Algeria - part 5

We camped for the night in the lee of a high rock-face, scoured by the wind into a rough crescent. Tales of deserts being baking in the day but freezing at night are commonplace. Generalising wildly from my two journeys in the Sahara, I believe such tales are a gross exaggeration. However the night-breeze can feel cold, and of course after the furnace of the daytime you are rarely tempted to start the night by climbing inside your sleeping bag. On this evening I was quite glad of the shelter of the rocks, as the wind was strong, and my hosts slept in their cars. As the wind continued to pick-up, I drifted off to sleep despite vague apprehensions about sand-storms prompted by distant memories of childhood reading, almost certainly some Biggles escapade. Nothing more serious ensued than a couple of inches of sand-drift against my sleeping-bag.

A few years later I was caught by a real sand-storm at a campsite in the deserts of Namibia. It was an utterly eerie experience. The mid-afternoon air was completely still, but a huge yellow cloud was rolling silently around the side of the next hill and creeping across the ground towards our small tent. From one moment to the next the stillness changed into violent battering at the tent. Unable to see out, it was impossible to judge the true strength of the wind, but it was quite terrifying. Opening the zip a couple of inches in an attempt to peer out merely resulted in an eyeful of blasting sand. We sat listening to the gale, hoping firmly that the wind was not strong enough to pick the tent up like a sail, for the best part of an hour. Then almost as suddenly as it had started, the wind dropped again and the sun re-appeared. Everything was covered in a layer of sand but otherwise it was as though the storm had never happened.

Progress next morning was slow. The terrain was rugged, flat stretches rare, and each vehicle in turn frequently bogged down in the sand. A new hazard was the occasional quite steep slope, up which the cars slithered, slipped and sunk. Eventually it all became too much for one of the younger drivers, and slamming his foot on the accelerator, he charged his old taxi up the hill. Inevitably he hit a hidden rock, took off into the air, and landed with an ominous crunch: the radiator was punctured, not an ideal malfunction for the middle of the Sahara. The Tunisians switched to Arabic.

After heated discussions, the only reasonable solution was arrived at, and the journey was now complicated further by the permanent need to tow one car on the end of a rope behind the silver monster. Fortunately the terrain unexpectedly eased shortly afterwards, and we were able to make relatively rapid progress. Finally in mid-afternoon the Niger border post appeared.

Easier terrain near the frontier.

The frontiers between developing nations fall into various types. In the first, the whole frontier is bristling with hostility, guards, and barbed wire. For the traveler it may be somewhat intimidating, but at least it is clear what to do and where to do it. In the second type, between friendlier nations, the main challenge is usually to find the border posts and get your passport stamped. Frequently the passport buildings are poorly signposted and hidden away down back streets, while the main focus of activity is the douanes/customs, which merits much higher priority because of the opportunities it offers the customs-officials for personal enrichment. There is usually a long, patient queue of parked trucks pointing the way to the frontier.

The Algeria-Niger border was a new sort to me. Set down in a flat sand-plain, the only buildings for at least a hundred miles in each direction were a collection of small huts. Presumably its location is determined by the presence of a well. A few hundred metres away, a small group of varied vehicles formed a pair of ad-hoc campsites. The Southbound campsite consisted entirely of European and Arab car dealers (plus the junketing French removal van which arrived a few hours later), with their dubious and battered ex-taxis presided over by the Silver Monster. Some distance away, the Northbound campsite was more interesting: two rugged old goods trucks were attended by a complete nomad village, complete with vast headman, retainers, wives, goats and children, attired in blue turbans and robes. Touareg, my companions insisted.

One of the Tunisians fetched his old camera and took a picture of the nomads. Instantly, as if by magic, a uniformed Niger officer materialized, snatched the camera, pulled it open and exposed all the film. Apparently the border-post was a sensitive and secure area and photography was forbidden. It was difficult to see exactly why this should be so. If I were to plan a coup in Niger, the Route du Hoggar across the Sahara would not be my preferred choice of access route. Subsequently, following the advice of my guidebook, I presented myself at a police point in the capital to apply for a photography permit. No permit was needed, I was told, but it was expressly forbidden to photograph any government buildings - presumably therefore including small border huts in the middle of the desert -, bridges over rivers, soldiers, police or lastly, women bathing in rivers. I was made to repeat this until I had the necessary French word-perfect.

I wonder how the ban would be enforced in these days of digital photography? Maybe the border guards are trained to stamp SIM cards into the sand. More likely the confiscation of easily resaleable digital cameras is one of the extra perks of an otherwise tedious and very isolated job.

The border official brusquely demanded to see our passports. He looked at mine. “English?” he asked. I nodded. “Which city is your home?”

“Nottingham, monsieur,” I replied.

“Ahhh.” Unexpectedly he suddenly smiled broadly and switched to quite passable English: “Nottingham Forest. Very good team!” In 1991 this was a genuinely true statement, so I had no problem in agreeing. I looked at the border post again, and wondered if he knew what a forest was.

Algeria - part 4

Should you ever elect to put yourself completely into the power of a group of travel toughened men, whilst carrying the local equivalent of a year’s wages in easily convertible form, and then cross one of the world’s great wastes where you could quite easily be overpowered and left to die of thirst without it being discovered for months, I can make no higher recommendation than that you choose Tunisian second hand car dealers.

