935, the story of his life has captured the imagination of succeeding generations. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a monumental work in which he chronicles his role in leading the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War. A reluctant leader, and wracked by guilt at the duplicity of the British, Lawrence nevertheless threw himself into his role, suffering the blistering desert conditions and masterminding military campaigns which culminated in the triumphant march of the Arabs into Damascus.
-
-
One of the greatest stories ever told.
- By Stevie on 01-11-13
By: T. E. Lawrence
-
An Arabian Journey
- One Man's Quest Through the Heart of the Middle East
- By: Levison Wood
- Narrated by: Levison Wood
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Starting in a city in Northern Syria, Wood set forth on a 5,000-mile trek through the most contested region on the planet. He moved through the Middle East for six months, from ISIS-occupied Iraq through Kuwait and along the jagged coastlines of the Emirates and Oman; across a civil-war-torn Yemen and on to Saudia Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, before ending on the shores of the Mediterranean in Lebanon. Like his predecessors, Wood traveled through some of the harshest and most beautiful environments on Earth, seeking to challenge our perceptions of this misunderstood part of the world.
-
-
Learning about people
- By B Tidball on 07-13-21
By: Levison Wood
-
The Marsh Arabs
- By: Wilfred Thesiger
- Narrated by: Laurence Kennedy
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a period of seven years, Wilfred Thesiger canoed through the marshes at the confluence of Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers, living among the native Madan tribes and their islands made of reeds. Now extinct, their ancient way of life is speculated to have existed for 5,000 years, going back to the days of ancient Sumer, and possessed a unique culture found nowhere else in the Middle East. Thesiger documents the tribes' conflicts, traditions, cuisine, relationships, justice systems, and art, and reveals how they built their unique water-borne society
-
-
Another great story
- By Taylor Allen on 04-10-23
By: Wilfred Thesiger
-
The Road to Oxiana
- By: Robert Byron
- Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1933, Robert Byron set off from Venice with his friend Christopher Sykes to explore the architecture of the Middle East. Their long and arduous journey took them from Cyprus and Jerusalem to Syria, Iraq, Persia, Afghanistan, and finally, Oxiana, a tiny country around the river Oxus, which snakes down from Russia into Afghanistan. They travel by any means necessary (truck, camel, horses, and foot), and encounter several setbacks, but their risks are rewarded as they encounter some of the greatest examples of Eastern art and architecture, many of which have now vanished forever.
By: Robert Byron
-
Lawrence in Arabia
- War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 23 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history - the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East. Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.
-
-
A Comprehensive, Compelling Biography
- By Lester Gesteland on 10-05-20
By: Scott Anderson
-
Wanderlust
- An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age
- By: Reid Mitenbuler
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater danger: his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him. If Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.
-
-
Amazingly in-depth look at an amazing person.
- By Dave on 06-18-23
By: Reid Mitenbuler
-
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
- By: T. E. Lawrence
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 25 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although T. E. Lawrence, commonly known as "Lawrence of Arabia’, died in 1935, the story of his life has captured the imagination of succeeding generations. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a monumental work in which he chronicles his role in leading the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War. A reluctant leader, and wracked by guilt at the duplicity of the British, Lawrence nevertheless threw himself into his role, suffering the blistering desert conditions and masterminding military campaigns which culminated in the triumphant march of the Arabs into Damascus.
-
-
One of the greatest stories ever told.
- By Stevie on 01-11-13
By: T. E. Lawrence
-
An Arabian Journey
- One Man's Quest Through the Heart of the Middle East
- By: Levison Wood
- Narrated by: Levison Wood
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Starting in a city in Northern Syria, Wood set forth on a 5,000-mile trek through the most contested region on the planet. He moved through the Middle East for six months, from ISIS-occupied Iraq through Kuwait and along the jagged coastlines of the Emirates and Oman; across a civil-war-torn Yemen and on to Saudia Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, before ending on the shores of the Mediterranean in Lebanon. Like his predecessors, Wood traveled through some of the harshest and most beautiful environments on Earth, seeking to challenge our perceptions of this misunderstood part of the world.
-
-
Learning about people
- By B Tidball on 07-13-21
By: Levison Wood
-
Children of Ash and Elm
- A History of the Vikings
- By: Neil Price
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Viking Age - from 750 to 1050 saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Than on 10-06-20
By: Neil Price
-
The Lost City of the Monkey God
- A True Story
- By: Douglas Preston
- Narrated by: Bill Mumy
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die.
-
-
Still Lost...
