Category Archives: Sahara News

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

Overlanders’ Handbook 2

VW ‘Hilux’ Desert Pickup

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I’ve always been attracted to the simplicity of a pickup in the Sahara. Where weather, payload security or (inside) passengers are not issues, what more do you need; a self-propelled platform with a steering wheel and a seat, just like the LRDG. The tray behind the cab is big, loads low and is easy to get to.
First choice would have been a 70 series Toyota (below) but the extreme scarcity of 70s in the UK and the expense of bringing one in from Europe or Australia meant not this time.

Tojo 60s were cheap and easy to find in the UK then, and had the same running gear and engine as an early 75. And heck, while we’re cutting off the back body, why not cut the thing in half and slap an extra metre into the chassis (left) to make a useful, US-sized bed?

So Matt collected a 60 sight unseen for 1100 quid; a TLC in dire need of more TLC. But driving it around a bit more proved it was just too shagged in the transmission to be worth investing in, so I flogged it to a mate in Niger with fewer reservations about its condition.
Amazingly, I came across it a few weeks later near Bilma (below) with a bunch of happy Eclipse punters in the back, following five days of intensive mechanical surgery in Agadez. Even today old 60s are still much sought after in the Sahara. But in the meantime I’d decided an extended pickup cut out of a 60 was not worth the din of the angle grinder.

I’d always liked the idea of a Land Rover HiCap (left). If nothing else it would add a useful promotional angle to our Empty Quarter crossing which was first completed by prototype LR 101s. But even before you’ve juggled the lottery of buying an LR, the prices of HiCaps proved to be two or three times more than a Todje of the same age and in no better condition. Old Todje’s really were a bargain in the UK at this time; you got a lot of car for your money.
If I was working a 4×4 year-round, a TLC have been the obvious choice, but all I do is a couple of desert trips a year while the rest of the time the car (well, the sort of vehicle I can afford) rusts and depreciates and is a dog to drive in the UK. A Hilux pickup should handle the load and landscape, hopefully scrape through the dunes where power is a premium, use less fuel and all in all, be sufficient for my needs even if it lacked the grunt of a six-cylinder engine.

I ebayed £847.12p for a ’91 2.5 diesel Hilux (left) on its second owner with 180,000 miles. I met matey at the station, asked if there was anything I needed to know, and set off back to London, hoping I’d not bought a crate. After driving 60 and 80-series tanks, the lightness of the Lux was a treat – at 1400kg it’s 30% lighter than a 60 but with 80% of the horsepower. That’s an idealised way of looking at it.
With the red Hilux’s vibrating and clanking UJ and props It was hard to tell how it really ran, but it started, pulled and braked well, kept cool and didn’t look too bad for a working pickup. If you think TLC models are complex, Hilux are no less confusing to an uninitiate, but it seems this was a Mk 3 LN105 with 24-volt starting, leaf springs with a 4-cylinder 2.5 non-turbo engine (the turbo 2.5s found on Surfs etc are said to be head crackers). It could be the same model as the famously unkillable Top Gear Hilux.

After a TLC, a Hilux’s undercarriage looks unnervingly skinny: shocks like pencils, diffs like tea cups. The crux is obviously not to drive and load it like a Land Cruiser. A closer inspection at Matt’s didn’t reveal any great dramas: filthy air filter, gravel in the tailgate, crappy rust repairs, a missing tailpipe and a UJ and prop bearing with more play than Wimbledon in June. Nothing too bent, broken or missing. With Milners 4×4 just down the road, Matt set to fixing the obvious flaws.

Then a Volkwagen Taro came into our orbit; a VW-badged Hilux sold in Europe during the 90s. No, I’d never heard of them either. Hiluxes (and their derivatives, Surfs and 4Runners, aka Tacomas in the US) are effectively light duty Land Cruisers, but how bad could they be for the desert? Their reputation is no worse than TLCs, they’re all over the Sahara (especially Mauritania) and there are plenty of old ones rusting quietly away in the UK.
This Taro had been resting since at least 2003, another early 90s LN105 in all but badge, but obviously in much better nick and only a couple hundred quid more than the red one. It had been used on Linda McCartney’s donkey sanctuary (or some such) had 70,000kms, was LHD and missing a back tray where a cabin had sat. It had a bench seat, horrid 16″ splits and one 12v battery with space for another which suggested an African ‘export’ model.
A quick drive back along quite Peak district roads with Matt’s 80 covering my bare rear proved it to be a bit gutless – the squashed header pipe we’d noticed or just the reality of an aspirated 2.4 in need of a damn good thrashing (or a turbo)? Time will tell. And of course the unloaded back bounced all over. But the gearbox felt tighter than the red one so, with less than 50,000 miles I think I’ll take the Taro please, waiter. The red Hilux is heading to Niger with a 60’s engine, gearbox and the Taro’s springs and other spares. Matt will take the chance to steam and waxoil the back before we tuck in the new bed.

