Forbidden Sands

This was another great book on Sahara crossing by camel train, this one in 1974. The route is from Tindouf in Algeria to Taoudenni in Mali as part one, then from Taoudenni to Timbuktu (also Mali) as part two. The route crosses briefly in Mauritania.

The author was working as a journalist in Northern Ireland, but spent time dreaming up journeys to undertake, inspired by his time in Kenya when younger, where his father was a District Commissioner.

Taoudenni was a place Trench heard of by chance, and I suppose it captured his imagination.

The journey itself was undertaken travelling with two different parties - the part one and part two mentioned above. The travel, as you might expect of the Sahara was no holiday. Whole parties regularly died in route, becoming disorientated, or unable to locate a well spelling almost certain death. However the men leading the camel parties were not amateurs, these were men who knew the desert, and knew their craft. While not enigmatic at first, Omar (the first part) and Hotan (the second part) had qualities which Trench came to understand and respect.

Trench does a good job in narrating his travel, combining it with quotes from esteemed travellers who followed this route - primarily Ibn Battuta and René Caillié. Others who get a mention or a quote shared include Graham Greene, Leo Africanus & Gordan Laing.

Some of the writing I enjoyed enough to note down page numbers:

P51:
I thanked him [the Souz-Prefet] for everything he had done for me.‘One last word of advice. Do everything they do, and do not express your surprise at anything.'I looked at him, and on his face I could detect a shadow of a smile. What was it for? What did it mean? It was the smile of some knowledgeable person, someone who understood something that I did not understand, who knew something I did not know.

P56:
A camel's roar carries for miles across the desert. I once asked Omar how bedouins used to keep their camels silent in the days of tribal raids, when surprise was so essential. He picked up a twisted piece of rope that had been used to hobble a camel and twisted it around my face, closing my mouth.

P125:
‘Hotan of the Berebish tribe' was everything Tahar Omar was not. While Omar was short, fat and sophisticated, Hotan was tall, thin and simple. Although about forty years old, he had the eyes of a child. His beard and closely cropped hair were as blue as his clothes, and his finely featured face had a lean and hungry look to it.

“Are you the

who went to Taoudenni?” he asked me.
I said I was.
“you are our friend, come and eat.”