21st November 1985 : Flat As

Continued south through vast expanse of gravel and sand with nothing between us and the horizon in any direction. On the road most of the way, here under good repair.

Suddenly the horizon was, literally, the end of this world; the desert dropped to a second level at a gorge. Stood on the upper looking out over the lower Sahara and watched trucks seemingly racing along the road below. Gave us hope about the condition of the last kilometres into the town of In Salah.

And here I got my first glimpses of the berobed, turbaned black Africans of my imaginings, their wizened dusty faces populating everywhere across a tiny market square. One extraordinary woman, black and wrinkled and swathed in colours, was carrying a huge parcel on her head. She didn't react at all to Jim and I taking her photograph. But the backdrop to another three turbaned faces was a market stall of garish, new Western clothing - the commercial meeting of traditional and modern seeming incongruous-here. Then, as we were leaving, a breathtaking woman passed us, her wizened dusty creased face wrapped in diaphanous pale blue robing, her feet, with tiny wrinkled black toes, in leather thongs, scaly from the dryness, dust in the creases, almost reptilian.

Bought juicy oranges and drove out of town into the sand where we lunched with the Guerba truck.

After eating, Kelvin bogged our truck in the sand right in front of the Guerbals - soooo embarrassing! With sand mats and their help pushing, we got clear and continued our journey.

As the afternoon lengthened, we navigated areas of rutted and tracked sand and gravel either side of the potholed excuse for a road. At one point, crossing a huge flat pan littered with tiny green bushes, Kelvin drove a giant figure 8 leaving the tyre tracks behind him. Would have loved an aerial shot! We bounced along until Kelvin took us back onto road only slightly smoother than the near-side sand.

Pulled off for the night where small flat-topped hillocks and more ragged mountains punctured the flat horizon. The red and yellow striped sunset seemed to curve across the sky, red touching the horizon at two points.

Slept deeply on the truck-warm and comfy, and didn’t want to get up in the morning.