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.