Category Archives: Sahara Historical

Sahara • The Empty Quarter • Part 2

Originally published in Overland Journal

See also:
VW Taro build (soon)
Intro
Part 1

Many times during my decade of despatching in London I’d longed for the irritatingly reliable engine of some middleweight Honda I’d ridden day-in, day-out for years to explode into a thousand pieces. Nothing less than a terminal meltdown with conrods rupturing the block and cogs spitting out of the muffler.

Now, a long way from the interminable Clerkenwell Road, I was faced with the inevitability of my VW Taro’s imminent demise. The engine knock might last for days, but in reality I knew its sudden escalation meant this car would not see another dawn.

At least the dreaded dune crossing had turned out to be an anticlimax. It was all over before we realized and ahead of us the ridges subsided into a rolling sand sheet. We could now resume our easterly course towards the Malian border.

Our convoy followed me as I nursed the VW along, keeping the revs low and the load light. For a while I thought it might make it, but make it where? We were just at the start with a thousand vacant kilometres of Empty Quarter to cross. Mile by mile the ear-wincing clatter grew louder until a hideous hammering suddenly filled the cab as I tiptoed out of a shallow sandy bowl. I stamped on the clutch pedal and cut the engine, but of course this engine had just switched itself off, big time. We’d reached the VW’s grave.

If you’d asked me to point out the least desirable place to have a serious breakdown on this trip I would have guessed somewhere beyond the dune crossing but before the full traverse of Mali; somewhere like N20°03′ W08°00′, give or take a hundred clicks. From this point the nearest towns of Nema, Chinguetti or Timbuktu in Mali were as far as they could be: the better part of a week’s round trip.

I rolled back down into the dip where we hitched up the front end and pulled off the sump, expecting to find it full of shrapnel. No such drama although a bit of prodding revealed #4 big end was definitely shot. I had no spares of course; these days if you think you ought to carry new big end shells for a Sahara trip, what you really need is a better car.

We cleaned ourselves up and considered my options. We could wait here for a week, eating into our supplies while someone headed off to track down a big end. With the right part I might be able to limp on before making a proper repair in Algeria. But judging by the sudden, pre-terminal racket the crankshaft could have snapped – a distinct possibility as the engine was locked solid. Establishing this would be a lot of heavy work in the middle of the desert; dumping the car or trying to recover the remains made more sense.

The problem with dumping it was there was literally no space for me in the other cars, let alone my gear, which now had a value greater than the pickup. And with a replacement engine from somewhere, the VW – which was otherwise in great shape – could ride again.

We got on the Bat Phone to the Ambassade on the far side of the Quarter. A truck had just left Timbuktu but with a full load, while an empty up north near Taoudenni was having gearbox problems. They’d have a think and call back in a couple of hours.

Presently the phone rang. There was a MAN in the yard but the 2000-kilometre round trip would cost as many euros. It would take a couple of days to track down enough fuel for the round-trip too; after that they’d meet us in three days. It was marginal but I figured along with the convenience of getting my gear to somewhere useful, there was a chance of getting the pickup re-engined or sold on. Calling in a recovery from Timbuktu was not an option; we’d blow our cover in Mali with who knows what consequences, most likely with the waste of a lot of time and money while losing our chance to finish the crossing of the Empty Quarter.

With the recovery underway we put on a brew. A little later Ron came back from a wander, having found various Neolithic trinkets: flint knifes and hand axes from several thousand years ago when hunter-gatherers roamed what would have then been a grassy savanna teeming with game.

Did the disaster bother me? Not really. Vehicles are best treated as expendable in the Sahara, on this trip more than most. My desert travels had gone rather well these past few years so I was due a calamity; it just wasn’t the one I was expecting out here. The crux was not being alone and having back-up plan from a place like the Ambassade. It was a shame to waste all the work and money put into building up the Taro, but it had got this far and, for a gutless old ute, the gazelle had proved itself up to the point when it croaked.

By next morning we were already getting restless, and with the thought of a week’s waiting for the lorry to trundle over the eastern horizon, the tricky topic of towing re-emerged. It was clear that only the VX was capable of it: Sue didn’t mind but Roger was less keen. I saw his point; towing even the lightened ‘gazelle’ across unknown terrain for a thousand kilometres was a shortcut to prematurely ageing the transmission; I knew desert travellers who’d found this out the hard way. In the end though, the call to action prevailed and a fee of a euro per kilometre was agreed. I dished out the masses of fuel I had left and divided my kit for burning or portage. With the pickup as light as it could get, we roped a kinetic line to the VX and set off.

Tussocks! One thing you don’t get in Algeria

They say never tow with a KERR, it will ruin the rope, but I can tell you the elasticity is most welcome when a torquey VX is yanking you from one tussock to another hard enough to give you whiplash. Unless you’re a lost camel with an appetite, these tussock fields, stretching for miles at a time, are the bane of this part of the Sahara. In between them I relaxed on the rolling sand sheet and even had a chance to shoot some video reports. As we alternately cruised and bounced along I was surprised to see fennecs (desert foxes) dashing out from their holes.

The Empty Gang at 20, -6
From the back left Roger, Ron, Mohamed mechanic, me, Sue, Mohamed H, Mauritanian guide

Inevitably we hit a soft patch and spent half an hour getting the running cars out before we could even turn our attention to the dead pickup with much digging and all the tow ropes joined together.
But progress was good and by lunchtime next day we pulled up at 20°N 6°W to record the point for confluence.org, a website that’s collecting images and descriptions from every terrestrial longitude and latitude confluence on earth. Our shots to the four points of the compass were all interchangeable: blue sky over flat sand sheet whichever way you looked.

This point also marked, near enough, the border with Mali and our entry into the badlands of the ungovernable far north. Sure enough we soon crossed the fresh tracks of a single vehicle heading north far off any recognised route. Whoever they were, like us, they didn’t want to be seen. That night we camped out on the wide open sand sheet with no lights.

The next couple of days would be tense. At one point around 3° 40’W we would have to cross the widely braided Timbuktu-Taoudenni salt route. Although its meagre traffic would probably be legitimate, it would be a whole lot better not to have our incongruously eastbound convoy seen by anyone. If we did get hijacked the raiders would have quite a jackpot; and as we were soon to find out, they were closer than we thought.

As the sun rose next morning a lone dove flew into our camp and staggered around. A bad omen? I’d encountered such bird behaviour before in the desert and presumed they were stragglers, weakened during the southward migration and close to death. But once we got going again all thoughts of the lost dove were shaken out of me as we hit another interminable band of tussocks. The problem was when the VX steered around a lump, the pickup got towed on a direct line. Result? Head-shaped dents in the roof of my cab.

By mid-morning Mohamed received a text that the lorry was already in the area. Amazed by its swift progress but preferring not to use voice calls in case it set off any alarms down south, we texted back our position and waited.

Here comes the cavalry, a 6-cylinder, 11.4 litre M.A.N 19-tonner.
More grunt than the Bay of Pigs on New Year’s Eve

For hours we listened intently over the wind for the growl of the big engine. What was taking them so long? After a few false alarms we finally spotted the sand-coloured M.A.N trundling past a couple of miles away. Ron hopped into his 60 and dashed out after them.

Their own transit of northern Mali had not been uneventful. The previous evening they’d been held up by gunmen in a lone Cruiser and relieved of a drum of fuel and the power lead for their Garmin. Once the batteries had expired they’d had to locate us with the basic GPS in their sat phone which had no handy ‘go to’ feature. The two drivers, truck owner Hassan and his mechanic didn’t seem too perturbed by the robbery. Luckily they were empty and had wisely not disclosed the nature of the mission. They still had the truck, an M.A.N 19/240 troop carrier specially built for Algerian desert forces in the 1980s, and now the long-range desert smugglers’ choice over the more complicated and expensive Mercedes.

