Suivez la Piste!
We were traveling through a canyon of time where the sands have blown for a million years.

The year was nineteen- seventy- three. My friend and former Peace Corps colleague Dan Richard, his younger brother Randy, and my girlfriend Kersti, (who became my wife) set out on a motorcycle odyssey through the heart of the Sahara Desert. It was a journey through a colossal wilderness of sand, gravel and unbroken horizons that perhaps, before we did it, only a few intrepid voyagers had undertaken. In the silver light of the Sahara, images could be distorted, markers missed and distances miscalculated. We drove on through that massive wasteland towards the center of the African continent, unaware of the hazards. We had three and a half thousand kilometers ahead of us and no guide books: only our Carte Michelin, the desert voyager’s bible, that when unfolded was as big as a bedsheet. It charted valuable information as to where we could expect to find potable water and its depth, where petrol should be available, and if the track was exceptionally dangerous.

One of the prerogatives of youth is to see possibilities where others see obstacles. It didn’t occur to us that our trip might be difficult or that it could be dangerous. There weren’t satellite phones to call for help or backup crews to rescue us if we were injured or in trouble, but what we lacked in logistic support we made up for with an abundance of naive enthusiasm. Dan said, tongue in cheek that, “we were the last of the rugged individualists.”  Maybe, or perhaps, we were just young desert pilgrims on a journey to discover some things about ourselves by “taking the road less travelled by.”

Suivez la Piste (Follow the Track)

The skeletons of the abandoned vehicles, that we occasionally saw along the trail, stood as sand blasted monuments to travelers who were ill prepared for the harsh conditions and challenges of one of the world’s most desolate places. Without a doubt, the most sensible way to travel in the desert was in sturdy, well maintained all-wheel drive vehicles in a convoy with experienced desert hands who understood its shifting moods and whisperings, or in camel caravans like the Touareg Nomads had done through the ages.

Our overloaded motorcycles weren’t an ideal choice of transport for the arduous trip across the Sahara, but in many ways crossing the desert on a motorcycle was a rite of passage. It was an initiation and turning point in our lives that wasn’t as dramatic as that of the young Masai warriors who went off into the bush to kill a lion armed with only a spear, but our desert quest gave us a myriad of memories to take with us.

“Suivez la piste” and “bon courage” were short simple messages that implied: be cautious, stay on the trail, have faith.  Good advice for anyone traversing the desert, in as much as there were no real roads through the Sahara, just unmaintained sand and gravel tracks that were kept open through usage.

Soon after we crossed the Eastern Atlas Mountains south of Algiers, the tarmac ended abruptly outside of the oasis town of El Golea. For the rest of our journey, we fish-tailed our way through the sandy rutted paths or bounced over uneven makeshift trails that on our Michelin map of northern Africa were depicted as improved roads.

The long, solitary yellow, line marking our route through that world of sand, was broken only by the pinpricks that represented the oases where travelers over the centuries stopped to replenish their supplies, and where it was also essential for us to rest and bunker up on water, food and petrol. The names of those refuges in that vast expanse of wilderness etched themselves into my memory: Blida, Lahouat, Gharhadia, El-Golea, In Sahlah, Tamanrasset, In Guezzamn, Agadez, Tanout, Zinder.

We followed the ancient trade route from Algiers in Algeria, through Niger and on to Kano in Northern Nigeria. The road we followed was either drifted sand, hard sand, bottomless sand, or a punishing, bumpy dirt track with corrugations that shook us to the marrow. Our heads and jaws ached from our teeth banging together, our nostrils were caked with dust and often our back wheels, looking for something to grip, bogged down to the exhaust pipes, forcing us to climb off and help one another lift them out. When storms howled, we had to cover our machines carefully so that the fine-grained sand that whipped us at gale force didn’t clog the filters or blow back through the mufflers and into the engine. The four weeks that it took to cross the desert was a test not only of our stamina and driving skills, but also the dependability of our motorcycles.

The Sahara is a  place of clear skies and wide stretched horizons and covers an area that is equal to the continental United States. For the most part, it’s unpopulated and if anything happened, we were more or less on our own. If we got lost or had an accident, we couldn’t expect anyone to send out a tow truck or a rescue party, and portable satellite phones were still twenty-five years distant. At In Sahlah, the last oasis before the trail became even more difficult, we filled out the mandatory permission forms at the Gendarmerie National before we were allowed to continue on through the Hogar region to Tamanrasset.  We detailed our route and destination to the desert police, who having fulfilled their bureaucratic obligations, placed the forms among piles of other forgotten, yellowed documents. Would they really have known, or have been concerned if we didn’t show up at the next check point within the specified time? I doubted it.

For days on end, the terrain didn’t change. In the hammering rays of the North African sun, one sand dune resembled the other, and in the shimmering light you understood what a mirage was. Follow the track, was advice that you took seriously.

It was a matter of survival.  It wasn’t a just a catchy expression you used when taking leave or greeting other travelers whom you met in the desert.  It was an admonishment and a stern warning, a rule and not a recommendation.

If you were foolhardy and strayed too far from the markers that designated the trail in search of firmer sand or a short cut, it could cost you your life.

If you were careless and wandered off the track and lost sight of the half-meter high stones that pointed you in the right direction, and then reckoned that you could follow your tire tracks and intercept it again, the wind could have already swept them away.

If you were lost and didn’t have shelter, the sun would follow you like a sharp toothed predator stalking its prey.

The Trans Saharan Highway when it was completed would be an asphalt road that would link North and Central Africa. But in nineteen seventy-three, the Trans Saharan Highway was just a dream with a grand name. Eventually it was meant to slice through the heart of the desert from Algiers in Algeria, through the deep, sands of Niger, onward to the Sahel in Northern Nigeria.

When we travelled the piste it was marked out by stones, and at intervals punctuated by those grave warnings not to stray from it.  The rutted and corrugated track shook us to the marrow.

Our heads and jaws ached from our teeth banging together and sometimes after a day of combating the strenuous conditions of the trail, we ate our rice and sardines and just crawled into our sleeping bags, too tired to unpack and pitch our tents. 

The four weeks that it took to cross the desert was at times a brutal test not only of our physical endurance and motorcycle skills but also the durability of our BMWs.

When the changing geography signaled that we had successfully conquered the three and a half thousand kilometers of the Sahara and that our days in the desert were coming to an end, we sat in the evenings savoring those last moments, talking quietly of our struggles on the trail.

It was with feelings of anticipation and relief that we gazed up at the night sky. The stars shone so brightly and seemed so close that we felt that we could almost reach out and touch them.

We had followed one path to its end, which led to our next adventure.

Dan and Randy headed west to Cameroun.

Kersti and I took another trail east through Chad and then followed a route south that would take us deep into the jungle of the Congo.