- By Mel on 01-12-17
By: Douglas Preston
-
The Rise of Western Christendom (10th Anniversary Revised Edition)
- Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 26 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This tenth anniversary revised edition of the authoritative text on Christianity's first thousand years of history features a new preface and an updated bibliography. The essential general survey of medieval European Christendom, Brown's vivid prose charts the compelling and tumultuous rise of an institution that came to wield enormous religious and secular power.
-
-
Mind-expanding book
- By ABC on 06-15-23
By: Peter Brown
-
Adventures on the Wine Route (25th Anniversary Edition)
- A Wine Buyer's Tour of France
- By: Kermit Lynch
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Wine is, above all, about pleasure. Those who make it ponderous make it dull.... If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover." So wrote the renowned wine expert Kermit Lynch in the introduction to Adventures on the Wine Route, his ultimate tour of France, especially its wine cellars. The "magic" of wine is Lynch's subject as he takes the listener on a singular journey through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, northern and southern Rhone, and Burgundy.
-
-
Finally!
- By Mark on 01-18-21
By: Kermit Lynch
-
Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
- By: Plutarch
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 83 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.
-
-
For the Very Dedicated
- By John Pinkerton on 03-13-18
By: Plutarch
-
Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
-
-
Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
-
Green Hills of Africa
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: Josh Lucas
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon, 1932), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife, Pauline, journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip.
-
-
The Pleasures of Place, People, and Persuit
- By Darwin8u on 10-25-16
By: Ernest Hemingway
-
The Wager
- A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, David Grann
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia.
-
-
Gasping for Air
- By Jean Engle on 04-19-23
By: David Grann
-
The Lives of the Artists
- By: Giorgio Vasari, Julia Conway Bondanella - Translated by, Peter Bondanella - Translated by
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 22 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance", was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.
-
-
Awesome
- By Daniel on 05-17-19
By: Giorgio Vasari, and others
-
Marco Polo
- From Venice to Xanadu
- By: Laurence Bergreen
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the most celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler and the earliest bridge between East and West. A universal icon of adventure and discovery, he has inspired six centuries of popular fascination and spurious mythology. Now, from acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, comes the first fully authoritative biography of one of the most enchanting figures in world history.
-
-
Educational and Entertaining but a bit repetitive
- By PETER on 01-02-13
-
Skeletons on the Zahara
- A True Story of Survival
- By: Dean King
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of 12 American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men - who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback - is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.
-
-
Haunting
- By thawstone on 06-05-16
By: Dean King
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
What listeners say about Arabian Sands
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Danish
- 04-01-25
Unmissable, humbling epic of our time
You will not read an account of the Bedu in the same way today, or since. The humility, capacity for adventure, and cultural nuance of Thesiger in this book is a masterpiece in itself.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Owen Summerscales
- 06-24-23
Fantastic narration
A perfect narration of a classic desert adventure book. extra words and some more. and more?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Badar
- 08-30-23
Masterpiece!
A wonderful listen for Emiratis and those interested in the history of the Khaleeji Bedous.
“As the plane climbed over the town and swung above the sea I knew how it felt to go into exile.”
- beautiful closing words by Mubarak bin London
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JK
- 10-21-24
INTERESTING
Just finished an absolutely enjoyable and educational book.
It is interesting that the author describes his travels between 1945 and 1950, so different than what you would encounter now.
The desert remains the same, but due to political differences, the people will have a different approach.
If you like to read about the nomads and Arabian history I highly recommend audible’s book “Ibn Saud”.
The narrator, mr. Laurence Kennedy, is a pleasure to listen to.
My thanks to all involved, JK
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- H. Konrad Gersh
- 07-27-20
Wonderful Cross-Cultural Exploration of Yore
Enjoyable, well-written memoir / journal of explorations among the Bedou. The author provides keen observations, personal reflections, adventure, and insight into another culture with its foibles, norms, and strengths. As the saying goes about Spartans in Greece, "Always admired, never imitated". Similarly, I'm glad to experience these explorations vicariously.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Elisabeth
- 12-06-23
Beautifully written and told
This was a peak into late 1940s. His historic retelling of his journey of Saudi Arabia is amazing. The narrator carries the author’s story so we feel as if we are riding our own camel along long red deserts and mountains in the search for water and food. Learning alongside him of all the different nomadic tribes to become one of them for a short time. This story caused me to research and want me to see for myself the beauty of Arabia.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- tristan.ruark
- 12-28-24
Wow
Must listen!
Sad those days are over but I’m happy Thesiger was able to live them and document them. What an amazing story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!