Gershwin’s Sahara adventure and the lost phone

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Gershwin. Now Gershwin had been on many, many trips. He was a bit of an adventurer. He'd been to the jungle. He'd been to the Arctic. He'd been to the North Pole. He'd been to space. He'd been up mountains. He'd been in the ocean. He'd been to lots and lots of places, but the one place that he had never been was the desert.

Now Gershwin really wanted to go to the desert because he wanted to play in the sand. He wanted to feel the heat on his skin. He wanted to ride a camel. So one day he set off for the biggest desert in the world, the Sahara Desert.

Now, the easiest way to get there was by plane. So Gershwin set off on a plane, and that plane was a private plane. He was the only one on it apart from the pilot. So he flew and he flew and he flew. He slept, he ate, and eventually they arrived near the Sahara Desert. The plane set down in the middle of the desert, and Gershwin stepped out.

As soon as Gershwin stepped out, he felt how hot it was. It was so hot he instantly broke out in a sweat, with sweat dripping from his forehead. He reached for his bottle of water and drank the whole thing down as fast as possible. Why? Because it was so, so hot.

Very soon, a man came up to him and said, “Oh, you here for desert tour?”

“Yes,” said Gershwin. “I am. I'm waiting for my quad bikes.”

“I take on quad bikes. You come with me,” said the man.

Now Gershwin followed him, and there he saw two big red quad bikes. They were so big; almost as big as Gershwin. But it had steps climbing up to it, so up he climbed. That's why it seemed so big to the little adventurer.

Now Gershwin climbed on. He turned the key in the engine, and the engine set off. It was very loud. Gershwin pressed the accelerator. He accelerated, and they both headed off into the desert.

They went up sand hills and down sand hills. When they reached the top of a sand hill, they jumped into the air on the bikes, and then they came crashing down in a bit of a bounce. But the bikes could take all that they could throw at them.

The next time, Gershwin thought he would try a trick that he'd seen when playing Mario Kart. He accelerated as fast as possible up one of the hills, and the bike flew off the top. Gershwin let go of the handlebars and jumped in the air. He spun three times, round and round and round, grabbed hold of the handlebars again with his feet and pulled himself in. And then he was back on the bike just as it landed on the other side of the hill.

“Wow! You're very good,” said the man that brought him the bikes.

“I try. I played a lot of Mario Kart,” said Gershwin.

Very soon, on the horizon, Gershwin could see a tent. The tent had a beautiful campfire burning, a pot on the stove, and Gershwin realised that must be where they were going to spend the night, because it was getting very, very dark in the desert.

The bikes soon were there, and the man coupled up the one bike to the other and said, “Goodbye. I leave now with bike. You have nice night.”

And he drove off with both bikes, and Gershwin was at the tent all alone.

So Gershwin crawled into his tent, and waiting for him was a beautiful cup of tea that was freshly warm off the stove. He drank it down. He helped himself to some other food that had been cooked. He ate the food, and he felt very, very tired. So he curled up in his sleeping bag, closed the door of the tent, and fell asleep.

The next morning, he heard a rattling on the tent.

“You wake up now, sir! You wake up now! We go, we go,” said a voice.

Gershwin opened the tent and peeked out, and there was a man stood there, surrounded by camels. So Gershwin knew that this was where he was going to go on the tour. He was excited. He jumped out of the tent, threw on his clothes, and very quickly ran over to the closest camel and jumped on the back.

“We go, we go, we go, sir! I show desert,” said the man.

Very soon the camels stood up, and Gershwin was off. They walked and walked round the desert. They saw lots and lots of animals. They saw scorpions and snakes, and they saw big pyramids and trees. But not once did they see water.

They didn't find any water as they tramped across the desert, and that was probably because it was so, so hot. It was approaching fifty-two degrees. They found a big clump of trees, and there was just nothing. They were just dead. The trees were dead because they had no water.

Now it was a good job that there were twelve camels in the caravan, even though there were only Gershwin and the man. That's because the other ten camels were completely loaded with water.

Now Gershwin, feeling really generous, took one of the big barrels of water. He took it over to the trees and opened it up. He pushed the water all over the base of the tree, and hoped that one day that tree would come back to life with the water that he had given.

Next, they carried on, but they'd done a U-turn, and they were heading back to a really huge sand dune that they'd seen. Now, this sand dune was absolutely massive. He'd never seen anything so big. It was almost the size of a mountain back home.

And when they got to the top, the man at the front of the caravan jumped off and said, “Here, you sit on carpet on mountain, and you go slide. It's fun. You go, you go.”

And that's exactly what Gershwin did. He went to the top of the sand mountain, sat on a rug, and all of a sudden the rug started to slide down the sand hill.

“Whee!” said Gershwin. “It's like being on a flying carpet.”

He flew all the way down the hill, and then he got to the bottom and thought, “That was the best slide I've ever been on.”

Now, even though he'd gone really fast, there were more camels at the bottom. He thought, “There's no way that the man could have come down here, not that fast. I was a lot faster than him.”

And Gershwin realised that it was a completely different man there. So he jumped on the camels, and he was taken back to his tent.

That night, he fell into another deep, deep sleep. He dreamed of flying down sand mountains. He dreamed of all the animals he'd seen. And he was sad because he knew that he'd been there for two days now, and the next day was time to head back home.

When he woke up, there was another rattle on the door.

“Hello, I bring back bikes. We go airport now.”

Gershwin packed up his things and jumped onto the quad bike again. Gershwin and the man took off on the bikes, fast and fast. Gershwin did lots and lots of jumps again, lots and lots of spins. He was very inspired.

Very soon they were back at the aeroplane. Gershwin jumped off the bike and jumped on the aeroplane, and the aeroplane set off into the sky.

Gershwin thought, “I'd better phone that man and tell him what a great time I had on the bikes.”

So he went into his pocket to grab his mobile phone, but there was no mobile phone there. He tried his other pocket: no mobile phone. He checked through his bag: no mobile phone.

“Oh no,” said Gershwin.

He thought back in his mind to the very, very first day, where he did the spinning Mario jump, and he remembered the phone slipping from his pocket, falling, falling, falling into the sand. And now Gershwin was on the plane, and he had no way to phone and thank the man who'd made his dreams come true.

“Oh dear, maybe another day I'll find him and say thank you.”

Very soon, Gershwin was asleep on the plane. He slept all the way home, and woke up just as they landed. He got off, jumped into a taxi, and went home to write in his journal the amazing time that he'd had in the desert. He wrote in his schoolbook the amazing time he'd had in the desert, but also made a note that he had to go back to the desert very, very soon to try and find his phone.

But that will be for another day.

The end.