Train the Brave, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 9Change before you have to

The Sahara Desert, which spreads across 9.4 million square kilometres, is larger than Australia and almost as large as the United States. Most years it grows by about 50 kilometres, but during a decade-long drought in the 1980s it grew much faster. I decided to cross it, soon after, in late 1991. Arriving from Morocco on a truck with a group of other intrepid travellers, I crossed into Algeria and then went south across the vast swathes of scorched desert into Niger and on to Nigeria.

Despite having grown up in Australia, one of the most desert-laden countries in the world, up until then I'd never spent any time in a desert. The arid landscape, with its infertile sand dunes stretching nearly 200 metres high and spreading out over thousands of kilometres, was striking. With scorching days and freezing nights, I was in awe of the resilience its nomad dwellers showed against the fierce Harmattan winds, which sandblasted their way across the Sahara at that time of year.

One image still etched in my memory was of an elderly man sitting on an old drum of some sort beside the remnants of a building, which I assumed must have once been his home. Dressed in the voluminous robes and indigo dyed turban of the Taureg people, who have inhabited this region for thousands of years, what struck me about him was that the dwelling he sat in front of had been consumed by the burnt desert sands some time before. Around him was nothing inhabitable for it had ...