Wormholed to the Sahara Desert

In keeping with my last post, I'm going to gloss over a few things for now (like uploading any pictures from Egypt for the time being) as I wanted to write a little about our last adventure: a 4x4 into the Sahara Desert.

We arrived in Ouarzazate two days ago looking to hire a 4x4 to self-drive into the desert near M'Hamid (no Wikipedia page). Apparently this is not something that happens often (driving without a guide) as it took near 5 hours and visits to around 10 agencies to find an available car with 4-wheel drive. Anyways, we got it done and showed up the next morning to collect our ride. 7 hours later and after driving straight to the end of the paved road in Morocco, we arrived in M'Hamid.

To describe the village it helps to keep in mind that it really is at the very, very end of the road, 250 kilometers from Ouarzazate (a town that most people have probably never heard of to begin with). If you accidentally drive off the paved road at the end of the town, well, you are in the Sahara Desert.

To help with visualization, here's a map (the big grey line is Algeria theoretically, the light yellow means that the road is just one lane total for both directions of traffic / playing lots of chicken):

Agrandir le plan

Now before you get all upset as to us driving out into the desert without a guide keep in mind that I'm writing this now so I'm obviously OK. Also, we really only intended to drive as far as M'Hamid and then pick up a guide there to take us the additional 60 kilometers out into the desert to Erg Chigaga, a massive sand dune field 40 kilometers long and up to 100 meters high. Cause really we didn't want to drive out into the desert alone anyways.

Now, most of the people that head out into the desert here have a guide (and a driver) and sleep in an organized camp. We decided to try and find a guide that would just sleep next to (or in) the car with us and buy our own food. Luckily it worked out that the first place we stopped at in M'Hamid guide shopping simply said we could forget the guide and just follow them as they drove out to their camp. A few minutes later and after agreeing to give the musicians a ride to the camp, we arranged to follow the car for free.

The camp was basically a circle of tents near the start of the dune field. After a couple of stops along the way, we arrived just at sunset. After a quick trot to the top of a dune, we slept a little ways away on the ground next to our car so as to be alone and also to not impose on the camp that the others had paid a substantial amount to stay in. Dinner consisted of canned corn and chickpeas, bread and strawberry jelly, processed cheese, and water. Lots of water...

It was all a really spectacular adventure. The driving, sleeping, and just being among massive dunes was a great experience. In my bliss, I've uploaded just a few quick pictures so you can have a look at the trip.

By the way, trying to sleep in the Sahara in August is like trying to sleep inside a hair dryer... That blows sand all over you...