Travel

Five reasons to Trek the Sahara Desert

In October I trekked 100km across the Sahara desert and I have to say what a fantastic experience it was. Imagine being in the middle of the desert sleeping under the stars, being at one with nature and not seeing a flushing loo for a week.

1. The Scenery: Seeing the sand dunes that are up to 100 meters high, then climbing up them was amazing, scenery has never taken my breath away before, this is something that a photo cannot quite capture and has to be seen with your own eyes. The Sahara isn’t all sand dunes the rocky terrain provided just as much epic scenery as the dunes especially at the top of the mountain type peaks.

2. The Experience: It’s truly is a once in a lifetime experience, living like a nomad (well as close as you would without actually being one). Collecting water from wells to cool yourself down, loading your belongings onto a camel to carry, sleeping outside under the stars also spotting the shooting ones too and seeing also sorts of creatures and critters (including scorpions!!). Setting up your camps daily, trying Berber food, making a bowl of water turn into a shower, last of all getting to ride a camel.

3. The remoteness: Being in the middle of nowhere, only with your group of a few people, during the walk we didn’t see any other people apart from those in our group, we didn’t experience this until the drivers came to take us out of the desert.

4. The people: The friends you make and relationships that form from being pushed to your limits, whether it is the walking or the lack of washing.

5. Living a simple life: In the middle of the desert you realise that you don’t need a TV or need to know what’s going on X-Factor, who Gail Platt id getting married to next or even what’s happening in the rest of the world, you realise you could probably live without any of the above. Spending the week without technology, updating face book or twitter was actually really satisfying.

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