Taro Readings
This Taro will have to go a bit further than most for its first desert trip, lugging enough fuel and water for a week-long, 1000-mile stage across the Sahara’s western ‘Empty Quarter’ from Mauritania to Algeria. But with only me in the vehicle the payload ought not top out at more than 600kg, and three quarters of that will be ever-diminishing fuel and water. So, apart from renewing the perhaps ageing rubber and repairing what is worn out or broken, what is initially needed is:

• New suspension. I hoped to experiment with parabolics again but none were available, so we sourced some OME springs from Italy.
• 16″ steels on BFG ATs. Yikes, 6 of them cost nearly as much as the car but they do work.
• A pokey 13″ 265W Kenlowe fan. Hiluxes get hot working in dunes I’m told.
• New timing belt (normally due at 100,000km).
• A custom-made flatbed back tray. We did follow a rusty Mk 2 bed on ebay which didn’t sell for 50 quid but even at that price we thought it would be easier to start from scratch and built something better than standard.

This tray is going to take some organising, but a flat-bed is easiest to make and darn useful. They are commonly fitted to Hiluxes in Australia. It turns out regular-tray Hilux wheel arches are much higher than they need to be, so the flatbed can be not much higher than normal. Space underneath can be used for storage, fuel or whatever. I’m still undecided if I just chuck it all in and rope it down under a tarp, or make some built-in dividers. Probably the former as the marine ply floor Matt has lined will be easy to partition.
For the SEQ the simplest long-range fuel solution is a 205-litre drum which I can dump when I’ve finished with it. I found a couple outside a local garage which hopped obediently into the back to the red ute. Haven’t had a chance to pin down a 105s fuel consumption yet, but if a 4-litre 2H engine gets 15mpg (4kpl) at worst then I hope the Taro will max down at 20 (7kpl). Averaging 20 mpg for 1000 miles is 50 gallons which is the drum, the normal tank and a couple of jerries.

As with all custom jobs it has all taken much more work and been fraught with complications, but I’ve been there and done that so the less I have to know about that the better. With nothing available in the UK at any price we sourced some OMEs from Italy (below right) – as usual the price was substantially less than in the UK. Along with the new BFGs the pickup was now right on its tiptoes and the barely long enough shocks were getting dizzy under the strain. This was without the full back body, let alone 400 liters of Mauritanian gasoil, so we’re hoping it will settle down a bit once it’s all built up. I do wonder if I may have gone OTT with the ‘400kg-permanent load’ springs which the VW will exceed only occasionally. Time will tell if it rides like the Forth Bridge or if we need to try and take a spring out of the back. I suppose this is where those airbag assisters would come in handy but it’s just another thing. I want to keep this one as simple as.
Recognising the OME set up might lead to spinal injuries we decided to mount two spares right at the back rather than ‘Dukes of Hazard-style’ in the tray off the roll bar. Being big BFGs they take up a lot more space when they’re off the axle but as luck would have it, they just squeezed in between the back springs and pipe. And once Barry moved the tyre-winch crossmember up a bit they fitted without buggering up the departure angle too much. To spare the tyre winch a hernia the top spare is wing-nutted directly to the crossmember on long studs while the lower, more readily accessible spare tyre is held on by the winch chain as normal. Holes had to be cut into the tray rearmost cross members to enable the crank handle to get in there.
I got to thinking how is it that Tojo spare tyre winches hold the tyre in place over all terrains so securely but just simply wind or unwind on the crank handle without any rachetting or locking. Dr Matt drew on his pipe, tucked his thumbs under the unfashionably large lapels of his lab coat and explained: it’s probably all to do with worm-drive gears and ratios. A worm drive (a gear like a drill bit with spiraling teeth) actuates on a regular roundy-round gear to hoist the wheel up because the ratio is set at a Newtonian optimum. But the wheel – attached to the regular big gear by the chain – can’t undo the worm because the ratio is too high. Worm can crank up the 20kg tyre easily but tyre can’t undo the worm anywhere near as easily. That’s what we guessed goes on inside a Tojo tyre winch assembly. We could all be terribly, terribly wrong.
Anyway, 40kg of tyres fitted in, out-of-the-way and give the stubborn OMEs something to think about.

With that done (and a quick waxoil spray job all over the back chassis and area while it was easily accessible) Baz the Rod sprung into action finishing the back body, levelling it off on rubber mounts and filling in any holes to limit internal rust. One thing they mentioned was that when ordering steel to build something like this, it’s a whole lot less work to order exact lengths from the supplier instead of buying in a whole stock of 2 by 4 or whatever. This way the ends are perfectly cut on an ion particle saw and not at a variable parabolic 8.5° angle using your junior hacksaw and a lot of blades. Makes butting up for welding a whole lot easier too. The tray frame then got painted and clad in 18mm marine ply. All three flaps or gates fold down but can be levelled off for use as long narrow banquet tables with corner post chains. Talking of which, the back two corner posts as well as the tops of the roll bar posts have welded on JATE rings (well actually old shock absorber ends) to help lash down motorbikes, canoes and the like.