We set about finding a way to load the VW. A mile or so away we found a hardened platform of calcrete – the weathered remains of what geologists call duricrust which here had one edge exposed by the wind a couple of feet proud of the desert floor. By digging two wheel channels into the crumbly edge, the lorry could back up almost level with the car positioned up on the pan.

A couple of hours later we’d all taken our spell with the picks and the levels were closing up. Some firewood and sand plates made a ramp and with a run-up the pickup rolled into the back.

When it came to lashing down you’d think these guys knew their business. It didn’t look like it. My tyres were deflated (to reduce rolling I presume), heavy fuel drums were then piled on the Taro which was then secured over the lorry’s flexing side gates which was to do a lot of unnecessary damage to both machines over the next few days. No one listened.

At just about every stop within the Empty Quarter, we easily found prehistoric artefacts and geological oddities lying near the camp. Among them were pieces of fulgarite – sand fused into delicate coral-like tubes or flakes of glass by lightening strikes. It’s something that never ceases to amaze me – solidified lightening. In Egypt we once found a rod of fulgarite as thick as my arm twisting deep into the sand in a shallow helix form created as the charge earthed itself.

By towing from Mauritania we’d saved the truck a good 800 kilometres and a few days so Mohamed was working on Hassan to try and reduce the price. It wasn’t looking too promising. Like Mohamed, Hassan was a Berabish, the little-known Arab tribe from around Timbuktu, descended from the tail end of the Islamic conquest which had whipped across northern Africa in the 8th century. Essentially Moors, and notoriously sharp in their business dealings, the Berabish run much of the bush commerce in that region. Unlike the better-known Tuareg (whose ethnicity Mohamed feigned as it was good for business in Algeria), they have no time for either playing up to tourists or making rebellions, unless there’s good money in it. Getting a financial break from Hassan would cost the proverbial pound of flesh.

One of the truck drivers was particularly aggressive at the wheel so I took to sitting in my car to try and limit the damage. Leaking diesel drums had the pickup sliding around on its flattened tyres, the sidewalls getting further pounded by the rims’ edges as the VW bashed against MAN’s sides.

I persuaded them to part re-inflate the tyres but all my gear was getting either crushed by the drums or soaked in diesel. As the side gates bent inward, the ropes slackened and the car beat itself up. I’d have to crawl out of the window, edge over to the MAN’s cab like Indiana Jones and thump on it until they stopped. They’d hop out and hang off the ropes to get them good and tight against the creaking side gates. It was painful to watch, but on the move the grunt of the 240-hp truck was something to behold. Rated at 19 tons but carrying next to nothing and running singles on the dual rear axle, it ground its way over small dunes like a digger.

Presently we started bisecting the Taoudenni salt route’s countless north–south tracks, the only piste we’d see in the Empty Quarter. An hour later as they began to peter out I spotted a distant M.A.N on the southern horizon, probably heading back to Timbuktu with a cargo of hand-hewn salt slabs from the pits at Taoudenni.

Despite my troubles we had not forsaken our commitment to the advancement of climate research. Learning of our plans to cross this remote region, a scientist friend back at Oxford University had asked if I could collect dust samples from a couple of ‘hot spots’, the darker red patches above.

The Sahara is the world’s biggest source of dust which, when launched up into the atmosphere by seasonal windstorms, is thought to have a significant effect on global climate, including Atlantic hurricanes. After western Chad, much of this dust comes from the Empty Quarter but samples had never been obtained before. As we passed through one of the hotspots, composed of the same calcrete we’d dug into a loading ramp, Sue interpreted my gesticulating from the cab and stopped to collect some samples.

Watching vids with the crew while break baked

Next afternoon we passed the place where the truck had been ambushed on its way out, and later spotted our first tree since Ouadane in Mauritania. Soon rocky hills rose out of the unending sand sheet, heralding the outliers of the Jebel Timertine, where European hostages had been held for months at a time and where France had it out with AQIM in 2013, after one hostage escaped.
One of the truck crew was a particularly creepy guy, a skinny Tunisian brimming with resentment. He tried to chat me up, but could not help pointed comments about us rich Europeans. I would not be at all surprised if he ended up with AQIM in the coming years and I was glad to see the back of him, and all of them, to be honest.

We joined a piste and as the sun dropped behind us we rolled into the compound known as l’Ambassade in the No Man’s Land trading post of El Khalil. Bou who managed the place gave me a warm welcome, especially when I handed over a solar panel and some Garmin 72s I’d promised him.

New big end shells had been ordered in from Algeria and gritty negotiations with Hassan got underway. The Taro was now in a sorry state but Hassan was unapologetic – it’s the Berabich way. Nevertheless both he and Mohamed were interested in buying it. In no mood to do Hassan any favours, I let Mohamed have it for the combined cost of the recovery, Rog and Sue’s towing fee and a haircut in Tamanrasset. A total loss in other words, but better than expected considering my helpless position.

A sad ending for la gazelle, in many ways a perfect lightweight desert car

The VW was shoved into a corner, had its tasty wheels striped off and locked in the storehouse, and was covered in an oily sheet. It’s probably still there today, but full of bullet holes, as El Khalil ended up on the front line of Operation Barkane and got bombed by the French.

As ever, the chirpy Bou was full of business ideas. Could I ship a container full of Land Cruiser or old Land Rover parts out to Togo, or maybe we could slip a brace of Renault prime movers up into Algeria. How much are they in France anyway? And what about three double-cab Hiluxes? I said I’d find out and get back to him.

We’d crossed the Majabat, some more successfully than others. The Mauritanian guide who’d been out of his depth got paid off, and I took his place in Mohamed’s 80 as we headed for the Algerian frontier at Bordj Moktar.
After their epic crossing, in 1975 the JSE had been turned back near here or maybe Tessalit and were sent down into the Sahel to continue their eastward traverse to the Red Sea. We weren’t going that far but hoped to range a little further across the width of the Sahara.

But our entry into Algeria was no forgone conclusion. How were we to explain our unused Malian visas? I’d already considered this and figured the worst they might do is send us down to Tessalit, the nearest Malian entry post 120km away and, with Tuareg bandits on the prowl, a risky proposition according to the Ambassade’s travel advice unit.

It was time to face the music so we rocked up at the police post at Bordj, handed over our passports and let Mohamed schmooze the cops. He knew well it was the best way to get the better of the countless ‘Men in Hats’ you have to deal with in Algeria, but it didn’t look good. Under orders from the Free World to seal its massive, porous southern borders as best they could, what were they to make of a bunch of tourists blithely roaming across Moktar ben Moktar’s territory? The brigade commander was already on the phone to Tamanrasset, 600km away, when by chance Mohamed recognised an officer from In Salah, his home town. The guy was swiftly persuaded to vouch for Mohamed’s peerless credentials as a renowned desert guide and with, as far as Algeria was concerned, all the correct paperwork and permits in place, we were grudgingly let off the hook.

It had been a lucky break and an example of why it had been worth hiring Mohamed. In sub-Saharan countries like Mali and Niger a tourist might pay their way out of situations like this, but in Algeria I knew well (and have found out again since) that bribing small-time border officials is not done. It’s actually one of the things I like about Algeria.

‘Al hamdullilai!’ (‘Allah be praised’) exclaimed Mohamed, delighted to be back home after his fraught round trip to Mauritania. We had crossed Le Quartier Vide, evaded the attentions of soon-to-be AQIM’s top commander, Moktar ben Moktar and his henchmen (well, almost) and were safely back in the land of milk, honey and cheap diesel.

