Having tasted the thrill of off-piste riding,
corrugations just aren’t so much fun anymore.

Looking back, I realise Desert Riders was the most amazing ride I’ve done in the Sahara. And looking again at the location of the Lost Tree (see map below), we were right out there, too. The Sahara has become a dangerous place in the intervening years and I don’t imagine I could ever repeat something like this. 

This film is now free on youtube

Not long after 1989 when my Sahara Motorcycle Tour described in Desert Travels staggered back home, a bitter civil war broke out in Algeria as the army annulled elections and unrelated nomad rebellions broke out in the desert. At that time both Libya and Western Sahara to Mauritania were not accessible and so the brief Golden Age of independently exploring the Sahara came to an end.

I took a nine-year break from desert biking until a chink opened up in Libya in the late 90s and I returned on a BMW F650. My vehicle supported motorcycle tours in Libya and re-opened Algeria soon followed, and in 2003 I cooked up an ambitious expedition: Desert Riders.

It was probably my best pure desert ride on which, with the aid of fuel caches, Jon, Andy and I managed to get out as far as the ‘Lost Tree’ in Niger’s Ténéré Desert, slip back into Algeria and get out again just days before a mass kidnapping which we dodged thanks to a well-timed crash (right).

I looked at our route on a map the other day (a Google Map below) and realised there’s something to be said for the range of a 38-litre fuel tank after all! All things considered, we made a pretty good dvd of it too, and in that pre-youtube era it managed to get broadcast in a shorter form on National Geographic Channel.

Not surprisingly our actual route didn’t match our plans. Nothing new there. I’m never sure, but Oued Samene canyon had never been traversed, except possibly by a guy on an unloaded TT600. One day I’d like to go back there and explore upstream – or nose up from the south to the watershed and see if there really was a bike-proof cliff face up there, but the chances of being able to do that are slim these days.

It was in Oued Samene – our famous 4km day – that the reality of riding our 250kg slugs-on-stilts hit us. But it was also our first cross-country (‘off piste’) ride down to the canyon’s north rim and it underlined the thrill of finding one’s own way over wild terrain. Exploration: you can’t beat it!

Within sight of the Libyan border, Tarat wasn’t on our original itinerary either, but a fantastic piste. I’ve long wanted to do this one and I’d love to do it again. Water became a problem for us; the soak or ’tilmas’ at Imirhou village was nearly dry, and then the route south to Dider (left) became extremely rocky, right up to the last couple of kilometres. I don’t normally say this (though I often think it!), but it was a relief to get back to the road and ride on to Djanet.

Here we decided we couldn’t be arsed with the 1500-km run to Tam and back for Niger visas, so we took on the Lost Tree excursion instead. Leaving town, amazingly we covered the 300km to the Erg Killian fuel dump in one glorious day – all off-piste through beautiful country and especially wonderful after the rock bashing and bike hauling of the previous week.

From the Killian fuel dump to the Tree was across truly wild country – some tricky hills around the Alg-Niger frontier where we installed the DRP Monument – and then out into the Tenere itself: butt-numbing endurance. We were illegal and out there, but I at least felt pretty safe because dodgy encounters or all three bikes packing up at once was all very unlikely. We saw no one for four or five days.

Next day on to the Tree (left and above) and all the way back to Killian we did a stonking 450 kms – a ride to remember. Then on back north from the cache to Bordj on the Djanet road – another great ride until Andy got puncture fever and DNFed with tyre troubles all the way home. Read his story here.

So Jon and I took the regular route west to Tamanrasset as we were keen to have a closer look at Telertheba mountain. We rode up as close as we could over the rubble and Jon trekked right up to the base of the cliffs. But climbing this jagged ridge (it’s been done) would be tricky and as usual we were low on water and food. By the time we got to Tam we felt a bit unsatisfied. Having tasted the thrill of off-piste riding, corrugations just aren’t so much fun anymore.

Jon and I parked up in Tam for a few days (it was Tabaski festival) when a Dutch KTM – a guy I met last year – turned up with a couple of German mates heading for Djanet with pickup support. About ten days later they all got abducted in the Oued Samene region (along with 29 other tourists in various groups). Arjen and his three mates were released six months later and several stone lighter. One woman died of the heat on the plateau. Desert travel in Algeria has never really recovered from that event which has since spread all over the Sahara under the name of Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

But we didn’t know any of this yet, so Jon and I set off through the Hoggar, our XRLs cutting through the hairpins like half-sunk canoes. Still, a cracking ride even if the rough western descent took it out of our panniers. And from there we were heading up the easy Amguid piste to climb Garet el Djenoun – another of my all time ‘want to dos’ to another fuel dump* near the Amguid Crater for which we didn’t hold out much hope on our radical untried canyon approach from Foum el Mahek.

Then the above crash happened, so that would all have to wait for another time. With all the abductions that time may not be too soon. The party that started with Sahara adventuring in the late 1970s is over. Me, I’m just pleased I packed in all the Algeria I could in the good years. I still go back to the Sahara most years, but Desert Riders marked then end on an era in a fabulous place and the richest memories of my original desert travels.

*We picked up the fuel in November 2005 during another visit. A bit of evaporation but 90% there after three hot summers on a rock. And in November 2007 I reached the amazing Amguid Crater on foot.