I approached a pair of youngish, arab-looking men, fiddling with the engine of an old green Mercedes taxi parked on a patch of waste ground, and enquired about the prospects of a ride across to Niger. I was snapped up on the spot. As I was to discover, the journey across the open desert would involve a great deal of hard manual work, and cost-free transport in exchange for wage-free labour was considered an excellent trade for both parties.

Returning in the early afternoon as instructed, I was introduced to the full group, five men in total. Their leader, who gave his name as Hamdi, was a short man in his early forties, stocky and dark with a shock of thick black hair. After a brief visual assessment of my digging and pushing potential, he agreed with his younger colleagues and welcomed me to their party.

Initially we continued on metalled road, but after a short pause for paperwork, the real fun began. Each of the Tunisians had a vehicle, a significant investment for each man. In four cases, the cars were exhausted taxis with Geneva plates, old Peugeots or Mercedes. Hamdi and his grave and grey-haired older partner had, however, invested in something more splendidly upmarket. A vast metallic-silver Mercedes saloon, low slung, with tinted windows, air-conditioning and automatic gears, led the way proudly into the sand. A less suitable vehicle for tackling endless stretches of soft desert or the twisting, sharp-rocked passes through the hills of the Hoggar was difficult to imagine.

Within ten minutes this monster was thoroughly bogged down. Being automatic, it could not, as could the other cars, be put in high gear and eased out of the sand with merely the assistance of some mild pushing from behind. Instead every wheel had be to painstakingly dug free, using only bare hands to push back sand which rushed immediately back into place. It was rather like trying to dig a boat out of the sea. Once this was achieved, vigorous pushing against its vast deadweight might, with luck, persuade the sand to release it. It would then be driven at as high a speed as possible over the next stretch of desert, aiming by sheer velocity to avoid the suction of the sand. When this worked, progress was rapid. When it did not, the same velocity and weight ensured a momentum which gave it maximum self-burial power.

At nightfall we stopped at the last settlement in Algeria, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, which made its living selling dusty water to desert travellers from a deep well. The staple, and unvarying, diet of the journey was produced. Bread purchased in Tamanrasset and wrapped tightly in plastic bags, which nonetheless became steadily staler each day. Tins of sardines, which strangely the Tunisians appeared to have no means of opening. Eventually this problem was resolved by borrowing my pen-knife, stabbing a tin violently, and carving the lid open (a technique I was later grateful to have learned). Tins of Harissa, the hot garlicky paste without which no Tunisian meal is complete, also opened with my knife. UHT milk for the first couple of days, until it became undrinkably sour in the heat, and we reverted to the dust filled water. Unused to eating dry-mouthed, I had difficulty in getting the food down until I got the hang both of taking a scoop of eye-watering Harissa with every mouthful, which had the effect of alarming the saliva glands into cooperating sufficiently, and also of avoiding drinking significant quantities of milk or water until the end of the food.

Filling up for the journey.

Three extremely long, hot and exhausting days followed. The first was spent perpetually digging the monstrous Mercedes from the treacherous sand, on which it spent more time stuck than travelling. On several occasions the only option was to fix up a tow rope, a hazardous procedure as none of the taxis was really in a fit state for such violent activity and there was a continual threat that, rather than extricate the silver beast from the sand, the rope would extricate a crucial part of the chassis from a Peugeot.

Nightfall, however, was a magical moment which more than made up for the travails of the day. It was absolutely quiet, save for the ticking of the cooling engines. There were no insects chirruping or buzzing as often in empty lands. Every rustle of clothing or foot shuffling through the sand could be heard with extraordinary clarity. A single lorry passed by, perhaps five miles away, its headlamps occasionally visible through the undulations of the dunes. Its approach and departure could be heard clearly in the silence for 20 minutes each way. There was a half-moon which lit the sand silver and cast great black shadows into the hollows.

Having parked in a sheltered hollow after dusk, it took some minutes next day to locate the main route again and there was some slightly grumpy altercation between Hamdi and one of his lieutenants. Clearly sardines and harissa for breakfast had not cheered them up. A pattern was beginning to become noticeable too – when things were going well, the Tunisians spoke in French, even between themselves, ensuring that I could understand. When things were less good, they reverted to their particular Arabic dialect. The altercation was conducted in Arabic, not a good sign therefore.

Eventually it transpired that it was about the choice of direction. The Route du Hoggar is marked in Algeria by what the Michelin map refers to optimistically as “balises” – a grand-sounding word, which to me conjured up visions of beacons lighting the way, but in practice is an oil-drum dumped in the sand every couple of kilometres. We located a balise easily enough. The trouble seemed to be deciding which way was south. As it was dawn, and the sunrise was extremely plain in the east, this was mildly disconcerting.

Eventually south was located to common satisfaction, and a further trying morning of easing the accursed silver monster through the soft ground ensued. The ground gradually became rockier, with weird sculpted rockshapes appearing through the sand with increasing frequency as we began to climb into the hills of the Hoggar. I was extremely glad of the arrival of the lunchtime stop. The inevitable tins were produced, and my penknife stabbed into the first portion of harissa. A violent hissing sound emerged from the tin, followed half a second later by a spraying jet of red paste. Unfortunately I was perfectly positioned in the line of fire and ended up with my hair, eyebrows, and clothes, already filthy after several unwashed days of digging in the sand, artistically decorated with red-brown streaks and stinking of fermented garlic.