But I do remember seeing a bunch of shifty looking ‘bearded Pakistanis’ at BBM, of the kind you rarely saw in the Sahara back then. They may well have been devout Muslims coming back from studying at a madrasa somewhere in Mali. Or they may have been associated with AQIM or any of the other jihadist groups roaming the outlands of northern Mali.

After a celebratory feast at a friend’s house in BBM (for which we’d all start paying very soon), we headed northwest for Tamanrasset and the Hoggar, retracing the route I’d taken with the burgundy VX a few weeks earlier.

On the way we diverted to the gorge of Tim Missao (above) which I’d not visited since the 1980s in my 101 (left). The gorge is a lovely spot and represented the most animated topography we’d seen since the Guelb near Ouadane. We decided the Empty Quarter was aptly named. It made up one of the biggest sand sheets in the Sahara, void of trees, outcrops any higher than my knee and even significant sand seas. Algeria on the other hand was full of diverse landscapes: smooth granite monoliths, gnarly volcanic ranges, eroded sandstone escarpments lapped by sand banks, and of course sand seas that would cover Belgium.

Garamantean horse chariots far from Germa in southern Libya

It was one reason why I returned here again and again. Another was that while exploring the gorge, the ever-observant Ron easily found the paintings of Garamantean horse-drawn chariots I’d missed on previous visits. The ancient rock art suggested that some two millennia ago traders from this mysterious civilisation based in southwestern Libya may have ranged much further across the Sahara than previously thought. In late 2007 similar discoveries near Jebel Uweinat in the far northwest of Sudan may do the same for the hitherto Nile-bound Ancient Egyptians.

Whether it was the stress relief or what we ate in Bordj, for us Tamanrasset passed by in a three-day blur of dozing and scurrying back and forth to the toilet block. Once the worst was over, Mohamed headed back north to In Salah and we got a change of crew for our final leg, east to Djanet.

The two new guys made me realise how lucky I was with Mohamed. To them, and many other guides, Mohamed’s crossing of the Quarter with us was seen as madness. Why risk your car out there when you could earn safe money transporting regular tour groups along the Hoggar and Tassili N’Ajjer tram lines? For all his faults and bullshit, Mohamed enjoyed a true adventure much like ourselves. We may never choose to go there again, but with his help we’d seen it for ourselves.

Already a warm, retrospective rosey view of northern Mali’s barren sand sheet was setting in. Now it felt frustrating to be hemmed in along washboard tracks.

Still, one look out of the window made up for it: the shark’s fin blade of Areggane mountain, the sand-swept canyons and rock arches of Tagrera, El Ghessour rock art, and the amazing Youf Ehakit. Wer also passed circular paved pre-Islamic tombs I’d never noticed before, and steps carved eons ago into a rocky sentinel that Ron had discovered on a previous trip. Our drivers had to be persuaded to make the deadly 20-kilometre diversion off the track into the unknown and once there, feigned indifference.

It was early December now and the weather was turning. Frost coated my sleeping bag after a night beside the Erg Admer dune passage which led to the oasis town of Djanet.

By early afternoon the cars had clawed their way onto the dune slopes to the crest from where the tawny Tassili N’Ajjer escarpment unrolled across the northern horizon. In no hurry to reach town, we camped early below the cliffs, cooked up the best of our remaining food and watched the same full moon rise as it had done over our first camp together in Morocco, four weeks and nearly as many thousand miles ago.

In Djanet next day we organised a day trip up to the Jabbaren rock art site up on the plateau. A car collected us before dawn and as the sun lit up the Erg Admer dunes behind us, we were already panting steadily up the goat track that led to the plateau top. As we trudged up, a lone figure scampered down with a cheery salaam.
Behind us a hoard of bedraggled ‘illegals’ from sub-Saharan Africa had emerged from the rocks, following our path uphill. Dropped there overnight by who knows who, they’d been instructed to wait for the guide who’d lead them across to Ghat in Libya, two days away. From there they were expecting to get to Malta and mainland Europe, but likely as not would get deported in one of Libya’s periodic purges or trapped as slave workers. Less than a decade later Gaddafi had fallen with other North African despots and the trickle of migrants became a tsunami.

Even back then, it all put our own adventurous caper into perspective, but we were still pleased with ourselves. We’d driven laterally across as much of the Sahara as was possible without ensuring serious trouble and our own deportation. That done, now it was time to head north.

Sahara • The Empty Quarter

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• SEQ Part 1
• SEQ Part 2

The late Wilfred Thesiger’s travels in the Arabian Rub al Khali or ‘Empty Quarter’ are well known, but the Sahara too has its barren regions. In the east is the Libyan Desert, while the more obscure Majabat al Koubra (‘Great Emptiness’) explored by Theodore Monod in the 1930s, spreads across the Mauritania-Mali borders. These hyper-arid, million-square kilometre expanses within the greater Sahara are barely touched by human presence; they represent the essence of the place known in Arabic as al sahra: the desert.

In November 2006 our crossing from Atar in northern Mauritania, across the Ouarane Sand Sea and the bandit lands of northern Mali to Bordj Moktar in southern Algeria was a highly ambitious project which cost me my vehicle.

In the end, by taking several liberties with border regulations and with a good measure of luck, we got within a day’s walk of the Libyan frontier, having crossed over half the width of the Sahara.
Expedition report at the Royal Geographical Society

Trans-Africa Highways route guide (1963)

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See also
Shell Guide to the Sahara (1955)

From 1949 (the year an Austin A70 traversed Africa north to south in a record 24 days) the Automobile Association of South Africa published their trans continental route guide until this final fifth, fully revised edition in 1963. In its way, Trans-Africa Highways is a more basic version of the French Guide du Tourisme Automobile du Sahara published from 1934 to 1955. You can buy copies online for 15 quid.
By 1963 independence from colonial rule was in full swing right across Africa, presumably making researching and producing future editions too costly. By 1963 it would already have been beyond the time when you could drive just about anywhere with a wave and a salute, as first rebellions and independence and then all-out civil wars impacted on transits.

The colour map on the inside cover (below) shows nearly two dozen driveable routes, including four north–south trunk routes: Cape Town to Matadi (DRC), to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and all the way north across the Sahara to either Algiers / Tangier, or Alexandria on the Mediterranean.
Unlike today, regular cars like the 1954 Morris above, were deemed suitable, even if they may have required full suspension or engine rebuilds along the way (left). It was all part of the adventure.

Back then the west route avoided Cameroon and Congo Brazza and came across the eastern DRC up to CAR, into Chad and then west to Kano in northern Nigeria. Here you chose either the short but sandy Hoggar route to Tamanrasset (fatal 1954 attempt), or the easier but longer Tanezrouft route to the west (1954 account, also in a Morris). Today’s Atlantic Route was decades away. Both these Morris expeditions mentioned the TAH route guide which must have been indispensable for undertaking a major African crossing.

Names like Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Benin and Burkina Faso did not exist in 1963, and the Spanish Sahara and Rio de Oro territories were marked but blank, as no route went anywhere near them. But whatever they were known as now, each country got a brief summary of currency, climate, roads and language, etc. (left)

Roues A to Alexandria (6647 miles) and B to Algiers (8257 miles) were the two principle trans-continental axes (below). The latter was the most used and at time of publication the Aswan dam was only in its third year of Soviet-aided construction, so you motored all the way up from Wadi Halfa to Cairo.

Meanwhile, there can’t have been many takers for the 4764-mile run across the width of the Sahel from Dakar to Port Sudan.

Each route is broken down into annotated map panels of around 200 miles (above) with a summary and icons identifying lodgings, fuel, ferries and so on. You inched your way from one panel to the next, but certainly in the Sahara, marker posts were as frequent as every mile in Mali (below).

