I don’t think I’m always right, but I always think I’m right—until reality shows me I’m wrong.
After five hours in the Sahara Desert, or at least Merzouga’s Erg Chebbi dunes, I’ve found what I expected to have been completely wrong. I’m not being self-critical here. I’ve just learned my view of the world is different from normal people’s.
For example, I’ve always wanted to visit the Sahara, so I’ve assumed that was a universal desire. Despite my experience, leading up to this trip, that not a single person said, “Oh . . . I’ve always wanted to go there,” I predicted I’d need to fight hard to avoid a touristy experience, that the first few miles in would be like Disneyworld at the opening bell. Instead, no one jostled me, nobody ran ahead to be first in line, not a soul cried with joy at finally standing where she’d always wanted to be. I’d pictured a parking lot surrounded by street vendors, souvenir stands and mortally ill camels for rent.
At best, I thought the Sahara would be like some of the time I’ve spent at the Grand Canyon, awed at the beauty and the immensity, but still needing to put up with someone playing Pearl Jam on a box, another taking their 27th selfie on a cliff and yet another talking loudly on the phone to complain about their motel room. Ping-ponging back and forth between transcendence and all-too-earthly immanence, I’d pray for a time machine to take me back to the days of the Havasupai and the Hopi. A time machine or a disappearing ray. The beauty outweighed the obnoxiousness, but only by a feather.
The Sahara is nothing like Disneyworld. The Sahara has nothing like the tumult of the Grand Canyon. The Sahara is. That’s all. The Sahara is.
I drove to Erg Chebbi, following Google Maps precisely. The app told me to take a right at the outskirts of nowhere. There was no road, just 4-wheeler tracks in the gravel. Still, I followed for 400 yards, a thousand yards, two miles—not seeing a single human or vehicle, just high dunes to the left of me and low dunes to my right. Finally, I pulled over to the side, got out my bag and climbed the high dunes to the Sahara. At the apex, I saw, stretching to the horizon, nothing but sand.
This was the desert I’d dreamed of from childhood, the Sahara of the Bedouins, the Berbers, “The Little Prince” (a book I’d missed all my life until two years ago, when Elena read it out loud to me). As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the Sahara is the size of the United States, so my finding the land tourist-free is roughly akin to someone washing up on the rocky coast of Maine and declaring the US uninhabited. Still, that castaway would experience the country as empty, at least until he found the first 7-11. So far, my taste of the desert has been what I’d always wanted it to be, but never dreamed it would.
Tonight, I will dream of the desert. Tomorrow I will return for another deeper, longer taste. I am a happy man.
Slideshow: The Sahara, some camels and me
