The desert changed me

They say the desert changes a man; the relentless Sun burns away your past and you emerge from the sands made anew. That has been my experience.

Today was spent driving relentlessly South-West. We went through the relatively verdant Dades Valley, walked through the Todra Gorge, and then drove through progressively dustier towns passing smaller and smaller women carrying larger and larger burdens.

The main game was to reach the Erg Chebbi dunes outside of Merzouga. There we pretty much got out of the car and straight on to camels and set off into the dunes. Nothing about the experience has made me love camels more – they remain awkward, uncomfortable, smelly beasts which have the capacity to burp and fart simultaneously. But, wow, do they look good in the desert.

We rode for a hour or so and then watched the Sun go down from the top of a huge dune. As we were driving I kept thinking the landscape was like central Australia, but the dunes are a different colour and the sand has a different, smoother texture.

When the Sun was down we rode on to our camp. In stark contrast to our last desert camp experiences, in Australia and Jordan, our tent has an en-suite bathroom complete with hot and cold running water and a shower. It’s a beautiful camp in the middle of the desert. After dinner there was drumming and dancing round a campfire under the stars.

So you may be asking what did all this do to change me – other than the addition of some mild saddle-sores. Well my mind has been blown by one simple fact – the Arabic word for a desert of dunes is… sahara. So the Sahara Desert is just the Desert Desert.