Finding direction

Bedouin are reputedly brilliant at finding their way in the desert and they are- but there is no magic to it, just extreme familiarity. They know that the wind is usually from the North West and that dunes align with that prevailing wind. They know that the sun, in winter at midday, is in the south. Finally the landscape in its main features is simple- every oasis has an escarpment along one or more sides. These cliff edges that can run for hundreds of kilometers can be used as handy reference points for traveling, as can the
lengthy north/south Western Desert road.