Even though there’s plenty of room in the back, it’s still handy to have things out of the way so I requested a cantilevered platform/rack extended forward off the roll bar over the cab roof, giving a few quick instructions. I went up the Pennines for a few days, came back and the job was done exactly as I’d envisaged. With no roof rack to hop onto, this rack will be a handy viewing platform when lost or separated in the Sahara – something that in my experience is more useful than you think.

With the tray fitted and wood in place, Matt sourced some robust plastic mudguards out of a trailer and caravan catalog, sawed them in half and nailed them under the tray. They give plenty of clearance for shovelling away sand when bogged – one thing pickups have in their favour. Mudflaps to limit spray are on the list, too.

Apart from lights and a number plate, that’s about it. Still haven’t even taken it for a drive but by the time you read this the VeeDub will be up in the far northwest of Scotland. Looking forward to getting an idea of the fuel consumption and hoping it will be in the high 20s (9kpl) or even low 30s (11kpl).

I drove the old red Hilux back down the other night, straight to Portsmouth docks for export to Niger. Even with a Land Cruiser engine and gearbox in the back (and then some), the old banger managed to keep its speed and pull away sharply (admittedly on 205s – not 750 x 16s). And the ancient springs didn’t even bottom out. I’m reminded how, over a short range, how light and pleasant a Hilux is to drive after a TLC tank, without necessarily being any less tough.

While I was away Matt fitted a second battery (left) and a what I consider a foolproof ‘split charge’ system which avoids diodes, schmiodes and gnashed teeth with two dead batteries and fries.

With the chunky red dashboard key in, both batts are connected and get charged off the alternator while the car is running. Come night-time or a lay over, put the key in the ash tray and the second leisure bat can be run down with ancillaries run off a dedicated four-way cig connector.
That toggle switch is for the Kenlowe fan. The thermostat broke off before it even got used so it’s been eliminated but I prefer to turn the fan on manually anyway as I always have an eye on the temp needle.

A q/d shovel has been tucked onto the side for easy deployment during boggings and for going to the bog. And on the back across the tailgate with easy-to-use screw down handles (not shown) are the ally sand plates last used during my Mercedes 190 experiment a couple of years back. These will be matched by a pair of red Soltracks which I’ve bought for all of us from France for €70 a pair. I’ve cut the corners off mine to better tuck them under cleared wheels, a la Grand Erg plates.

Light and harmless, they feel pretty tough, but a few days of 2 tons mashing down on them may change that. I’ll be interested to see how they stand up to it. All these trips of mine include trying out new things and ideas for my own interest as well as the next edition of the book. The Soltracks will also make handy under mats, wind breaks, ping pong bats and windscreen shades to keep the cab cool over lunch.

Tarps are always tricky to keep tied down until you get a degree in rope management so I’ve come up with a neater idea, an old fishing net bought off ebay to simply stretch over the tarp and hook down onto the sides. Haven’t tried it yet but there’s always lashings of rope it if fails – and who knows, it may have some sort of use in the desert an a communal sand hammock.
I was going to take two 200-litre drums plus a jerry for measuring it out, but checking the insides of one drum today revealed some rust and water. Who knows how it got in but I can’t be bothered to trace a leak if there is one, so I’ve dumped it and decided to use one drum and a few more jerries.
As it was I was thinking that two part-filled and unbaffled drums will surge undesirably, 300 kilos of diesel mounted high slopping left and right could push the car over the brink on an off-camber dune slope.
This already narrow ute has turned out higher than necessary, a combination of desirable 750 x 16 wheels and the not so necessary 2-inch lift you get whether you like it or not with with heavy duty OMEs. Too late to do much about that now but it gives me more space in the back.
For the big stage across the Empty Quarter my car ought to easily get by on 350 litres – (2100km @ 6kpl) which is a near-full drum, 5 jerries and the fuel tank. I nailed on some blocks of wood to help keep the drum in place for the duration with the help of a chunky lorry tie down.

Clearance? You got it. Grunt? No so much

And that is about it, baring the usual last-minute dramas. Overall I’m confident in the Taro’s untested set up. It’s a nice light car to drive, young enough not to be shagged out and I’m sure the ease of access will have its rewards in the desert. With a bit of carpet tiling on the load bed and my mattress over the top, it should be pretty quiet too. If it tips over at least it’s easy to unload and light enough to pull back up without doing much more damage to itself.
My biggest concern is the lack of power, not helped by the over-sized tyres which have raised the overall gearing. It’s been a few years now, but whatever I drive I think I still haven’t got over my HJ61’s bark-stripping grunt. The toughest section of the Empty Quarter will be getting through the Ouarane Sand Sea east of Guelb where all the cars will be maxed out on payload. A grunty 60 will manage OK, but the limp 2.4 Tojo engine may not have to poke to gain momentum to get up over the dunes. It will be like being in a Series III all over again: claw along, one bogging at a time. Oh well, que sera sera. If crossing the Majabat was easy someone else would have done it by now. Click this to read how it went.

