Desert Meditation

Through La Porte du Desert and on to Morocco. Well...almost. I have over 1000km of desert to cross, and cross in fashion! I'm in Dakhla, Western Sahara now, and I'm not even halfway home. While I could use this time to write about similarities, difference, and inevitable comparisons with West Africa, I think I'll save those for a later date, especially as even remote outpost Dakhla seems, in many ways, more developed than Dakar. I don't want to make any more comparisons though until I'm well into Morocco and I realize there's little to compare.

For now though, I'll turn back to Mauritania and the wonders of the desert.

I don't know exactly when I fell in love with the desert. It may be as early as the first time I climbed the dune north of my village in Niger. Or it might be as recently as the drive through the smooth, serpentine folds of windswept ochre sand and past desolate, rust-colored, rocky plains from Nouakchott to Atâr in Mauritania. There's something about the desert, its isolation, its indifferent, ever-changing yet immutable character that has evoked retrospection for generations. It's no question that Jesus retired to the desert in search of clarity, and Mohammed, of course, brought his new faith out of Arabia's sands. There's a reason for this: the sense of the infinite, and our place in it, is palpable in great, open spaces such as the desert.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Chinguetti, the seventh holiest city in Islam. Chinguetti was once an important caravan stop, linking West African gold, ivory, salt, and slaves to North African and European markets. In its heyday, the city was a center of great learning, with a population of over 30,000, mostly Islamic scholars and merchants. I doubt that Chinguetti has even a tenth of that number now, but like other scholarly cities, Timbuktu and Djenné, it is still crammed full of ancient Islamic manuscripts, many of them still held by local families in their own homes.

However, with the desert caravan days long gone, I think most of Chinguetti's spiritual energy these days comes from the majestic dunes that encircle the old, stone town. It's easy to walk only a few kilometers outside the city and be amongst the heaped masses of sand, the wind quickly obliterating any footprints and any sign of a world outside the desert's horizon. It's possible, from Chinguetti, to walk over 350km east and see nothing but classic Lawrence of Arabia-style dunes. While this would lead to certain death, it's hard to argue the appeal of a night spent amongst the dunes, under the cool light of a brilliant full moon, with no noise other than the sound of your own heart beat.

It's a wonder then, with my love for the desert and after sweating it out through two hot seasons in Niger that I never fully appreciated the phrase "like an oasis in the desert" until I visited an actual oasis in the desert. God is big. Part of the Sahara's spiritual appeal lies in its extremes, from scalding day-time temperatures to freezing nights. After a few days in Atâr's stifling heat (42C in the shade most of the day), I marveled at the green paradise of the Terjit oasis, the perfect stereotype of all you've seen in Hollywood films: a bubbling spring cutting its way through a desert gorge, watering a vast, shady date palmerie. For all the desert's hardships, the oasis is that much sweeter a reward at the end of a long stay.

But that wasn't quite the end of my time in the desert. I'll have more in another post. Coming soon: Sterling's epic 500km free ride on top of the world's longest train.