A Night in the Sahara Desert

I have always wondered what it would be like to visit the Sahara Desert and over the last two days I have found out.  We began outr drive into the desert after leaving the town of M’Hamid which is somewhere near the border of Algeria.

Before we left, we spent some time exploring the town and visited the local Kasbah.

As I have said before, the Kasbah is a type of fortified town. The ones that I have seen so far are made from adobe, so they are essentially great piles of dried mud. This none was badly damaged by a severe storm a few months ago. The flat-roofed buildings didn’t provide any run off from the torrential downpour so many of them collapsed including the roof of a 900 year old mosque.

The Kasbah is a maze of little alleyways into which the sun shines in a way that creates amazing patterns of shadow and light. We walked along many of them being careful not to include people in our photos unless they were walking away from us. Fortunately, our drivers were dressed for the desert and they became excellent models.

The town of M’Hamid is literally at the end of the road. The main street stops and from then there is only sand and a series of rough braided vehicle tracks that lead into the desert.  The town is very much like the last frontier.

We drove about 60 kilometres through the desert to our overnight stop at a desert camp. The environment changed from small sand hills with differing vegeation to open barren plains.

Along the way, we made some interesting discoveries. Rrecent heavy rain had caused the vegetation to grow and at one place, we found a camel herder shepherding around 120 camels to some pasture. After getting out of the car I noticed an unusual, but familiar, peppery smell.  I couldn’t place it at first but then it hit me that I was standing in an enormous field of wild Rocket or Arigula to use its American name. The camels are kept for milk.

A little way along was a beekeeper who was looking after 70 to 80 hives as his bees worked on the Rocket flowers for honey.

Our third discovery was coming across a well and cattle trough. A group of nomads were camped nearby and the had a little shop with handicrafts that were for sale using an honour payment system.

We ultimately reached our quite luxurious desert camp. My tent had a king sized bed, a screened off lounge area and a toilet and shower. We had to be very careful to use only a minimum of water as it all has to be transported in by truck.

By late afternoon, the light was right for us to venture into the dunes for some photography. We spent about two hours roaming  the ones near the camp and enjoying the shapes of the ridges of the dunes. One large one directly behind the camp was probably 200 metres high.

After a good night’s sleep, we were up before dawn to see the sunrise and then we were back to the dining hall for a buffet breakfast of bread, crepes with assorted jams, hard boiled eggs and coffee. Our dinners on this trip have largely consisted of  some sort of vegetable soup, chicken and beef targines along with fruit for dessert.

From our vantage point on a high sand dune, we could a couple of tourists taking advantage of a camel ride. Apart from the man on the front camel holding up his mobile phone, it was almost an iconic desert scene.

After breakfast, we had an opportunity to do some portrait photography with the camp staff along with our drivers. These men looked very handsome in their desert outfits. We paid them 100 Dirhums each to say thank you.

We drove the 60 km trip back to M’Hamid a slightly different way but still on very rough braided tracks throigh the sand. The benefit of this route was that we came across a couple of nomad caravans that made for excellent photography.

We stopped on the way back to pick some bags of the wild Rocket plants for Abdullah.s family to cook. 

We had been invited by the aunt of one of our drivers (Abdullah) to her house for lunch. It was a long slow meal that began with nuts and olives and then eventually went on to a huge bowl of Cous Cous. It was very different, and much tastier, than the Cous Couse we buy at the supermarket at home. This one combined flour with other ingrediabts and somehow needed to be cooked three times. It was served in an enormous common bowl with a serve of grilled chicken on top and then the whole lot covered in vegetables. The ideas was that you knelt or sat at a round table and dug into the part of the bowl nearest to you.

During the meal, various other relatives appeared and they then ate what was left (an enormous amount) very expertly with their fingers after we had eaten. 

By late afternoon, we were back at our hotel with time to do some cleaning and washing before dinner. The desert was very dusty and we had dust everywhere. I currently have had every electronic appliance I own charging. Of course there was power in then camp, but I only took an overnight bag with spare batteries and basic necessities .