Spectacular scenery early on, with huge sand dunes on one side of the road and sand-drifted mountains on the other; shrubs with spiky thorns, and a hazy sky with the sun hiding behind clouds; no breeze.
We lunched in very narrow Arak Gorge, five of our crew climbing the loose rocky sides as the food was prepared. Sodom's apple bushes everywhere hear. Their huge green fruit have a spongy texture and a white pine-cone like "stone" wrapped in very fine threads.
Soon after resuming driving, we came to a sign “Road Forbidden for 120km” so we turned off the bitumen and went into four-wheel-drive, following a route marked with 40-gallon drums painted with white "TAM" (Tamanrasset - our destination) and arrows. I spent a fantastic afternoon in the crows’ nest (above the cab) with Hawk, Per, Ton and Ann, taking in the most bizarre scenery so far. We drove through a valley between huge mountains like giant grey slag heaps, great mounds of rubble seemingly dumped by the roadworks - ha ha! - on corrugations so bad it was like being on a washboard, and criss-crossing vehicle tracks, like a giant snakes and ladders board. Kelvin had no option but to drive with an open mind, keeping us – and himself, I think - guessing as to which track he would follow until the last second - washboard, sand drifts or mounds. Twice we hit stretches of flat, hard sand where we could speed up, a wonderful change from the shuddering, slow lurching and grinding. We passed sandy areas where hundreds of jagged stones pointed skyward. As we drove on, the hills became more and more like massive black crystal formations.
Today's desert was fantastical and very different from my Saharan imaginings. More like Earth after the Holocaust: flat, lifeless and peppered with villainous hills, rather than a land of sheiks and crawling dying bodies. And because of the heavy black threatening clouds with us all afternoon, everything was bathed in broody light, with only fine streaks of blue and yellow above the mountains behind us where the clouds finished above the horizon.
We left the marker drums behind and veered back onto bitumen long before we had travelled 120km and we shortly came to a real dead-end, where the asphalt disappeared and the road surface ceased a metre above the sand and dust resumed 5 metres on – washed away by rains, no doubt, probably in the Middle East now. Here, not surprisingly, a casually dressed Algerian, his khaki shirt hanging out and unbuttoned to his navel, told us we were on forbidden road (for military only while it was being worked on - a little hard to believe given its condition). So turned back a short distance and rejoined the bin route. Back onto rutted sand. A gazelle flitted across the desert beside us, a beautiful beast with fine limbs and black and white flashing tail. Our first African wild animal of any note! Everyone delighted. A blue car was waiting at the next crossroad to make sure we didn’t turn back onto the road surface.
We camped behind rocky mounds and I was trying to photograph the stunning red-orange sunset when I discovered my camera lens is knackered - hope my previous pix are okay. Borrowed Bob's lens and then pulled out my old faithful Olympus XA (point and shoot).
Camel tracks everywhere, but we didn't see any other animals. Phantoms of the desert.
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