Truffle (kama) hunting in Saudi Arabia

Several mornings for the last two weeks, my good friend Lori and I have been out in the desert hunting for truffles. Truffles? Yes truffles - desert truffles or as they are called here kama.

We first heard about kama from a local merchant who encouraged us to go out hunting the edible potato-like mushrooms with stories of the fun he and his family had doing the same. He drew us a little sketch of what to look for - tall, thin plants with small white flowers which for some reason nearly always grow near the volcanic-like eruptions in which the kama are found.

He told us to bring plenty of water - hunting kama is strenuous work - and also some sacks and spoons, since the fungi hide just beneath the sandy surface. Of course, always the optimist, I also took my camera!

The first morning, Lori and I could barely contain our enthusiasm as we hopping into the Cruiser and headed off into the desert. We found lots of thin plants with small white flowers that looked exactly like the sketches our friend had made for us, but we didn't see anything even resembling a volcano.

Too early, we assumed.

Two days later, we were back out. This time we found the plants and -without exception -next to the plants we found holes where someone ele had found kama.

During our fifth trip out into the desert, Lori looked at me and, in her best Texas drawl asked, "do you suppose kama are anything like snipe?"

(Snipe, for those of you unfamiliar, are imaginary bird-like creatures that local good-old-boys (regardless of location, I think) trick new residents and naive visitors into hunting. Snipe hunting always takes place in the dead of night, requires a blunt object and a bag and routinely results in humiliation and a lot of laughter.)

Anyway, the longer it took us to find the kama, the more determined we became.

We started asking everyone and anyone we came across if they knew where we might be able to find kama, and pretty soon it became obvious that everyone but us had already found their kama. Found them and enjoyed them grated over some delicious stew just the night before!

This morning, Lori and I finally acquiesced, taking our empty bags and only slightly-used spoons out of the back end of the Cruiser. The kama season only lasts a few weeks, and our few weeks of hunting had passed.

Later sitting over caramel fraps, we decided that we may have been beaten this year, but we were not broken. We're going to spend the next 12 months learning a little more about these elusive kama, talking to more people who've actually found them in the sand and maybe even doing some pre-season scouting.

Next year we'll be ready, we vowed.

Kama, beware!

(Thanks to my friend Mohammad for the pictures. Unlike us, he and his hunting party actually found literally pounds of kama!)