Trans-Africa Highways 1963 marked the apogée of an era of motoring in Africa when, outside the French controlled Sahara, borders were crossed effortlessly and many roads and tracks were maintained in superb condition.
Within two decades desert route markers were knocked over, stolen or uprooted, tracks in equatorial Africa deteriorated into deeply carved holloways (left). But another two decades on, the advent of the Chinese roads-for-resources program saw Routes A and B almost entirely asphalted, along with many more.

The major difficulties today in crossing Africa need not be the terrain so that now crossing in modern ‘Morris’ is more feasible. It is the route planning game of snakes and ladders dodging no-go zones, as well as the complex bureaucracy associated with obtaining expensive visas and sticking to schedules. These days only the western route is open; as few as 16 visas from Europe to Cape Town.

Alasdair Kennedy’s Sahara school expeditions

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Nature in the raw, the awe-inspiring power of wild places, has the most immediate
influence on the youngsters. Initially, it is alien and threatening, but as confidence grows they
come to terms with it. They respect its power and violence, but at the same time they are drawn to the peace and beauty of the empty places.
Alasdair Kennedy

Back in the early 1980s I joined The 153 Club, a bunch of Saharan enthusiasts who’d travelled in the area covered by the ‘Michelin 153’ map (right). In fact, having been there was a condition of membership which at one time cost £1.53p.

Apart from the Sahara Handbook, information on desert travel was hard to come by then, so I’d joined in the hope of getting that from the three-monthly newsletters as well as maybe meeting some other active Saharans. My recollection was actually more of a reunion group of mostly former Minitrek clients (an early overland company). I attended a couple of club meetings in London, sent in a couple reports, then went my own way, though I did get to know ex-Minitrek driver Mike Foster who, in 1991, wrote Sai Bilma about joining the gruelling Bilma salt caravan.
One of the newsletter’s more lively contributions (as opposed to reminiscences), came from a geography teacher called Alasdair Kennedy from former Shorefields School in Dingle, Liverpool (now King’s Leadership Academy). From 1970 he organised summertime school trips to Algeria and beyond for over 15s (from ’82 including girls), using cantankerous 1950s ex-army 4×4 trucks.
It was writing up the mid-80s Imps trike fiasco which made me recall Kennedy and his similar adventures for unprivileged youths from ordinary schools. As Kennedy said in his book, below, ‘such activities can no longer retain the image of being indulgent “jollies” for a fortunate few.’ The school’s address was given as Dingle, but in later reports Kennedy switched to the adjacent Toxteth suburb to underline the school’s deprived locale. In 1981 Toxteth had gained notoriety as one setting for the many inner city riots of that year, partly attributed to heavy-handed policing. Though not involved, we were raided ourselves following the Brixton riots a few months earlier.

Kennedy had first co-organised a scientific visit to Assekrem in 1966 while a student at Durham University using a pair of Morris one-ton trucks (above left). One truck got wrecked in the Hoggar and was towed back as a trailer, bringing to mind Emile Lelay’s 2CV motorcycle stunt.
Once qualified as a teacher Kennedy developed the Sahara expedition idea, but with teenagers and using old trucks was the cheapest way to do it. The kids or their parents had to raise the fee (£340 by the early 1990s), and once there, all were fully involved in keeping the show on the road, as well as undertaking small-group mini overnighters through the Hoggar or Mertoutek village, which became a home from home for many future expeditions, before sometimes heading further south. In 1994 the curtailed Moroccan expedition was featured in a short Channel 4 documentary. This was a couple of years after Kennedy wrote a how-to book or thesis: The Expedition Experience as a Vehicle for Change in the Inner City. On p26 1992 book notes:

When this learning takes place in demanding natural surroundings, where there is an element of risk [Sahara], it ceases to be something artificial which is imposed for reasons of convention, and becomes something which is welcomed, because of its survival value.

Over 25 years over 300 kids from Shorefields and other schools got to experience a central Saharan adventure, and now there’s a Shorefields Sahara Expeditions blog recalling those expeditions, along with YouTube vids and photo galleries. It’s worth repeating these long trips took place in the school’s summer holidays when the Sahara and Sahel are a heck of a lot balmier than Merseyside!
Many of the reports describe unusual weather phenomena common at this time of year, including strange, windless mists of fine dust rolling over the camp or vehicles, choking visibility just before the main sandstorm strikes, often ending in a brief rainstorm and, on one occasion, heightened levels of static electricity when merely touching metal would give you a sharp zap.
The soundless vid of the 1973 above trip went all the way down the Hoggar route to Agadez in Niger, then back up the Tanezrouft via Tessalit in Mali to Reggane and on to Ceuta – in mid-summer all jammed in the back of a poorly ventilated, ex-army Austin K9 radio wagon and ambulance. (The same route was repeated in 1988). By the time they got to wet season Niger they were running with the bonnet’s off to help shed heat, but the 4-litre petrol sixes still suffered from vapour lock, and you imagine a whole lot more. (Later, diesel Bedfords were used.) Back then that’s what desert overlanding was – lurching from one breakdown or reversal to another which, along with your health, was pushed to the limit by the intense heat, dust and Sahelian humidity.

The 1971 trip (pics, report, vids above) sounded especially gruelling, staying entirely in the enervating desert for several weeks. On this one a SWB Landrover accompanied the Austin K9 and a similar Morris truck. Having come from Djanet via Tam and the Aïr, in Agadez, they’d run out of time to visit Kano in northern Nigeria, but took up an offer to join some French heading across the Tenere to Dirkou. It was sort of on the way back north and a loop I more or less did, but over a couple of trips.

Passing the then extant Arbre Tenere, after a visit to Jerome’s fuel depot in Dirkou (bragging, as he always did with Brits – like me 33 years later – about fighting with Monty in WWII), the three vehicles set off alone for Djanet along the desolate, Berliet-balised Chirfa piste (left). The intense heat combined with crappy fuel from Jerome’s played havoc with the Morris which was down to 2mpg – so bad the Landrover had to shoot ahead hundreds of kilometres to Djanet to bring back more fuel. Like the 1973 film, the end of 1971 Part 2 video rushes to the end and skips most of this drama.
You wonder how this was for the kids engaged in a combination of an Outward Bound course and Foreign Legion selection? It’s hard to keep a grip on your own struggles let alone maintain the morale of a bunch of heat-struck teenagers. It must have taken skilful and thoughtful leadership, like Roy Pratt demonstrated in the mid-80s Imps expedition, except with greater experience, Kennedy seemed far better at planning for the multiple contingencies the summertime desert throws at you. At such times the best place to be was probably sat clinging on, in you baggy Y-fronts, to a pitching truck cab’s roof!
A few stills below from the YT vids. Loads more on the WP blog.

Phonetic Afro-French. If only French, or all languages, could be spelt like that

Tademait descent 1973. The only year ever this part of the Trans Sahara Highway road was that good.

Digging out the K9 on the Tademait. It’s hard to believe the kids are cooped up in the back

The 1971 gang, Hoggar. You’d think they’d all get laid low by heat stroke

Pre-Islamic tombs in the Sahara

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Part of the Sahara A to Z series

See also:
Mysterious circles
Interesting academic document
Nick Brooks’ gallery (Polisario Free Zone)
Archeoland / Sahara loads of images and downloads
Wikipedia: Pre-Islamic burial monuments in the Sahara

As on previous occasions, the route of our camel trek through the Immidir will rest a day at Aguelmam Rahla, a reliable waterhole at the mouth of the Oued Tafrakrek canyon (blue line on map, left) where the Tissedit plateau drops down to meet a band of dunes. I’d been wanting to make a diversion here since scanning Google Earth a few years back and noticing the innumerable pre-Islamic tombs (‘PIZ’) in the area (below).