Algeria’s ‘Graveyard Piste’ 2026 • Route CW2/CP2

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Gunning through the Hadjhadj valley, 2003, just before the party ended

Many old Algeria hands will fondly remember what I called the 470-km Graveyard Piste from Hassi bel Guebbour (‘HbG’) to Illizi, just before the epic Fadnoun plateau crossing to Djanet. We first did it in 1990 and, with a combination of dunes, jebels, nomads and wells, it added up to the best 1000km of off-roading in Algeria at the time.
In Sahara Overland It was called Route A2 (below); the macabre name giving it an added cachet. When it came to covering Dunes for the Desert Driving dvd in 2002 (below), Toby Savage and I shot it along the ‘Graveyard Piste’.
In fact I’m told the true Gräberpiste was coined by a German guidebook writer in the early 1980s and refers to Route A12 from Amguid which after passing under Erg Tiffernine then cut across the Jebel Tahinaouine to join A2 at Ain el Hadjadj via the Erg Amastane (above right), passing this unusual structure, a probable vestige of the Senussi battles which raged in this valley in 1916. a link I’ve always wanted to make. From there it continued to Illizi along A2. There’s a whole Wikipage on the Gräberpiste and France’s battles with the Tuareg there.

Back then to access the dune-rimmed ‘Hadjadj’ valley which led to Illizi, you had to turn west at Quatre Chemins junction south of HbG and head out towards Amguid until you saw a metal hut. Here, you headed east up a sandy ramp that led into the rolling Erg Issaouane dunes until you saw Gara Khanfoussa hill (below). At this point you turned south. You usually followed tracks in the loose sand and passed a pole or two, but in the pre-tracklog era, in the three or four times I did this crossing, it was always nerve-wracking navigating the maze while maintaining momentum to avoid getting stuck. Car or moto, I never went the same way twice.

Old A2 dune crossing of Erg Issaouane to Tabelbalet well

The ‘Graveyard Piste’ – so named because of the pre-Islamic tombs and even Christian colonial soldier graves in the vicinity – became so popular it gained unwelcome notoriety in 2003 when the GSPC Islamist group kidnapped several tourists near the small dune crossing at KM330 (below left). We’d ridden this way on Desert Riders about three weeks earlier (left), aiming for a food and fuel cache before continuing south along Oued Samene in a doomed attempt break through the watershed to the Fadnoun.

Today a compacted track has been laid across the sands directly south of Bordj Omar Driss towards Gara Khanfoussa (below). This new route is also on OSM maps and is labelled CW2/CP2. It passes east of the hill then turns to meet the old A2 route at a rejuvenated Hassi Tabelbalet well. Cantone came up this way in April 2024 in windy conditions and had a good look around Gara Khan before continuinh north to BoD.

CW2 plies the sands from Bordj Omar Driss

Ain el Hadjadj well (below right, 2003) is now an army base, and the tricky dune crossing at KM330 (left) has also been graded and stabilised just to the north of the old crossing.
I do wonder how you lay a track over dunes that’s strong enough to support trucks. Maybe a metre of rocky rubble does the job? But even then, as shown in the satellite screen grab below, as all over the Sahara, dunes will eventually creep back over the track, requiring regular clearing.

At this point the route gets renamed ‘CW2’, and the last 100km east to Illizi are sealed, making the distance now just 330km, fuel to fuel and doable in a day. You won’t see all the route on Google; it’s clearer on ESRI sat platforms, like Apple Maps or Bing.

In 2026 a group of intrepid, escort-dodging Polish riders managed to be, afailk, the first party in years to follow A2 from BoD to Illizi, which has been off limits to tourists since the kidnappings (depending on which agency you ask). The old and new routes join near Tabelbelet well where in 1990 we met a jacked-up VW Beetle (left) that had come across the Khanfoussa crossing just ahead of us.
You can view the Polish riders’ raw gpx with photos on Wikilocs and read about their ride and a whole lot more here.

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.

Moroccan Sahara – Are we there yet?

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To paraphrase the cop addressing Jack Nicholson’s character at the end of Chinatown:
‘Forget it Jake, it’s the internet.’

Exactly where does the iconic and eminently Instagramable majesty of Sahara start in Morocco? Like Keyser Söze, is it even there at all?
Years ago I came across an internet forum argument on the now defunct LP Thorn Tree (I gave my 2ç then left them to it). There, a couple of know-alls lambasted the callow innocents daring to enquire where they could ‘see the Sahara in Morocco’ – in most cases referring to the famous Erg Chebbi dunes. ‘I told you: there is no Sahara in Morocco!’. All concerned have now migrated to TripAdvisor from where the quotes below were copied. It staggers me that some of these individuals can assert their unsubstantiated beliefs with such conviction, but such are the times. According to one of TA’s wise owls, ‘Erg Chebbi is not in Sahara, desert it is but not Sahara‘. So the Sahara is ringed by an unnamed desert that is not the Sahara?

