This incredible expedition will take you further across the desert than we have been for many a year, almost to the bottom of the Sahara and the remote, seldom visited sands of Mauritania. While “Timbuktu” is often used to refer to reaching the proverbial end of the world, neighbouring Mauritania is far more deserving of the title. This remote and large country is sparsely populated, with most of the population living in the western side of the country, near the Atlantic Ocean. The interior is the western edge of the Grand Erg Occidental , 30,000 sq miles of sand. Here, on the edge of the sand sea, the dunes slowly give way to a mix of sand sheet, mountains and plateaux’s.
Crossing the border from Morocco we head east, following the famous iron ore train line to explore ancient Islamic libraries at Chinguetti before heading to Oudane. From the Maur Adrar dune field we’ll head into the Guelb er Richât, nicknamed “the Eye of the Sahara, this bulls eye structure is of special note as one of the world’s natural wonders. This area is also covered in stone artifacts and tools and we’ll visit the small village of El Beyedh, home to probably the world’s most remote museum. Built over the years with artifacts collected by the elderly village head, Monsieur Yislim; as a young man Yislim was the guide of Theodore Monod, one of the greatest French explorer/naturalists of the Sahara. We’ll then head SE over the Tidjikja plateaux to Rachid and the southern edge of the sands to search for the last of the Saharan crocodiles, dwarfed over the centuries by scarcity of food and space and now confined to a few seasonal gueltas and remote water holes. We then swing northwest towards Nouakchott before following the surf north along the Atlantic beaches to the Banc d’Arguin National Park, the largest winter concentration of wading birds in the world, before we cross back to Morocco for our return home.
Never really thought that I could do this but thanks to Paul and Anne I'm here with my truck and loving it. The feeling of sucess and the priveledge of being in such a wild place is immense - the memories get better by the day.
Thanks again Paul and Anne for arranging a very memorable, exciting, interesting and most of all an enjoyable trip.