Since 1982 (above) I’ve travelled in the Sahara with motorcycles, 4x4s, regular cars, trucks and camels, adding up to over 50 visits. I’ve written books, presented talks, appeared on TV, organised and lead tours, shot films and offered advice and consultation to novelists, TV, world-leading brands, NGOs, nutters and scientists.

In the menu bar above you’ll find links to scores of travellers’ reports, map-, route– and country information, details about or reports on my tours, book reviews and articles on whatever deserty subject happens to interest me, be it Arawan, Burials, the 2CV survival story or the mysterious Merkala Tower. It’s a jumble of stuff dating back decades.

The last edition of my Sahara Overland guidebook was published in 2005 but has been superseded by this website and my subsequent Overlanders’ Handbook 2 (right) Adventure Motorcycling Handbook 8 and the 4th edition of Morocco Overland (left).

I also republished Desert Travels (below), a travelogue covering my early adventures in the Sahara when the desert was much more accessible. I also extracted and expanded the camel section from Sahara Overland into an inexpensive Sahara Trekking ebook (right).

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The Golden Age of Sahara travel
Today, following over two decades of kidnappings, much-increased trafficking, rebellions, revolutions as well as the widespread circulation of weaponry, independent tourism in the central Sahara has collapsed or is severely restricted. But it wasn’t always like that.

The late 1970s and 1980s were a Golden Age for independent desert tourism: post-colonial nations had yet to be beset by internal strife, while the popularity of the Dakar Rally as well as the emergence of desert-capable motorcycles and 4x4s saw adventure tourism flourish in the central Sahara. My book, Desert Travels, recalls this era. Most winters the overlanders’ campsites in Djanet and Tamanrasset were packed with VWs, Land Rovers, Ladas, BMWs and XTs.

The last time I stayed at Camping Dassine in Tam it was deserted. Only the old ‘airstream’ Transsaharien bus (left) rested where it’s been since time immemorial.

Make no mistake: the good days of roaming free around the Sahara are pretty much over. It was great while it lasted but you could say the Sahara has returned to what it always was: a lawless wilderness into which outsiders venture at their peril. Having said that, I am always conspiring of ways to get back there where Algeria and Mauritania hold the best prospects for real desert travel.