OUT OF THE SANDS!!!!

THE LIVING, WORKING, BREATHING SAHARA DESERT IN ALL ITS BEAUTY! Post No.36 (A 6 minute read)

What a joy it is to find yourself at long last, wandering in your past visions of your future. Your past visions have become your today´s REALITY! This is no longer a dream, a vision, wishful thinking, NO, this is now a living, working, breathing reality and you are just where you needed to be!

Travelling as I now was, ever further southwards, I was moving ever deeper into the Sahara Desert. The Sahara Desert today makes up 8% of the world´s land surface and is 9.2 million square kilometres in area. This is a vast expanse, it really is and yet the colours are changing oh, so subtly as you pass through the kilometres. The shades of nature, pure beauty!

GHARDAIA, OUT OF THE SANDS! Photo by Mido Art on Unsplash.

Hello and good morning to ALL readers around the world, welcome to you today. In this chapter thirty-three, I arrived at Ghardaia which stands in a valley and just seems to come out of the sands. The buildings are all low level with the exception of the mosque, whose minaret towers over the landscape. The sandstone constructions were shades of ochre, beige, peachy pink and when the sun set and rose, WOW!!! What a spectacular sight indeed!

Such a beautiful place just had to be enjoyed and explored and that is just what I did for some days before heading further south-east towards Ouargla and Hassi Messaoud. It was certainly an eventful journey of various legs and with changes of vehicles and travel companions between. That is all an essential part of travel for me. If you do not communicate with the local people, I do not think that you will ever get a real FEEL for the country and its whole way of living.

There were nights spent `en piste´, all part of the travel experience of course. A learning all the way journey. I quote myself from this chapter:

Yes, it had got us another hundred and fifty kilometres before it gave up and rent! Having used your spare, what next? In these situations (bearing in mind that we did not have mobile phones then), there is nothing to do but wait and hope a vehicle comes past. We had entered into the neighbouring province of Illizi, I remembered seeing the sign posts before light fell and we had passed through Hassi Messaoud and taken the left option at a forking of the highway, heading further south-east. Where we were now, I could not be sure. It was in situations like this, that my travel companions always surprised me. They would deal with these mishaps like they were par for course!

We all got out of the car and on viewing the rent tyre, all agreed that yes, it was definitely punctured!! The hours had moved on and the stomach had expected to be eating something by now. In truth though, no one is about to go walking off in the dark here, so, you just have to sit it out. Somehow though, ever prepared, these incredible people can always get a fire going and some mint tea boiling! Mint tea seems almost like the automatic solution to all problems!! End of quote.

We had a pick and mix of all the food that we had between us and then settled down to sleep for the night. I learnt so much from the Arab peoples about patience, tolerance, collaboration and co-operation. We were all in the same situation at that moment in time. Berating our driver was not going to resolve anything. Getting up tight was not going to resolve anything. Getting angry with each other was not going to resolve anything either. No, we all had to pull together and bide our time until we could resolve our situation. That was the bottom line in truth!

Time is the most valuable commodity that we have as human beings. Our perception of time and what we do with it though, are so very different from one culture to another. I was now learning to go with Arab time and the Arab people have a patience level matched only by the African peoples! I knew that I had come travelling in search of answers but I was not altogether sure exactly what my questions were! None the less, I was finding my answers but maybe I did not understand them as such at the time! 

80 KILOMETRES TO BORDJ EL HOUES! Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash.

This is a dense chapter of beautiful days lived and my continuing journey across the Tassili n´Ajjer Plateau. I quote myself again from this chapter: 

I had expected more basic styles, more child like maybe! Whilst being some six thousand years old, that is relatively recently for those who love delving in the past like I! Yes, there are thousands of cave drawings all over Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa which date back a lot further. These could therefore, be called relatively modern! The human figures were tall and had well defined thighs and arms. The male figures were wearing a cloth of short length, as our skirts! The female figures were also wearing a cloth but of longer length, to the knee, though they were all bare breasted!

Both male and female figures wore decorated ankle bands and wrist bands. In other paintings, bodies would be painted with markings, or wearing elaborate head dresses. There were different time periods represented of course. There are horses harnessed to chariots with male figures holding the reins and standing atop of the chariot. The chariots had round, spoked wheels!! There were animals of many varieties and hunting scenes. Just like our snapshots, our holiday photos, that is how I interpreted what I was seeing. A visual, pictorial representation, to illustrate something that was known to some but maybe not to others; ENLIGHTENMENT!!  End of quote.

What a truly wonderful and enlightening journey this really was for me. My today still revolves around all that I learnt during these years of my life. That is what needs to become my today!

Have you travelled in the Sahara Desert? Have you explored rock art and cave paintings somewhere in the world? Have you learnt from the local people of the nations that you have travelled through?

In my next post I will review chapter thirty-four titled, THE TIMES THEY SURE ARE CHANGING!

I thank you all for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment below or make communication via the contact box, why not send me your e-mail or click the follow tab and keep up to date . If this is your first read, may I suggest that you take a look at my older posts as this is a continuous train of thought. The Post Index is on the left hand side and the posts are date ordered and numerized. beginning 11th November 2022.

Until next time, happy learning. 

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