Looking again on Google Earth some time later, less than an hour of nosing around revelled three dozen keyhole, antenna or mound-ring tombs within a few kilometres of the waterhole. I didn’t bother counting the less distinctive mound tombs or just plain tumuli. In fact the proliferation of tombs here isn’t so unusual, given the topographic features already listed: edge of a plateau, former river mouth, band of dunes – all common factors found at former Neolithic occupation sites.

On the first crater tour in 2007 we walked along the base of the dunes, northeast from Aguelmam Rahla, and discovered several grinding stones and other artefacts at the foot of the dunes. And in 2012 one of us came across a near intact pot (left) at the foot of a dune, as well as napping (stone tool chipping) sites. You commonly find ceramic shards or even larger pieces, but I’ve never found an intact pot.

pizeders — Location of tombs along the Oued Tafrakrek canyon and on the Tissedit plateau, with a cluster around Aguelmam Rahla at the canyon mouth.

There’s something compulsive about Sahara tomb spotting on Google Maps, searching the featureless desert floor for the clear signs of prehistoric human activity. Once out there it can give a purpose to a journey that’s otherwise just agreeable recreation and adds a hint of treasure hunting.
It reminds you that the Sahara of 6000 years ago was not a desert, but a much less arid savannah. Among others, KenGrok spent years scanning and collating unusual imagery on Google Earth’s layers, including pre-Islamic tombs in the Sahara. In 2019 Google erased his work, but his baton has been picked up by ‘syzygy‘ on Google Earth Community, as well as Manfred Boelke at archaeoland.eu (his image below).

Image: https://archaeoland.eu/en/sahara-en

Broadly speaking, half a dozen tombs styles have been identified with clear regional limits as shown above. The most common is simply a mound of stones or tumulus which can be huge and can have a central depression to resemble a volcanic crater. Sometimes the mound may be surrounded by a ring – a mound-ring tomb. All over the Sahara tombs are usually found in clusters; find one and you’ll find others nearby. It suggests an auspicious place for burials or just a former occupation site with an adjacent burial ground.

A very unusual assembly of three types of tomb on the edge of the Tassili plateau near Djanet. The superimposed mound suggest the keyhole is older. As we know from rock art found in the same area, it’s common to cover what came before.

Antenna or crescent tombs have open arms spanning out from a tomb mound apex at around 120° and can be up to 250 metres or more, end to end. They are prolific in southeastern Morocco (bottom left; 27.6971, -10.8665), but are also found in Algeria by the thousand (25.86007, 4.36847). The finest ones have long, slender arms while small ones can be stumpy and even almost simple hemispheres.

Keyhole tombs are two concentric round or oval rings with the tomb mound near the middle and a corridor leading to the outer ring. Below is a famous keyhole near Djanet at the base of the Tassili n Ajjer plateau where you’ll find them in their hundreds.

A version of the keyhole is called a goulet tomb (below; French for narrow passage, as in ‘gullet’). They have a large perimeter ring with the tomb mound on the ring’s edge and a line or corridot of stones bisecting the circle. I find these much less common.

A version I’ve read about but not seen is called the rather ill-named compass tomb which is found exclusively in the Tibesti massif of northern Chad (left).
In the clearest examples like below, an arm or spike extends from the oval ring to one side, resembling a tadpole, tennis racket or snow show. As always, in the centre of the ring you will see the tomb mound.

Sunrise orientation
By now you may have spotted a common directional theme among the non purely circular pre-Islamic tombs: they all have orientations and elements which point at about 110° which, at these latitudes of around 25°N is towards the rising sun. Just as with many ancient, pre-monotheistic civilisations, the sun was the key element in their cosmology, with ‘the way to rising sun’ suggesting rebirth or afterlife. But just like builders, occasionally they got it wrong, like the compass tomb above right in the sands of the western Tibesti.

Sunrise and sunset points on the horizon at 25°N (Ie: much of the Sahara)

There is one final category of tomb which is also commonly foiund in the Sahara. The Islamic tomb. Contemporary Moslem cemeteries on the edge of desert towns are relative plain affairs, cleared rough ground covered in plain head stones. The ornate tombs below are out in the desert, far from the nearest village (Arak, Algeria). Usually the headstone is at the eastern end of the tomb, though of course with Islam that’s related to the direction of Mecca, not sunrise. These tombs, which might be said to have an entrance on the left and an east-pointing mihrab (‘altar’ niche) in the perimeter ring, will be a few hundred years old.

Not all pre-Islamic tombs fit the above categories. Below left, a keyhole shape but with no corridor, overlapped by a mound-ring tomb. Perhaps the corridor stones were reused for the mound-ring. Below right, a mound-ring with a perimeter mound like a goulet – a descendant’s tomb? I read here that excavated tombs in the Oued Draa of southern Morocco were more like mausolea, with a walled crypt under the stone mound where successive generations were interred. I’ve never read of a tomb being excavated like this in the Sahara, though I’m sure it must have been done, by either grave robbers, archeologists or the curious. I remember one time in the exceedingly remote Gilf Kebir, we came across a plain, desolate tomb (rare in that area) on a day-walk. Someone half-heartedly dug it up but found neither bones nor treasure. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

pizarm — Antenna; unimpressive at ground level

Often this fascination and excitement with pre-Islamic tombs falls a little flat on actually finding one on the desert floor. On a 2012 Immidir trip I was excited about finding a huge antenna tomb that lay close our path on Day 6 or so. On Google (above) the massive structure with a span of over 300m looked amazing, but by the time we tracked it down (left), it was too big to appreciate from ground level. My group seemed to say… ‘and the purpose if this diversion was…?’. ‘Flying’ over these tombs on satellite imagery, like Peru’s Nazca lines, is how they’re best appreciated.

How old are these ‘pre-Islamic’ tombs? Well in the central Sahara I’d say the Islamic era began to have an impact a couple of hundred years after the Arab Conquest of North Africa between AD 647–709. I imagine this swept like a tide west along the south Mediterranean coast, down the Atlantic to present-day Mauritania and then ‘eddied’ back west towards places like Timbuktu. Other eddies may have spun off sooner to places like Ghadames in Libya, following trans-Saharan trade routes into the interior.

Chances are these tombs, like the huge keyhole on the right in the Immidir (above), are only around 4000 years old, maybe double that. That means they followed the apogee of rock art some 6000 years ago following a climate change (the ‘Humide’ in the image below) which briefly repopulated populated what is now the Sahara. By this time megalithic tombs and temples became widespread across the ancient world, most spectacularly in ancient Egypt and western Europe.

You don’t have to venture into the deep Sahara to see keyhole tombs. In southern Morocco, just a short distance from Erg Chebbi and three miles west of Taouz, on the west side of the Oued Ziz are a cluster of tombs. Like Aguelmam Rahla they’re situated on the edge of a plateau and by a former big river as well as an erg – and not all with entrance ways pointing east.

Below, a curious structure on the Oued Tagant valley midway between Tam and Djanet. And below that, another in the Hoggar, just southeast of Assekrem. I’ve seen these elsewhere in southern Algeria but their meaning is unknown. The guides and old Saharan expeditions just call them ‘tombs’ but they look different and newer than PIZs.
More about them here.

Nine Nutty Ways of Crossing the Sahara

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For centuries camels were the way to go in the Sahara. Introduced from Arabia around 0AD, they proved to be ideally adapted to transporting heavy loads without needing water (providing they was daily herbage or straw). A couple of centuries ago huge caravans numbering thousands of camels would transport salt, slaces or sold from the souks of the Sahel.
Today, camelling is still a satisfying way to travel in the desert. You don’t ride; the camels carry all the provisions. But besides the obvious motos, 4x4s and aircraft, here are some other ways people have chosen to cross the great Sahara.

