The tarmac
ends abruptly a few kilometres south of Douz, the road continues, but there is
a clear line when it turns from black-top to dirt track. From here to Ksar
Ghilane, about 150 kilometres drive to the south east, the surface changes many
more times; fast-driving hard-packed sand, corrugated shake-the-truck-to-bits
sand, smooth rock-bed, gravel with fist-sized sharp rocks mixed in that could
slice a tyre like gutting a fish, soft tyre-sucking sand and dunes.
You see
them in the distance, running straight across the horizon like the looming
first day back at school when there's only a week left of the summer holidays,
like a tax submission when you've spunked all you've earnt and got no
savings. Of course, you have a
naïve assumption that the track must snake through. This pathetic belief
quickly dissolves as you approach. No matter how your eyes scour you can't see
where the path might go. Then you realise, or rather accept the truth, that
there is no track. It stops where they start.
I slump
forward onto the wheel for a few seconds to stare out of the window, then jump
out and walk ahead, scouting a path with Mirko, and grateful, not for the last
time, that we’ve been sensible and listened to the maxim, “Never drive alone in
the desert”. He is driving dunes for the first time too. He's ridden thousands
of kilometres over the Sahara on a motorbike, but this time he is in a Land
Rover 110 with his wife Ulrike. It’s all very different on four wheels than
two. We are both about to drive into the unknown.
Walking
ahead only serves to confirm one thing: you have to pick your own route. Get it
right and you get through, get it wrong and at best it will be a few hours of
digging sand under a searing sun.
The only
way to do this is to drive. Let some air out of the tyres to give them a bigger
footprint, engage the diff lock, selected low second and pull off. Straight up
and over. Hit that dune anything other than square on and four tonnes of truck
has a very good chance of rolling. Not a pleasant thought, especially way out
here. Especially when what will roll over is your home.
That first
dune wasn’t the biggest we would climb that day, or the next: it was quite
small really, maybe only a meter and a half tall. I could see over the top of
it from the driving seat, but it looked like a mountain. We only had a few
meters run-up from a standing start and I probably stepped on the throttle
harder than I needed to because we shot up and over like it was nothing but a
speed-bump on a suburban street. We came down pretty hard on the other side.
But it showed me once again just how capable the truck is.
Like a
blubbery sea lion that waddles on land, but is sublime in the water, the 101
danced through the Sahara. Five and half thousand kilometres bouncing, trundling
and labouring along on tarmac had numbed me to its staggering off-road agility
and power. It was amazing when we took it wading in the winter mud of East
Anglia, just as impressive in Sahara sand.
It climbed
dunes effortlessly. From a standing start and without over-gunning the
throttle, it would stroll up slopes that seemed near vertical sat in the cab.
Some of them were at least five metres: enough to give me a psychotic grin and
a junkie’s desire for more, but nowhere near the limit for the truck. She
seemed disappointed when she reached the top. This junkie has a new poison.
Booting the
accelerator and charging straight at a wall of sand in four tonnes of truck is
a little unnerving. Do it once and the trepidation turns into a manic obsession
to tear up each and every sand hill in the entire Sahara. Sell the house. Sell
everything in it. Arrange an airdrop of spare parts, beer and petrol and stay
out here driving up and down dunes until the tyres melt or sanity snaps. This
is fun. Oh, yes. My god. This is fun. With a hymn from Faithless blasting out
of the stereo loud enough to overpower the scream of a V8 in an aural battle of
satainc proportions, this is my church. This is where I heal my hurt.
Route, photos and more at www.thelongandwinding.co.uk
