Facts about the desert - The Sahara Desert.

…there must have been a subtle art to getting these headscarves to sit correctly. We, however, were as yet unable to master it. The result of our first bungled attempts were definitely less Saharan Nomad and more, say, George Formby with severe head trauma. But we didn’t care; these were the real deal and would afford us at least a little protection from the rigours of the desert - even if we did look like we had just failed a first aid course. As far as we were concerned, we were good to go.

…These rudimentary, single story dwellings – each barely the square footage of a large western bedroom – squat stoically under a fierce Sahara sun. But despite their meagre stature, here they are sky scrapers - for around them is little else. Here, in this landscape so consistently void of feature, even a mud hut stands like a giant…

…In short, the whole landscape just appeared to be, well, bare and desolately sterile, or at least so it seemed at the time. Throughout the journey we were privy to a swiftly moving array of sand, rocks, a few more rocks, and then a bit more sand. Apart from the odd (and distinctly lost looking) shrub here and there, it all seemed so completely void of life. I’ve seen more living things in a single squat toilet cubicle…

…Grand Taxis can generally be identified by their silver or white bodies and black roofs, and by the blacked out rear windshield, funky carpeted dashboards, dysfunctional windows, and wide and varied selection of missing door handles. A Full Grand Taxi, however, can usually be identified by the sea of melancholic, compressed faces, all unforgivingly wedged against the inside of the windows, or, alternatively…

If you like middle of the road, backwater towns, you’d love Er Rachidia. Now I’m not complaining, on the contrary, I did like Er Rachidia. It had all the infrastructure that makes for a decent stopover. It was low key in a rather pleasant and undemanding kind of way, the town was billiard table flat […]

You can only tell so much from a map. As good as they are, they are still just a mish mash of browns, yellows, and greens, with a few red lines and black dots. Our map, however, is special – for it also happens to be furnished with jam, the remains of a baguette or two, and the odd coffee ring. Nevertheless, it forms the basis of a travel plan – and it’s a plan we share with you today.

Unimpressed by the city so far, it would take something extremely special to win them over. Little did they know that today would see a BIG shift in their opinion, and all it would take would be one semi-concealed archway and a smallest flight of steps. Something incredible now lay before them, and they couldn’t believe their luck.