While most people are planning to ring in the millennium with a blow-out party or a special weekend with loved ones, Eamonn Gearon is turning his back on the world in the hope of setting the new century's first record. This Christmas, the 29-year-old, British-born Irishman, whose father and mother hail from Co Wexford and Co Tipperary respectively, is setting off on a 50-day solo walk through the sands of Egypt's remote Western Desert, with only three camels, two books (the collected poems of T.S. Eliot and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius) and a tape-recorder for company.
The current record for a solo, unsupported desert walk is held by Ted Edwards, who, in 1983, spent 20 days walking 350 miles across the empty quarter of Mali and Mauritania with two camels. Gearon hopes to manage 10 hours of walking each day and cover a daily average of about 25 miles in his bid to set the new record.
Starting from the Mediterranean town of Marsa Matrouh, he will head to Siwa oasis, some nine days to the south west. He will then walk to the remote spring of Ain Della, on to the town of Baris (gateway to Egypt for caravans coming from Africa in ancient times) and then to the southern resort town of Aswan. In all, the journey will cover 1,200 miles, much of it hugging the undulating dunes at the edge of the Great Sand Sea, the world's largest dune field.
"My biggest worry is the solitude," says Gearon, gazing out over the chaotic skyline of Cairo the day before leaving for the coast. "I'm worried that I'll come back either mad or as a crystal-gazing hippy. Still, while the camels don't necessarily preclude madness, at least they're living things. And I will have my taperecorder to talk to."
He shrugs off other potential problems with the same relaxed humour. "I'll have four litres of water per day, which should be enough for food and drink, assuming there aren't any disasters. There won't be any for washing but if I can put up with the camels, they can put up with me."
Gearon's connection with Egypt began with his father, who was posted here with the army in the 1950s. "I grew up listening to stories about Egypt and its deserts, and I was fascinated," he says. He made his first trip at the age of 24 to visit a girlfriend who was teaching in Cairo. "We broke up the day after I arrived," he laughs. "But I stayed on for 10 months."
He returned again last year and walked from Marsa Matrouh to Siwa with some Bedouin to raise funds for the Brooke Hospital for Animals, a British-based charity offering free veterinary treatment in Egypt.
Since then he has been planning his walk. He has consulted with other desert explorers, calculated his exact food and water needs, pored over numerous maps and charts, and read historical accounts of desert journeys in Egypt. He will have a few high-tech aids (a Global Satellite Positioner and a satellite phone) for help in emergencies but will be largely reliant on himself, his camels and luck.
To minimise his dependency on the latter, he has spent the past month in Egypt, acclimatising himself and getting to know his three hump-backed companions, whom he plans to name on the trip. "I'll have lots of time to think of something appropriate," he smiles. "But the vet has already named one of them `Son of a Dog' because he bites."
After completing his journey, Gearon plans to return to Siwa, Egypt 's most enigmatic oasis and site of one of the ancient world's most famous oracles (Alexander the Great made a long detour to consult with it in 331 BC). Cut off from the Nile Valley for centuries by hundreds of miles of desert, the Siwans speak their own, Berber-based language and Gearon hopes to spend a year there, writing about his trip and learning about the unique culture of the area.
But for all the exoticism of his future home he admits that if he wasn't going to the lush palm groves of the oasis, his choice of writing spot would be the "beautiful green hills" just outside Cork.