Steam Powered Landship

In the Edwardian era of luxurious, steam powered ocean liners, why not a desert liner to tame the vast sand oceans of Sahara? Like something from a Jules Verne novel, giant traction wheels would glide over the sands while desert tribesmen looked on in awe.
This one never got beyond the drawing board, but today massively overloaded gros porteurs (left) from the pre-electronic 1980s diesel apogee still grind across the desert sands.

Sauterelle Propeller Car

With the advent of the gasoline-powered motorised cart, or ‘car’ for short, traction in the desert sand was the problem with early, low-powered and inefficient engines.
Those new fangled flying machines never this issue, so how hard can it be to combine the two? Behold the wingless, deafening wonder known as the Sauterelle propeller car of 1912 which could literally put the wind up you. Nicknamed the ‘mobile guillotine’ (not really ;-) it was tested near Ouargla and never heard of again. Read more here.

Citroen Half Tracks & Renault Type MH ‘Douze-Pneus’

Motor cars were catching on but traction in the desert remained a problem. During WW1 the Brits under Pat Clayton adapted ultra light, 2WD Model T Fords for the Light Car Patrols in Egypt (left). Desert adventurer Ralph Bagnold used these Fords to travel deep into the hitherto unexplored Libyan Desert.

Around this time Citroen were the first to cross the great desert via the largely flat but very long Tanezrouft Piste in a vehicle fitted with ‘autochenille’ or Kegresse half=tracks (below).
Very slow but not as noisy or deadly as la Sauterelle, they crawled across the desert and were used by Prince Kemal el Din (left) to ‘discover’ the lost plateau of the Gilf Kebir in southwestern Egypt.

Competitor Renault’s solution to the traction problem was the 6×4 10CV Type MH featuring doubled wheels rubber and twin rear axles. Nicknamed ‘le douze pneus‘ (not really ;-), Renault trounced Citroen’s trans Sahara expedition of 1922 with a full, 23,000-mile trans Africa in 1925, the first cars to cross the continent.

Sand Yachts

You got wind, you got sand, so why not Sand Yacht across the Sahara to Mauritania?
Full story.

Chinese Wind Barrow

Regular family cars like Morris Oxfords were now commonly used to cross the Sahara (sometimes ending in tragedy), so lorry manufacturers among others, undertook costly, promotional but essentially pointless Sahara west to east expeditions.
People were running out of stunts to stage in the Sahara until 1974 when priest Geoffrey Howard came up with a new angle that sounded like a lost sketch from Monty Python.
Lately back from volunteering in Nigeria with his wife, he had a Chinese sailing wheelbarrow built, then set off to cross the Sahara ‘unaided’ from Beni Abbes to Kano, raising money for the poor while also positing a new means for locals to transport their goods (not unlike the initial motivation of the 1980s Africar project).
As one reviewer observes: ‘That he was assisted by two British soldiers … in a Land Rover and accompanied him most of the way makes it sound easier – but this was a safety consideration, and he made his own complex rules about how and when they could assist.’

National mountaineering treasure Chris Bonington contributed a harsh foreword: ‘Not much of an adventure’ I thought, ‘pushing this ridiculous wheelbarrow along a well travelled road or track with a [support] Land Rover in constant attendance.’ You’d hope that line is followed by ‘… but Howard’s monumental endeavour changed the face of human powered adventuring…” or some such.
I can’t recall, but do remember similar conclusions to CB on reading the book decades ago: a silly stunt that turned into an endurance test. The sail idea soon proved useless so he had to resort to pushing the barrow for the three-month, 2000-mile crossing in his flapping get up.
There’s some grainy archive film on the BBC of a lightly mocking Bob Wellings (remember him?) interviewing Rev. Howard training on Morecombe Sands in full costume. He ends with ‘I have no fears whatsoever’ The 1990 book is easily found online, new or used.

Three wheel- 2WD FatBike

A regular bicycle will struggle on the piste to carry more than a couple of days of water. One answer: Jean Naud’s 2WD, three-wheeled fatbike replicating the multi-tyred Renaults of yore.
And like a modern lorry, to reduce the pedalling effort, one axle on Naud’s contraption could be lifted and disengaged (left) when payloads dropped or the terrain allowed. It worked too, he crossed the Sahara twice on fat bikes.
Read more.

Microlight

In 1988 prolific adventure travel writer Christina Dodwell teamed up with experienced microlight pilot David Young (recently back from a close shave in Nepal) to fly 7000 miles in a Pagasus XL from Cameroon to the Atlantic in what was still the pioneering era of microlighting.
I knew of it but never read this one; it’s not a trans-Sahara, more of a Sahel traverse via the Aïr mountains and Timbuktu. From the back cover map it looks like they followed roads and main tracks for navigation, maybe due to range and landing issues. Luckily they didn’t do an Icarus and all ended well in Dakar four months later. There’s a book of course (right), one of Dodwell’s many which is widely available online.

Rollerblading with tricycle sail cart

With the 21st century bringing a choice of no less than three asphalt roads spanning the Sahara at 1500-mile intervals, it was time for the rollerblade (or ‘inline skate’) and the humble push-cart sail-tricycle to have their day in the sun. It’s what rollerblades and bitumen were made for.
Five thousand clicks from Spain to Dakar, watch Mark Heuss’ cool short film below.

Did I miss any other batty trans Sahara crossings?

Film of the Week: Life in the Sahara 1953

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Trans-Sahara from Uganda – 1954

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Knud and Svend’s two-month journey to Europe

Thanks to Danish journalist, Anders Nielsen (a friend of one of the protagonists) for passing on this fascinating article and photos. I tidied up a Google translation and added [my annotations] for added clarity.
Seventy years ago, on finishing a lengthy contract in the late-colonial sub-Saharan Africa, taking on such trans-African adventures was not uncommon. It was assumed a regular car might manage as in many colonies parts of the road network were well maintained and superior to what exists today. But as you’ll read, the near-new Morris Oxford still got quite a beating. The yarn reminds me of Paul Stewart’s Trek (below right; to be reviewed), also in a Morris just a year later, but which ended in tragedy north of Agadez in the Sahara. And of course David Newman’s demented The Forgotten Piste a few years later.

From Kenya to Morocco you’re reminded this era was marked by widespread anti-colonial unrest. It’s also interesting to learn of the huge £1000 bond (2500F + 40,000F) for the Contrat de Depannage (assistance) required to cross the French-controlled Sahara to cover the cost of possible rescues.
The Trans-Africa Highways route guide (below) was first published in 1949 by the Automobile Association of South Africa. There are loads of copies online from £25: I bought the final, 5th edition published in 1963, by which time the vast majority of the European colonies (list with dates) were independent. The preface to the 5th edition explained the laborious task of redrawing all the guide’s maps to conform with the new nations. The guide closely resembles the French Shell Guide to the Sahara published since the mid-1930s: page after page of annotated strip maps along a given route. Knud and Svend used the 1949 edition of Trans-African Highways which Anders still owns.

In 1954 two Danes, Knud Jensen and Svend Nielsen, drove a Morris Oxford from Kampala Uganda through equatorial Africa and across the Sahara to Kvistgård in Denmark. The 14,373 kilometre adventure nearly cost the lives of all three.