… neither … Erg Chebbi/Erg Chigaga are the Sahara. For that you need to head to Western Sahara.
Ok, we know that but we want just see Sahara and ride camel
The limit of the Sahara is classified by the limit of the Date Palms
the Sahara,… lies 100 km or more to the south in Algeria.
Although not part of the Sahara , the dunes are pretty amazing.
It also corresponds to the 100mm isohyet in the north and the 150mm isohyet in the south. Long term average rainfall. A further definition is where the evaporation potential exceeds the presipitation [sic].
I don’t care what “Sahara” means. I am talking about the actual geographical boundaries of the area. And your definition of those boundaries is as incorrect and misleading as that of the ridiculous tour companies’ one.
Erg Chebbi is not in Sahara, desert it is but not Sahara. If you by reading see on website about Sahara tour, then it is only marketing to attract customers. But Sahara begin first in Algeria or you have to go to the South of Guelmim, to Western Sahara.
Here we go again with the “Erg (Chebbi/Chiggaga) is not the Sahara” brigade. What’s wrong with you? What’s a few hundred miles between friends? Jesus H. Christ.
May I just make one thing clear? You will not be travelling through the Sahara desert until you have gone south of La’ayoune. References to the Sahara in other places such as Erg Chebbi and so on are simply concoctions dreamt up by tour companies to fool their victims into thinking that they have been to the Sahara – they haven’t. To the east, the Sahara starts way over the other side of the border, deep into Algeria.
the Sahara if [sic] 100’s of kilometers away from the big dune areas over the border in Algeria and not in Morocco [continues] ... [Chebbi] is more spectacular than any of the places in the Moroccan Sahara that I have visited.

This knotty problem of the Sahara’s precise extent may be unique to Morocco. You start with the very concept’s compelling mystique. It’s hard to think of other wilderness regions that conjure up such strong imagery and notions, maybe because it’s so close to Europe compared to other iconic wastelands.
Then you mix in the unceasing clash between gullible bucket listers wanting to definitively tick off the Sahara – and devious local tour ops who promise the earth and deliver a turd. One wily tour agency has even managed to insert themself as a ‘reference’ on Wiki’s ‘Sahara desert (ecoregion)’ page.
This seems to be the angled grinder which the naysayers above fixate on: if some Moroccan cat in an oversized cheche strolls up and says ‘Hello my friend. Come, we will drink tea with nomads and I will show you Sahara’, you can expect to be a little disappointed.

As with all geographical features (seas, mountains, etc), it’s tempting but futile to apply fixed boundaries to their precise extent, as if they were a country. Where exactly does the Southern Ocean become the Atlantic? Where does the Karakoram become the Himalaya, or the High Atlas become the Anti Atlas for that matter (along the N10 highway, of course!).

It’s the same with hot deserts, commonly defined as arid regions with less than 100mm of average annual precipitation. Unlike a sea shore, there can be no finite edges identifying this change in rainfall; to imply otherwise would be absurd. In this way the NOAA map (above) is rather more nuanced, showing blurred transitions, not fixed isohyets (rainfall contours) between regions. Both the hard-edged yellow and red maps below could benefit from the same idea.

According to this ridiculous website, (sadly, the first that popped up on my Google) it appears to rain every other day in Merzouga/Erg Chebbi. (The ‘sea temperature’ there gets pretty balmy too – or maybe they mean ‘sand sea’).
This source for Merzouga looks rather more plausible: 65mm. Another estimates 53mm. yet another 172mm. This French Wiki gives 59mm. Let’s assume it’s not Kew Gardens down there and it comes in under a 100 mil most years.

Another map with a red zone straying over the Moroccan border. Can’t be right! Source

Archway into the desert, south of Guelmim (iirc)

Not all accept the level of aridity as a definition (‘I don’t care what “Sahara” means…‘), but they don’t cite any sources to explain their assertions about the Sahara’s boundaries. Instead, some of the TA dolts avow the Sahara lies ‘100km south of Erg Chebbi’ (ie: in Algeria). Others insist ‘200 miles’ from Chebbi. Final answer: ‘100’s of kilometers away’. Some even proclaim they magically entered the Sahara at Guelmim in western Morocco because ‘it is officially known as ‘The Gateway to the Sahara’’, surely a bald, tourist-oriented claim in a town famously thick with faux Tuaregs.

Others insist that, to be in the Sahara in Morocco, you must go ‘beyond Layounne’ (left), a fairly boring road trip, even for a dedicated bucketeer. What will they see on the way there? It may look like a desert, walk like a desert and quack like a desert, but it sure won’t be the Sahara!
No matter – give it a few decades because it’s said the climate in Morocco will see the Sahara creep over the berm and into Morocco.

