P was up early to climb a dune and see the sunrise. I finished my tea, noting that the sunrise wasn’t for half an hour and desert nights at this time of year are literally freezing. When I finally emerged, yesterday’s warm fluffy sand was cold and hard. But P had seen the best of the pre-dawn colours.

And a perfect shot of a string of camels.

We noticed another moped following our tracks and parking just behind Arnie and as we came down, sure enough someone else was willing to sell us something. It is the low season and this is how these guys make a living of course so we smiled and Salaamed but headed inside for breakfast. We were both buzzing with excitement and ready to head deeper into the desert. So we packed up and fired up Arnie and, oh yes, we were actually bogged down.

We’ve driven in deserts before but not in anything as big as Arnie and we are sandladder novices. But we let the tires down to a better sand setting, dug out behind them a bit and unbolted the sand ladders from the side of the truck.

It took a couple of goes but we were soon out.

We headed south again flushed with the success of our first sand extraction. Away from the camel rides and ATVs and pedlars and blasting trails bikes and onto a road which soon we had to ourselves. It was fairly new, well made and joyous to drive. The recent rains meant parts of it were lined with lavender and camomile.

We were aiming for the desert town of Zagora following GPX data recorded by others who had done the same route over well-established tracks. They suggested it would be about five-six hours of driving, which we aimed to do over two days.

As we cruised along the smooth, wide, empty road deeper into the desert, I was thinking it was nice, but not really the desert experience I was hoping for. Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for…

Late morning we pulled off the perfect road and stopped at the only building we’d seen in quite a while – a large caravanserai, now a posh hotel.

It appeared deserted save for the manager and three French travellers with a Land Cruiser who were having tea and poring over a map. We sat in a reception room and had mint tea, and a plate of tiny biscuits and peanuts while looking at the large map painted on the wall.

The manager spotted us looking and made a point of telling us that the normally dry river Daoura we had to cross had been in flood a few weeks previously and would be impassable at two of the three crossing points. He pointed us to the dry crossing, which thankfully our route took us through. But this too turned out to be prophetic.

100 meters further down the road and the sweeping tarmac ended abruptly, like a border between civilisation and wilderness. Ahead of us, 200km of desert track in various states of existence. It began relatively smoothly; gravel and sand by turns.

Sometimes it branched and we followed the waypoints on the GPS trying to spot the sudden sandy dips created by recently running water. After a few hours of this we reached the tiny village of Ramlia which was the usual crossing point (now too boggy) and headed north on a minor track to reach our dry crossing. It was slow going and while there were some motorcycle tire marks it didn’t look like any other 4-wheeled vehicles had been that way for a while. The unexpected rain in September meant that parts of the plain were full of small bushes, obscuring the track which we were able to follow only with the GPS. When we finally reached the river after a couple of hours of jolting, the GPS line continued, but the track abruptly stopped at a sheer sand cliff by the river’s edge.

The dry riverbed was a couple of meters below. We could see the track at the other side, perhaps 300 meters away, but there was no obvious way to get there. We decided that was a good place to stop for the night.

Philippa made some supper and I walked up and down the riverbank looking for a way to avoid having to turn around and retrace our steps. It looked as if there might be a way…

We sat out, enjoying the last of the day. The only sound came from birds flitting between the bushes and when they went to roost the silence was absolute. A nail clipping moon rose and the stars turned themselves up to high – almost too bright to look at. We set tomorrow’s problems aside.