For three years, Knud and Svend had worked as carpenters for Christiani & Nielsen on the construction of the Owen Falls Dam (left) in Jinja, Uganda. This is where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria to continue north to the Mediterranean. [An old treaty between Uganda and Egypt endured the Nile’s flow was unaffected, though during the 1956 Suez Crisis the Brits considered cutting the flow so to oust Nasser, even at the cost of flooding around Lake Victoria.]

Along with their last salary, they received two plane tickets back home to Denmark, but they chose to cash these in instead. The two young men decided to drive home to Denmark. Knud had an almost new Morris Oxford [Series MO, left] and when you’re young, the spirit of adventure trounces reason.

The direct route was via Sudan and Egypt [with the option of putting the car on a train across the desert from Khartoum to Wadi Halfa], but Egyptian President Nasser was in the process of kicking the British out (the Suez Crisis occurred in 1956). Meanwhile Sudan was also wearying of the British and refused permission to transit the country. The only alternative led west across the Belgian Congo [today’s DRC] and on through French Equatorial Africa [CAR, Cameroon], British Nigeria, French West Africa [Niger] to Algeria and Tangier in Morocco.

First, 1949 edition of *Trans-African Highways* as used by Knud and Svend

The expedition required a huge amount of planning. Were there reliable maps? What were the roads like? When would the rainy season flood the rivers? What documents would be needed? Would the Morris even survive the trip and what spare parts would be needed? The 406-page guidebook, Trans-African Highways (left), published by the Automobile Association of South Africa, provided many answers.
The rainy season in central Africa began in April, and the route through the Sahara would be closed from June to October due to sandstorms and intense heat. This still gave the pair a few months to get organised. Costly permits to pass through French territories were obtained in Nairobi, Kenya – a round trip of nearly 1500km along wretched roads. In Kenya, the Mau-Mau uprising was underway, resulting in a driving ban after sunset. Knud recalled stayed overnight in a small hotel in Nukuru, where the white guests were hanging out in the bar with rifles close at hand. In another town, the police station had been burned down.

Back in Kampala, the Oxford was given a major makeover, and many spares were thrown into a back-up engine sump, which produced a metallic clatter all the way to Denmark. The spare sump served as insurance against a possibility of damage on rutted tracks. An auxiliary petrol tank was fitted in the spare wheel well, and four spare wheels were lashed to the roof rack. Typically, the car did not get a single flat, even though they didn’t see asphalt until they reached Morocco, 8000km later. With a Danish pennant on the left front fender, Knud and Svend left Kampala on 3 April 1954. Ahead awaited massive rivers, equatorial jungle, harsh desert, isolated tribes and miles of rough tracks.

Soon they entered the Congo, where a rebellion against the Belgian colonial rule was already smouldering. But Knud and Svend were more concerned by the Pygmies’ evil glances. The road passed through dense jungle, and several rivers were crossed on small barges made of joined-up dugouts (below). The propulsion was a rower in a canoe on each side, directed rhythmically by the captain’s drum.

Kudu encounter
While still in the Congo, one of the Oxford’s front axles broke. The two had agreed they’d take turns in getting help so with the axle under his arm, Svend got a lift to the nearest town, while Knud set up camp in a clearing. The natives gestured loudly to move the tent, but Knud refused, assuming they were trying to lure him away from the stranded car. That night he found himself camped in the middle of a forest full of snorting, growling and unnerving brushing against the tent, but otherwise the parade of unseen beasts passed without incident. The next day the locals returned to see if he was still alive. Knud emerged from the tent in good form.

A few days later the Morris hit a kudu (a large, spiral horned antelope). The kudu trotted off unharmed, but they did not. The collision had shoved the fan back into the radiator leaving them to repair the damaged cells ‘the African way’. Being carpenters, they figured out how to knock some wooden plugs into the radiator at the bottom and squeeze the cells together at the top so water still flowed through. Miraculously, the repair lasted until they replaced the radiator in Spain.

In French West Africa [Niger] they ran out of drinking water. Thirst became such an acute problem they drew lots to see who’d try some murky ditch water. The idea was that if the one who drank got sick, the other might be able to continue. Knud was given the honour of the dirty water, filtered through a handkerchief soaked up with red wine to cover the bad taste, while Svend had to make do with a mouthful of wine every now and then. The days passed, and when they finally found fresh water, Svend was so dehydrated he was hallucinating.

On the verge of giving up, they were under pressure to cross Nigeria before the rainy season broke. In Niger, the U-bolts holding one of the rear leaf springs snapped. According to the map, the nearest town was at least 60km away and the temperature was reaching 45°C in the shade. Now it was Knud’s turn to seek help; a truck gave him a lift to Dosso which in 1954 turned out to be just a junction. The next day he got another lift to Niamey, Niger’s capital, but it being the weekend, everything was closed. On Monday, he finally managed to get a workshop to fabricate two new U-bolts.
Knud had wanted to wait until the next day, but realised Svend would have been impatient after waiting five days in the bush. The truck Knud returned on was the only vehicle Svend had seen in all that time, and he didn’t want to rot there any longer. While waiting, he’d crawled under the car for some respite from the heat, but the next morning found his body covered in rashes. Unfortunately, he’d shared his space under the car with a dozen rats.

After 6000km and three weeks on the road, the two exhausted Danes reached Gao on the Niger river [present day Mali], the southern terminus of the 1800-km Tanezrouft piste across Sahara to Algeria [the route of the original crossing of the Sahara with
Citroëns in the early 1920s]. Here they met four Englishmen in a well-equipped 4WD, one of whom was a mechanic. They’d driven up from the Gold Coast (a former Danish colony, today Ghana) but had already blown four tyres. Although their original plan had also been to cross the Sahara, they’d lost their nerve and planned to sell the car and fly home.

France shining it’s light upon their colonial world

This encounter made a sobering impression. Here they were stuck with an ailing ordinary family car with a broken rear spring, unstable steering and wheel bearings grinding with sand. Crossing the vast Sahara suddenly seemed like a daunting prospect. The only problem was the price they’d get for the clapped-out Austin wouldn’t even cover a single flight home. In silence they tried again to secure the broken spring by wrapping the handbrake cable around the broken leaves along with a pair of old trousers. At first glance, the repair seemed adequate.

Crossing the Sahara
With permission to cross the Sahara came a requirement that the police in Gao verified at least 60 litres of drinking water was carried. However, the police did not seem so bothered in how careless travellers might be, so most of the water reserve was replaced with petrol as fuel was expensive at the military checkpoints further north in the desert. These checkpoints were up to 400km apart and, according to the regulations, travellers had up to 36 hours to reach each one. If they didn’t show up, the military would launch a search at the drivers’ expense. However, one of the checkpoints explained this never really happened. Soldiers serving in the Foreign Legion had not signed up to be tourist guides.

The track through the Sahara was marked with single oil barrels [‘bidon’] every 2.5km and two stacked barrels every 5km. The sand-blasted wrecks of vehicles from unsuccessful transits also helped mark the route. For the first few days the track was corrugated – not so easy with a broken rear spring. Later they entered areas of loose sand which they tried to avoid while keeping in sight of the bidons. It became a struggle to shovel their way free, and the camaraderie became strained. When they got badly stuck for the third time on May 1st, Svend threw away his shovel and refused to work – this being International Workers’ Day. Knud assured him it was hardly likely the Danish Carpenters’ Association would find out about his shameful betrayal of the proletariat.

Border with Algeria near Bordj Moktar but still only halfway across the desert.

Despite these challenges, the journey through the harsh and beautiful landscape was a memorable experience. The great silence when they took a coffee break or ate beef straight from the can was indescribable. Then they’d sit in the sand with their feet in the ruts while the fiery red sun set, as it only does in Africa. When they got tired, they would burrow into the sand and look at the billions of stars overhead.

Crossing the Tropic of Cancer, north of Bidon V in Algeria.