You can see why some of your forum know-alls get cynical, myself included, even if I believe they’re dying on the wrong hill on this one. Lately, some canny marketing has designated an area of eroded wasteland ever so conveniently close to Marrakech’s gated resorts as ‘the Agafay Desert’ or ‘le petit Sahara’ which ‘extends over several hundred acres’.
There you can do all your favourite deserty things: sip tea in a tent, wear a cheche or ride camels, quads and 4x4s across a landscape where the barren rounded hillocks of dried mud resemble dunes. Insta heaven!

Some academics have sought to reclassify the liminal sweep in question as the ‘North Saharan steppe and woodlands‘. Aka: the edge of the Sahara where things gradually become less arid, like the Sahel in the south. But looking at the zone on the map below, ‘woodland’ is not a word which springs to mind. The band encompasses the vast Grand Erg Oriental spreading across Algeria (left) and southern Tunisia – about as Saharan an expanse anyone could wish for which would swallow up hundreds of Chebbis. The only woodland here is of the petrified fossil variety, west of Hassi bel Guebbour.

Me? Having travelled much of the Sahara over the last five decades, if you pushed me blindfolded out the back of a Hilux behind Erg Chebbi and removed the hood, I’d get up, smell the air, squint at the sun and guess I was in the Sahara. It may transpire to be the edge of the Sahara in boring old Marrokie, because vegetation and rainfall change in a very short distance (by Saharan standards) in the mountains to north.
But from Chebbi south and west along the Algerian border all the way to Tan Tan, it all resembles the Sahara I’ve seen – often dreary, sometimes epic, often barren, vegetated in patches, hyper arid elsewhere – all the way from Mauritania’s Adrar plateau to the Selima Sand Sheet (left) close to the Nile.

Camels? Dunes? Palms? What else could be be?

If anything, Erg Chebbi is just too darn Saharan for school and so has become one trampled terminus of Morocco’s Axis of Tourism, a quad-busting desert resort. I avoid the place. Over the years the pretty cluster of dunes at the end of the road has become choked with desert camps, kasbah-hotels, a few opportunist sharks and us tourists doing the dunes by various means.
In that sense it is very much not what I know of the real Sahara, but caught right, Chebbi can still be an amazing sight for a desert first timer. You’re on the very edge of the Sahara. Which side you’re on is up to you.

A is for Atlantic Highway to Mauritania

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Part of the Sahara A to Z series

In March 2020 I rode Morocco’s 2300-kilometre Atlantic Highway nearly all the way to the southern border and nearly all the way back. I last came this way in 2019 (as far as Gueltat Zemmour) but have not done the whole crossing into RIM since 2006 heading for our Empty Quarter transit.
I knew it then, I know it now: scenically, mile for mile, the Atlantic Highway is pretty dull by Saharan standards – a drab limestone plain where, encounters aside, sea-cliff viewpoints and a few barchan dunes are as good as it gets. If you’re on a mission to get to Mauritania – as I was on this occasion – here’s what I found.

Up north, use the autoroutes to dodge the N1 and speed traps
It’s a long way so coming from the northern ports, I recommend sitting on the deserted A1 and A7 motorways all the way to Agadir where the A7 ends, even though you pay tolls (about £30 for a moto/car). South of here traffic thins right out. The alternative coastal N1 trunk road is slower, less safe (in a driving sense) and is commonly staked out by cops with radar guns, especially around Essaouira and Agadir.
Otherwise, there are any number of great ways of exploring inland Morocco, across the Atlas mountains all the way south to the Desert Highway along the Algerian border.

The speed cops are creeping south
Even though I was hyper-aware of radar cops, I still got caught leaving Tan Tan doing 80 in a 60. That would have been 300d, but deploying the usual techniques – basically: humility in the face of the obvious – he let me off. All the way to Layounne and Dakhla, be wary of lurking speed cops, especially as you approach or leave settlements but even out in the desert too. Crossing solid white lines is another favourite trap; easily done when stuck behind a soot-spewing lorry crawling up an incline,

Western Sahara checkpoints and fiches
As ‘Western Sahara‘ is a Moroccan military zone, checkpoints increase south of Tan Tan, and unlike up north, they don’t just wave foreigners through but want your passport details. Handing over a pre-printed ‘fiche‘ (French for ‘form’; below) helps speed up the process. Hand one over and they can log you into the ledger once you’ve gone.
It seems fiches are less needed these days; I got through only about six on the way down – the last one at Dakhla Junction. Some checkpoints will insist on seeing your passport anyway; others just want a chat.

On the N1, subsidised fuel begins 92km south of Tan Tan
Along with a few other key commodities, fuel is subsidised by about 30% in Moroccan Western Sahara. The first discounted fuel station is just after you cross a causeway and climb out of a sea inlet, right by a checkpoint.

Fish & Chips at Afknenir
Make sure you pull in for a poisson-frites in Afkhenir, 20 kms from the checkpoint above. For some reason streetside fish restos here are like casinos on the California-Nevada border. You may think there’ll be loads more down the coastal highway, but there aren’t.
You can thank the upwelling of nutrients from the cold Canary Current which gets funnelled by the Canaries themselves onto this near-north-facing section of coast before Cape Juby. Or maybe local demand supports the informal shore-casting fishing economy. You’ll see loads of scooterists with rods as well as the crude clifftop shelters where they live.

