Notes from the desert
Tadrart Rouge, January 2022
I often struggle to explain to people who ask about the Sahara what it feels like to venture into this vast and ancient landscape. It’s an experience that is difficult to put into words. One that requires you to step beyond everything you know and into a place that exists outside the bounds of time and history. It is a place governed only by the deep and primordial rhythms of the nature.
The best way I can think to share this experience, in its rawest and purest form, is through excerpts from my expedition diary. A few words that offer small insights into the things that touched me most deeply or lingered most profoundly during days spent in the desert with our Tuareg guides.
Tuesday January 11th – The place of the angry camel
Arriving in this place is like landing on another planet. Nothing but miles and miles of rust red desert - laid out like an endless blanket of crinkled velvet as far as the eye can see. A landscape broken only by shallow wadis and a few trees, scattered across the landscape like little gems in the sand. Contorted rock formations break the horizon. A thousand perfectly chiseled pieces of stone carefully assembled by some divine hand, like an ancient game of desert Jenga rising from the endless sand.
There is an intoxicating smell of smoke that follows our Tuareg guides around. A woody, spicy smell that clings to the air. It is the smell of cold nights spent telling stories around the fire, the smell of tea leaves and woodsmoke, the smell of tobacco from the sibsi pipe, the smell of leather and dust. It is not so much a smell as a story. The story of life in this desert.
Tuareg drink sweet green tea from tiny little glass cups, frothed by pouring it so quickly between the cup and the teapot that it forms one continuous stream of liquid suspended almost motionless in the air. It is a ritual that is repeated at least six times a day, each time with as much love and joy as if it were the first tea of the day. Kacem likes to call this magic concoction “desert cappuccinos”.
Wednesday January 12th- The closed places
We entered this place through the black dunes (Bagh Aleti). Harsh volcanic towers stand starkly here against tumbling orange sand dunes- a testimony to nature in her softest and harshest forms. Tuareg move across this landscape in endless pursuit of pasture, water and good camping grounds. The guides tell me that any time we see nomads in this place, we will know that water is somewhere close by. In this part or the Sahara, the color of the dunes changes suddenly and frequently across the landscape, like some fiery patchwork from Mars. Orange sands melt seamlessly into red dunes, sometimes splashed with yellow, other times broken abruptly with streaks of velvet black.
There is so much to absorb that at times you feel exhausted, like you can’t possibly take in any more of this surreal shape-shifting landscape. This place that is both harsh and inhospitable, yet at the same time primordial, strangely familiar and totally intoxicating.
The last few nights I have fallen asleep to the sound of our guides speaking softly around the fire in Tamashek, a gentle crackling of wood and the vast endless silence beyond. Nothing but the moon, the stars, this place and us.
Thursday January 13th - The place of Merzouga
Today we passed through the valley of a thousand rock paintings. The density and diversity of rock art in this region is astounding. Everywhere you look there are paintings and “graver” (engravings), telling fascinating stories of a time long gone, a time when this region was savannah and plains game roamed the landscape. Today we saw wan aksem (giraffes), wan ahar (man killing giraffe) and wan aklem (cows) along with many messages written to passing travelers in ancient Tamashek.
Coming out of the valley the terrain changes again to what can only be compared to the surface of Mars. We catch our first glimpse of the dunes of Moul en Aga - so deeply red in color that they almost appear to vibrate.
The landscape is of a magnitude almost unimaginable. The sheer scale and drama of nature in its rawest form, astounding. Entering this place is like passing through some playground of the gods, a place where your own life and mortality becomes entirely insignificant.
From the top of the highest dune, we can see nothing but red sand and black volcanic cones falling away into the distance, sculpted perfectly into long plateaus that weave their way towards the horizon, dropping off somewhere near Libya.
Friday January 14th – Intehak
I never cease to be amazed by how expertly Tuareg navigate this vast landscape. They remember places by the color of the dunes, the shape of the mountains, the flow of the valleys, the alignment of the sun, how the shadows fall, the way that the wind shapes the sand. They are in tune and in total harmony with the harshest of its elements.
Today we’ve weaved our way further south towards the dunes at Intehak. After the moon like canyons and fiery sands of Merzouga, the dunes here give a sudden and surreal softness to the landscape. These dunes are dusky pink and orange, almost buttery in texture - laid out like reems of silk as far as the eye can see.
We stop for lunch in a valley of flat top acacias- a welcome pause and moment of stillness in a day otherwise filled with more than one can possibly take in. Lunch times in the Sahara are always punctuated with laughter and sweet Tuareg tea. This is the time of day where you sit in wonder, contemplating where you have been and curious about what is still to come
We will camp not far from Intehak. Here you find shelter in the little places. Under the arc of a dune, on the windless side of an outcrop, in the bend of a wadi. Temperatures drop fast and I am in my warmest clothes by sunset. But even on the coldest of nights, the Tuareg always sleep outside under the desert sky and its piercing blanket of starts.
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