Heart of the Sahara: travels with the Tuareg

In 2022 I travelled in the Sahara on a 4x4 tour of the Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria, on the trail of John Michael, a family friend who crossed the Sahara Desert in the late 1970s – the glory days of Saharan overland travel.

What I found in Southern Algeria left me in a state of open-mouthed wonder: 72,000 square kilometers of sand and rock, colossal dune ranges, sandstone pinnacles, and otherworldly ‘rock forests’ – with barely another tourist in sight.

After a few days, I ran out of superlatives and was content to wander under the luminous African skies, imagining that we had this vast tract of the planet to ourselves.

Originally published in JRNY Magazine

SAHARA