Fresh fish in Afkenir – not to be missed

They’ve rebuilt the N1
South of Guelmim a new, wider road is being built in stages, sometimes alongside the old one – certainly as far as Layounne. Around the dunes of the windy Khnifiss lagoon past Tan Tan, when I was there roadwork embankments see sand get blown across the two-lane road – not a good place to meet an oncoming truck while checking your likes.

It’s very windy – day and night
They say March is especially bad, but south of Guelmim where the desert sets in, it’s windy day and night. Normally in the Saharan interior the wind stops at dusk. In late February 2020 a huge Saharan sandstorm (below) made the news when holidaymakers on the Canaries were stranded. Close to the coast the cold current produces fog (right), certainly between Guelmim and Tarfaya. Within a kilometre of the coast a northerly sea breeze can also blow up to 10°C cooler than an easterly from the dry interior – which might be just a mile or two inland. But generally, the wind is behind you; on a pushbike (I saw a few), that’s important.

The flat landscape of Western Sahara can’t help, but when you realise the whole 3000-mile width of the Sahara has been steadily heated by the rising sun before it reaches the Atlantic coast, the wind has had plenty of time to get a good run up.
On the move it’s not so bad, but outside of a car, camping can be pretty miserable. Even the trees are bent southwards.

All this wind is good for the economy: Dakhla has long been a kiters’ resort (below) and there’s a huge installation of wind turbines south of Tarfaya, helping keep the lights on in Laayoune. At one point they were saying that array of turbines (or one like it) will feed electricity to the UK via a 4000-km undersea cable.

The monument at Tah
On the N1 for Laayoune you’ll pass through nondescript Tah with no fuel and barely a cafe and shop to rub together. In the middle of town is a granite monument covered in Arabic inscriptions. It marks the spot where in November 1975, some 350,000 Moroccan civilians symbolically marched over the then border into Spanish Sahara.

This was the Green March (map left): three co-ordinated and tactical mass demos mobilised by the wily King Hassan in response to rumours of Spain considering handing over its marginal colony to the indigenous Saharawi and Polisario Front. The marches were followed by the 16-year Western Sahara War which Morocco effectively won by annexing most of the territory (see map,above). It’s why the UN still hang out in Western Sahara and why unmapped landmines are still a menace. Otherwise, not much appears to have happened in Tah since that glorious November day.

Laayoune
Laayoune is the provincial capital and biggest settlement in WS by far, with a prosperous frontier-town vibe to it. At least from what I perceived; life in the Saharawi shantytowns may not be so rosy and civil disturbances are not uncommon. Riot police lurk on standby in the town centre (below). The UN’s MINURSO mission is based here, monitoring the Polisario ceasefire.
Passing through the city, the transit is not an obvious single main road. Without a satnav, follow signs for the airport, or back right up and take the Laayoune bypass (see below).

The Laayoune bypass
At Tarfaya (former Cap Juby) you can turn into the town, head for the shore past the St Exupery museum, his monument, and the 19th-C curiosity of Mackenzie’s Factory). Following the coastal road 90km to Foum El Oued (‘river mouth’) brings you back to the N1 just south of Laayoune city.
It would be nice to report this is a quiet byway passing idyllic beaches, but the wind is ever-present and trucks use this narrow road to avoid Laayoune. Dunes also get bulldozed off the road, especially south where the road gets narrower. I suppose it might be cooler than the inland route. There’s more here.

The longest fuel range is 162km but may be 250km
This is between Tchika (Imlili) near some big white barchans on the north edge of the Gulf of Cintra, and Bir Gandouz, the last town, 80km from the border. There is nothing at all along this section except the howling wind. However, the Tchika station and the two similarly old and grubby Atlas Sahara stations to the north near El Agroub (see map right) may be empty.
Stations may get upgraded, but for the moment this means from Dakhla Junction roundabout (two fuel stations) to Bir Gandouz is 252km (via the Tropic of Cancer). I covered that distance northbound into the wind and go in with a pint in the tank.

Is Dakhla worth the 90-km round trip?
No so sure, but then I took the cheap hotel thing a bit far in the old town. Next time it might be more fun to check out the kiters’ resorts at the head of the lagoon. On the other hand, up north, Boujdour was a fun stop for an evening wander.

