Photo Friday: The Sahara Desert

While my favourite time in the the desert is undoubtedly night time, I have to admit the morning comes pretty close. As day breaks over the golden sands, you notice tracks left by critters in the night - the telltale signs of scarab beetles, sandfish, and sometimes even sand cats.

The morning is still cool, not having yet been made insufferably hot by the beating down of the desert sun - did I mention how huge the difference is between day and night in the desert? - and the sand is cold, so cold that it feels almost wet.

At the crack of dawn, just when it's starting to get light, the Berber guides wake you up, clapping loudly outside your tent just in time for you to climb to the top of a dune to watch the sun come up over the horizon.



As the sun comes up, the silhouette of camels and their riders come up to you from across the dunes. Caravans of camels from other tour groups ready to head back to the village after nights out in the Sahara.

As they pass by me, I start realising how much of an oddity I must be to these people - a novelty, having an Asian person out here in the desert. They greet me with good-hearted konichiwa's and ni hao's, and although I'm usually bothered by this today I decide to let it go. It's too beautiful a morning to ruin.



Although I came out with about ten other people, as the sun rises the rest of them get ready to head back to Merzouga, too - I'm the only one who's going to spending an extra night out here, and today I'll get to visit a real Berber village out here in the Sahara.

"There are actually people who still live out here?!" I can't help but think. Sure it's beautiful and gorgeous, but it's also harsh and barren and where on earth do they get water from?!

I jump up on camelback and soon I'm watching the desert change under the rising sun - the sky becomes bluer, the sand becomes even more golden, and the flies start buzzing around my head again.

I'm seriously starting to wish that I'd had the foresight to bring a good insect repellent. I'm kicking myself for not having brought my Tiger Balm.



As we cross dune after dune, I ask Ibrahim how it is that he is able to tell one part of the desert from the other - it all looks the same to me, featureless, full of sand. "You just know," he tells me. I suppose that must be something that comes from having been born in the desert.

I learn that Ibrahim is also quite the aspiring photographer - he absolutely loves taking pictures of everything and anything, and several times he asks if I'd like to stop for pictures.

He calls himself the "Berber japonais" - the Japanese Berber, because he loves taking pictures. "Just like the Japanese," he says.

I have to say, he's pretty skilled with handling my Canon 550D and even slides down the sides of dunes to get at nice angles.





After journeying for about an hour or so, we finally arrive at the edges of the Berber village. There's a well there (that explains how they get their water) and even a tiny garden. Ibrahim draws up water from the well to give to Bob Marley Rasta, who I suppose must be pretty thirsty because he's gulping it down… Well, like a camel.







Between 10AM and 5PM, the desert is insufferably hot. It's unbearable and brutal, and it's pretty much dead between those hours. The only things that are awake are the flies, which refuse to stop buzzing around your head. It's nap-time between 10 and 5, because that's pretty much the only thing for people to do.

There's a little mud hut, which is about as basic as basic gets - a simple straw roof and a cut-out window through the mud walls, with a couple of rugs between me and the earth and a simple metal door. There's also a plastic sheet over the roof - "For when it rains," says Ibrahim, although I can't really imagine it raining out here in the Sahara.

I become very glad for the fact that I have my jacket on me, which I pull over my head to keep out the drone of buzzing flies. The flies are horrible - the droning really gets to you, and it's so much that I actually think I'm going insane.



When I wake up just in time for lunch, Ibrahim is preparing a salad out of tomatoes, onions, capsicum, cucumbers, olives and some sort of fish. There's olive oil drizzled over the top. It's simple but refreshing, and oh my god the olives. I've never been much of an olive girl, but the ones I've had here are the most delicious thing I've ever had.

In fact, I wouldn't have expected myself to like half these vegetables at all, because I don't usually have capsicum or olives in my diet, but I think Morocco is changing my mind about these veggies.



I decide to head out to check out the rest of this little Berber village.

Somehow it's not quite the village I expected - I kind of expected a little community of people living together happily, with simple but clean huts or nomadic tents, and a whole hoard of livestock, camels and goats. They've got the camels and goats alright, but the rest of the village looks… Well, run-down.

There isn't any real 'village' either - it's more of the one family who is unwavering in wanting to remain the desert, and their mud-house. Mud-house, goat-keep, and solar panels.

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Yup, solar panels. Because you really can't get by without electricity, and if you're going to do clean renewable and sustainable there's probably no better place to get electricity than in the Sahara, right?

I'm a little bit surprised, but a part of me dies when I think about how hard life must be out here.



Later in the afternoon, Ibrahim asks if I want to check out the oasis. "Sure, why not," so we head out, and soon there's a little place with a few trees and shade. Another surprise - it's not the palm trees and big lake that I'd expected, but just a place with a little bit more water so that plants can grow.

Seriously, where do I get all these desert stereotypes from?!



Ibrahim lays out a couple of mats and tosses me a tree branch to use as a fan to keep the flies away. He also insists on calling me Fatima Couscous, which he says is my 'desert name.' I don't know why he decides to name me after a food, but it's pretty amusing, so why not?

The desert is brutal. Brutally hot, and by now it's been some 20 hours without access to the comforts of everyday life. No internet, no showers - and right now I could seriously do with both, especially the shower. The heat is making me sweat and I'm feeling sticky, icky and gross. Internet access would be good too, because without internet I'm feeling lost and frankly unsure what to do with all these hours doing nothing.



When it finally gets cool enough, Ibrahim saddles up the camel and we head over to tonight's campsite.

Bob Marley Rasta doesn't seem to enjoy having his harness fiddled around with too much.



That evening after getting to the campsite, I get to watch my second desert sunset.









In the morning, I see sand-cat tracks, and kick myself for not having stayed up last night to see the cats. I love cats. Love. So when Ibrahim tells me that there were four sand-cats around our campsite last night, I'm cursing and swearing for not having been able to see them out and about, hunting sand-fish and desert insects in the dark.





One thing strikes me - how easily the wind, which whips up at sunset and sunrise, seems to erase all signs that people have ever walked paths in the desert. There's so little moisture that the fine sand picks up as easily as dandelion fluff, and the wind blows tracks right over. The sand ripples like waves, and soon there's no evidence at all that anything had ever walked here.



And yet somehow, through all this harsh brutality, things do survive. It's the Sahara, it's extreme, it's inhospitable, the days blur into one another, but life is there. There are desert cats, desert dogs, sand fish, scarab beetles, all depending on one another for continued survival.





A poem creeps into my head:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.