Major repairs in the Sahara
Every now and then the engine would cut-out due to vapour-lock in the fuel pump struggling in the immense heat. Cooling it with a wrapped wet cloth helped a little, but the engine was also losing power and knocking loudly until they could only run for 3km at a time. Now the spare parts they brought from Uganda became invaluable. The engine was removed and disassembled in the desert and a destroyed main bearing was was replaced with a lot of filing and hammering. It took hours, but when the car started on the first try, the proud smiles lasted the rest of the day. The broken spring still had to be re-tied constantly, but after seven days they finally reached Reggane with a hotel and a proper meal.

Finances were tight if they were to get home. In Nairobi they’d paid a deposit of £1000 for permission to cross the desert, which they could claim back at any French government office north of the Sahara. But in Colomb-Bechar they didn’t have pounds. A detour was taken to Oudja in Morocco, but the consulate was closed, and the following day there were violent anti-French riots. And when the consulate finally opened, they didn’t have any pounds either. In Tangier it was the same story, and the Danish consulate could not help.

Near Kerzaz, heading for Colomb-Bechar and the Moroccan border

In the end, by exchanging their remaining African currencies, they were able to buy a ferry ticket across the Straits of Gibraltar, then at least they were in Europe. In Malaga, Svend sent a telegram asking for money, and while they waited, they stayed in a small hotel in town. The money took three weeks to arrive, and by the time the hotel bill was settled, there was barely enough left to reach Denmark. In Madrid, they pawned binoculars, cameras and a tent to get a little further north.

North of Meknes and the road to Tangier.

Late one evening in Germany they were stopped by the police on the Autobahn because both rear lights were out. They promised to fix the mess at the next fuel station, unable to admit that both headlight housings were rattling around in the trunk. To their great frustration, they only had enough fuel to reach the border in Kruså, but the Danish customs officers showed a rarely cheerful side. Despite the early hour they were fascinated to learn of the duos’ arduous adventure from Uganda. And when Knud and Svend explained they had to wait for money for fuel, the customs officers offered to lend them the cash so that they could drive home.

The two adventurers never forgot their welcome to Denmark. In Hillerød they sat in silence for half an hour, looking across the lake towards Frederiksborg Castle. It was June 5, 1954 – two months and two days since they’d left Kampala, and a beautiful summer day. It was hard to believe the adventure had reached its final chapter. Twelve minutes later, they rolled up in front of Knud’s parents’ house in Kvistgård, where the mother came out onto the steps, clapped her hands together and exclaimed: “Well, you’re finally here – you must be very hungry!”

N55: the Road between Djanet and Tamanrasset

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Updated October 2026

These two southern Algeria towns will be joined with a ribbon of asphalt called the N55. I was told in September 2026 that 40km remained, though it has yet to be independently verified. Soon we will know for sure.
It’s worth knowing that according to the Djanet gendarmerie who give permissions, for some baffling reason, from Djanet this road is closed to tourists, even with a guide. We drove it eastbound in 2025 to Djanet with a guide and no problems. Maybe eastbound from Tam makes a difference, as you can say that from Bordj you’re heading north to Illizi, even though it’s straightforward (and an amazing drive) to carry on east to Djanet which is a dead end (no open borders to Libya or Niger). It has been done a couple of times in 2026 from Djanet to Tam, but unescorted and maintaining a low profile.

Caught on camera west of Serouenout (Bing Maps)

How the surface with survive the baking summers and pummelling of trucks remains to be seen, but that’s been an issue since they finished Trans Sahara Highway from Algiers to Tam in the early 1980s. It’s said the TSH remained intact over its 2000-km distance for just one year before flash floods, poor engineering and overloaded trucks beat the bitumen back into rubble. In January 2025 we did the full TSH too; there’s probably 100km of diversions over sand and gravel.

Djanet to Tam
This description may be out of date now but about 8km west of Serouenout checkpoint (270km from Djanet) the tarmac ended in early 2025. After 24km there was a short, 20-km section of tarmac, and then you’re back on the piste south of the new road’s alignment for about 70km. Once back on the road around 24.264, 6.4864 (if not already), it’s about 80km to Ideles roundabout (fuel in town, see map) and another 140km on to Tam via In Amguel on the TSH, about 190km along the scenic ‘Hoggar Ring Road’ via Col Azrou and Tahifet, or south from Hirafok and to Assekrem junction (70km). From nearby Assekrem the easier descent to Tam in left (clockwise).

Sahara Overland Route A6
In the good years (1970s, 80s and 2000s) various tracks between Djanet and Tamanrasset and Hoggar mountains all combined to make classic multi-day adventures in southern Algeria.

Heading west on Route A6, (the current N55 road), you traversed below the ramparts of the Tassili N’Ajjer plateau, long famed for its prehistoric rock art, then either turned southwest at Bordj el Haouas for Tazat mountain (below right), or used the same mountain as a landmark after crossing the dunes of the Erg Admer (below left; Route A7),

Passing isolated volcanic cones, plugs and other outliers, the basalt rubble from the once molten Hoggar raised you up to Assekrem, a few hours from Tamanrasset and a refuel. The main route used by non-clandestine locals (A6 in my old Sahara Overland guidebook bottom of the page) was still nearly 700 kilometres or two desert nights for most. It was also on the limit of what a moto could manage alone.

When I first did it in 1987, the road from the north ended in Illizi, 400km from Djanet over the Fadnoun plateau. That all added up to over 1000km and one of the best all-dirt stages in southern Algeria (above), with just enough pre-GPS navigational challenges to keep you on your toes. It was rare to pass more than one or two other vehicles during the transit.

In the 1980s the army were tasked with building a road over the Fadnoun’s switchback escarpments. Up to that point, trucks supplying isolated Djanet had to take a huge, sandy detour to the west via Amguid, nearly doubling the road distance.
After about ten years the Fadnoun (below) got sealed and today is still a great drive, even if the road is breaking up here and there and occasionally lorry drivers fall foul of the Fadnoun’s curves (left).

Gara Ihadja n Kli, one of the Fandoun’s escarpments, 2018

Morocco is famed for sealing it’s southern desert pistes faster than we can keep up, but Algeria has been catching up, only over vastly greater distances and probably with access restrictions to the military. A whole network of ‘hidden’ border highways, remote military bases as well as vast defensive sand berms (below) have emerged in recent years to control migrant traffickers coming up from the south.

Border road and berm with Niger, far south of Djanet

Even though they’ve succeeded in sealing this traverse, A6 Tam-Djanet (N55) still remains one of the great routes in the Sahara and there’s no need to follow the new road. There is A7 to the north which we also partly did in 2025, A14 in the deep south I last did in 2007, and at least one more route via Tiririne, Tarabine which we did in 1989 and again in 2006 on the way back back from Mauritania on Sahara: The Empty Quarter. For me this was all before gpx tracklogs but these routes are probably traced on OSM maps or Wikilocs. So do not be put off by the road being officially closed to tourists. As long as you (and your guide, if present) are prepared and equipped to tackle these pistes, they still offer some of the best, long-range routes in the central Sahara.

Sahara West–East with VW Vans, 1984 • Part 7/8

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Reports by Peter Reif
Photos by Peter Reif and Arike Mijnlieff

OSEWO Index Page

Part Seven of Peter Reif’s report and maps recalling ÖSEWO: an Atlantic-to-Red Sea crossing of the Sahara in 1983-4. After having to divert around Libya via the Mediterranean, the flat-four foursome are back in the desert to tackle on of the hardest stages so far. But not before they conduct a desert survival experiment to see how far one of the team can walk with what they can carry (above left).
For other parts, click the Index Page.