Plan a break at the Hotel Barbas in Bir Gandouz
Maybe it was just me on the day, but the Hotel Barbas was an oasis in a duststorm. And once inside shimmered into a veritable mirage. We stayed here in 1997 but the place has been transformed to the point of incongruity. They built a two–storey U-shaped bank of rooms around a planted courtyard but then, ingeniously, draped the entire thing in a huge shade-net. Result: a large, cool space where courteous waistcoated waiters flit about at your service. Rooms are good, prices are normal, food is good too and so is the wi-fi. Tourist, traveller, refugee or trader, some of the characters that roll through add to the place’s edgy ambience. The south end of Morocco, not the Mediterranean coast, marks the true border with Africa.
Bir Gandouz is an easy day from Boujdour which itself is an easy day from Tan Tan. With an early start and an hour to the border, you’ll easily get to Nouadhibou or on the road to Nouakchott.

Barbas hotel: an outpost in the wilderness

What is ‘La Gouira’ you see on the road signs?
The ‘Lagouira’ you’ll see listed on some old Atlantic Highway road signs indicates the short-lived Spanish base at La Agüera on the Ras Nouadhibou peninsula opposite today’s Nouadhibou. See map inset below. Effectively it indicates the distance to Nouadhibou which is not always listed.
Abandoned at the turn of the century, today it’s a collection of ruins which are actually in the Polisario Free Zone, commonly mistaken for No-Man’s-Land which separates Morocco from Mauritania. Some have managed, but the Mauritanians won’t allow casual visits from the Nouadhibou side.

For Mauritania, see here.

How to be safe in Morocco

Like most people, I was shocked by the brutal murders of the two Scandinavian women camping in the High Atlas in December 2018. Sadly it was another attack attributed to young men seeking to show solidarity with violent Islamist causes.
One assumes the two women were stalked by the perpetrators from Marrakech, and so the attack might as well have happened anywhere once an opportunity presented itself.
Morocco has been largely free of the types of the attacks which became commonplace in western Europe at this time, and yet tourists who’ve long been targets elsewhere in North Africa and the Sahara, are thick on the ground in all the usual Moroccan places because they feel safe. The last reported terrorist attacks were a bomb targeting tourists in Marrakech in April 2011 and a bigger wave of bombings in Casablanca way back in 2003, mostly aimed at Jewish interests. Unlike the rest of the Sahara, to date no tourist has ever been kidnapped in Morocco.

How to be safe in Morocco
As a tourist, maintaining your safety in Moroccan cities is no different to any other unfamiliar place. Hustlers are common in certain areas; traffic appears chaotic; pickpockets exist and cheap hotels can feel insecure. And out of the cities mountain roads may not all be velvet-smooth Alpine super highways. All these issues have long been far greater threats to visitors in Morocco than Islamist violence.
Being a Muslim country does give Morocco an edge to those unfamiliar with Islamic culture, particularly women, but the Islam practised here is a lot less severe than in Saudi or Iran, for example. Read the blue box, left, extracted from my Morocco guidebook. Also read the sensible guidelines given on the British FCO website, to give one example. They spell out all how to be aware of the most common risks.

In a crime sense, the popular hiking area below Mt Toubkal (left) where the women were murdered is not dangerous compared to a big Moroccan city. It is probably its popularity and proximity to Marrakech which make it an easy, adventurous destination.
Occasional unnerving but actually harmless encounters over the years have long led me to advise the following: when wild camping, do so unseen and completely out of sight if possible, and if not then camp close to or in a settlement. This way either everyone knows you’re there or no one does. I give similar advice in both my global overlanding books and would act like this anywhere in the world, just for peace of mind.
In Morocco many have found undisturbed wild camping can be quite hard to achieve. Even in the desert, travellers commonly report someone popping up out of nowhere, usually a curious nomad or villager, or sometimes police checking up on you. It should be understood that in North Africa and the Sahara, camping alone in the middle of nowhere away from other people is regarded by locals as suspicious or odd.
For us Euro-tourists camping has long been regarded as a money-saving adventure, but because hotels and auberges can be so numerous and inexpensive in southern Morocco (from <€5), I’ve long preferred the comfort and security they offer to all the clobber and faffing required with camping, especially if not travelling in a spacious car, or when travelling in the cool season when mountain nights get chilly and drag on for 12 hours. In a cozy auberge you get to meet local people or fellow travellers, eat well, rest properly and recharge your gadgets.

Another practise desert travellers like me have adopted since the deep Sahara became FUBAR’d, is not to share detailed travel plans with strangers or online, especially on publicly readable social media. I don’t do Facebook or Whatsapp, but by all means keep friends and family in a closed group appraised of your movements. In Morocco the reach of the mobile network is far greater than you’d expect, not least in remote rural areas where locals depends on it. A local SIM card costs from €2 which includes €2 of credit. You may need the vendor’s help in setting it up.

No one could have anticipated the appalling murders in the High Atlas any more than crossing a bridge in London, backpacking in New Zealand, visiting a market in Strasburg, attending a Baltic island retreat, or a school or place of worship in the US. Morocco remains one of the few countries in North Africa where tourism continues to thrive despite anxieties about ‘Muslim countries’. It helps sustain the local economy, particularly in rural areas where the true level of poverty is much greater than it looks. Don’t let this tragic event unsettle your plans to visit a wonderful country, any more than any of the other places listed above.