Into The Silent Emptiness

Escape your everyday hustle on a camel trek in the Sahara.

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We are at Erg Chebbi, where the end of the road meets the start of the sand, and where camel caravans departs for their four months’ journeys across the Sahara down to Mali.

We’re going on camelback into the Saharan sand dunes. We’re not going to go for four months though, or even four days — it’s not that comfortable on a camel. In fact, it’s not that comfortable in the desert, especially not the Sahara desert. But the desert is a chance to escape, a chance to retreat from everyday reality and find ourselves surrounded by nature, humbled by its power.

The sand dunes rise 200 meters high. Every day they change as they go through the transformation of light to shadow. It’s a light orange, red, yellow, gold. And each day you can see the sand moving, the sand dunes shifting.

But the best thing about the desert for me is the silence. The silence magnified, because there is no wifi, there is no signal, there is no artificial or electronic connection. So we plod slowly, slowly on the camel. Maybe we jump down, walk alongside the camel. We travel in the dusk hours when it’s cooler, when it is more comfortable to travel in the desert.

And as we cross a ridge around the corner and another dune and another turn and keep going on, all there is is sand. Sand, sand, sand. Every view completely different, yet always the same. Another ridge, another dune, another turn, along we go with the camels.

An oasis! An oasis is bliss. Only after travelling in the desert can you appreciate the meaning of that word — oasis. It’s a place of sanctuary, of refuge, of comfort. A place to continue the retreat, but to also retreat from the powerful nature all around. And down we go into the desert camp, where thick carpets lie on the ground, where tea is served on silver trays, with silver pots, ritualistically — a welcome for us weary travellers who have crossed just one hour of desert. But one hour of desert feels like a lot when you’ve never been to the desert.

Here in this oasis, there is still that silence, and that view of the sand all around. Yet there is also this fine comfort. A great thing about being out in the desert is that there is so much space. You don’t need to share a camp with somebody else. So this is our oasis — we made it to the camp and this is for us, it is private. It has been erected solely for our journey.

So we can rest our heads in solitude. We can gaze up at the stars. Because the desert is not just something we do in the day. Another great thing about the desert is that we’ve disconnected from everything electrical, from the artificial lights. So above us, the great starry sky stretches, all those bright constellations, too many shooting stars to count. There is so much going on in the nighttime sky that we wonder — why did we come up with streetlights to ruin it all, in the cities and places where we live?

We wake the next morning to see the sunrise. A sunrise in the desert — especially when you’re alone — what a feeling of freedom that is! And after the sunrise, a sumptuous breakfast, then back with the camels. Back in a different route across the desert, because there’s always a different route, every single day. Walking, walking, walking with the camels, seeing how the sand dunes come out of their shadow.

Now we’re still in the desert, but we’re no longer in the dunes. And then we are back to where the desert meets civilization, and our 18-hour experience is over.

Yet a highlight of spending the night in the desert is that it feels much longer.

A few hours in the Sahara feel like days, because there is so much to experience, and at the same time so much empty space and silence in what is a world of your own — your own piece of the desert.

Story by Stephen Bailey. Edited by Beatriz Becker.

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