sands of time

by Dominic Ryan

Dominic travelled with Dragoman Overland around Mauritania and the Sahara on our exploratory 'Discover the Mooorish Sahara' search code XNN

WE'RE far now from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, a city of heat, dust and sand-coloured auberges, where the night is woken by screaming banshee goats and the day roused by ululating calls to prayer. The last of its tumble-down outlying villages, with its cheering raggedy children, was left behind many hours ago. Now all that surrounds us is a close crescent of dagger-edged, obsidian-black hills. Beyond their broken-toothed peaks are the infinite sands of the western Sahara, and arching above are unknown white-swirling galaxies in an ebony sky. I feel as far from the modern world as it is possible to be.

My companions are asleep in their tents, but I've pulled my sleeping bag next to the campfire, unable to tear my eyes away from the desert sky, where fiery meteors arc and die in the cold beyond. The only sound is the nervous crackle of burning wood, or perhaps it is the searching scribble-scrabble of a scorpion. I pull the neck of the sleeping bag closer around my shoulders.

It must be near 6am when sleep finally overwhelms my meditations, for in the next instant an explosion of dawn light and the stirrings of my companions herald a sudden new day. We're here under the guidance of Claire and Duncan, our unstintingly enthusiastic guides from the Dragoman Overland adventure tour company, in whose Mercedes Benz converted truck we plan to forge a 500-mile circular journey. We will set off from Nouakchott through the desert to the railway line that carries the world's longest trains, which travel from the iron mines at Zouerate to Nouadhibou and then return via the coastal route.

We have flown in from London, via Casablanca, and while there may have been a coup d'état in Mauritania in the summer of 2005 - officially the country is still under martial law - it seems as though very little has changed for its people. Certainly in Nouakchott the markets are alive and raucous, the stalls hung with dripping chunks of camel meat and spilling over with fruit, vegetables, spices and pungent dried fish.

We wander through the joyful bedlam in search of provisions for our trip: blood-red peppers, fresh garlic and chilli, sacks of rice and flour, onions, sweet potatoes. In the days ahead we'll take turns stirring steaming cauldrons over the camp fire.

Nouakchott, 'the place of winds', lies between the western Sahara and the Atlantic. And it is aptly named: low-walled, canvas-roofed houses hint at the origins of a breeze-blown city, ephemeral and ever-changing, as one might expect of a settlement built by nomads. Dodging the traffic - braying donkeys chased by stick-wielding charioteers, cars made of rust and rope, a naked man herding scruffy goats - there is a strange contradiction in streets where dust and sand bank against bare, bleached walls of rudimentary buildings bristling with hi-tech satellite dishes, where among ornate jewellery and silver-inlaid boxes of the historic foire artisanale (silver market) touts sell mobile-phone holders and telephone cards, and where a people swaddled head to toe in robes are ready to surprise western prejudices with warm smiles and clasping handshakes.

Fully equipped with a week's worth of rations, our progress from this city of contradictions leaves behind the tarmac road for rough tracks of sand and stone.

The canvas sides of the truck have been rolled up, allowing us to view the magnificent panorama as each day we bump and lurch through a fresh, fascinating landscape: vast plains where the sand is a liquid lake of pink and gold, high seas where enormous waves are of yellow, wind-whipped dunes, and nape-tingling narrow passes through the Adrar mountains, whose sides plunge headlong into bone-dry riverbeds. The open sides also mean we're constantly showered in a fine mist of sand and must wrap scarves around heads and faces until we sit facing one another like a band of nomadic Tuaregs.

Thankfully, amid the sand and the throat-tightening heat, there is respite, for our route north passes near the tranquil oasis of Terjit. In this tiny, narrow gorge, under the cool shade of the palms, a fountain of hot spring water feeds a warm, thigh-deep pool, where inch-long fish nibble my feet. When finally I drag myself up from my bath, I dare the plunge pool, then sprawl out on the soft mats in a Moorish tent and sip cooling cups of mint tea. Bliss.

Our initial aim, to head for Nouadhibou and the coast, steering a route between the forgotten minefields and the Zouerate railway line, soon proves to have been ambitious at best. Ploughing through, creeping atop and sinking into a sand that sucks at our truck like thick honey, we must clamber out, dig round the wheels and position sand mats - only to repeat our endeavours ten minutes and 100 yards later.

Slowly we progress across the crimson lakes of sand, silver pools of sand, enormous hillocks of sand, skirting giant rocks and stubbornly vibrant patches of thorn bush. We're stuck again. The sun is scorching our heads and Nouadhibou seems a long, long way off.

When finally we admit defeat and reroute direct to the coast there is a feeling of relief mixed with tired resignation. But even when spirits are at a low and the flesh is flagging, there are highlights to revive us. Chinguetti, a town that sits on the edge of an immense sea of sand like a harbour village, is a sprawl of labyrinthine streets and walled courtyards. Designated a Unesco world heritage site, and one of several towns that grew up on the tax revenues received from trans-Saharan trade, Chinguetti is also home to a library filled with ancient Koranic manuscripts. A guide shows us these beautifully bound, priceless books, handling them delicately with silk gloves and explaining their origins in a mixture of English and French.

At sunset we ride a procession of camels out into the dunes and sprawl in the sands as the sun turns the world peach, crimson and then blood-red. Our final stretch takes us to the very edge of the desert, where the dunes meet the ocean, passing through the Banc d'Arguin national park.

We are led by a local guide, Ahmed, a man who breathes through a permanent smile and communicates primarily with his index finger, impeccably timing our progress betwixt soft sands and engulfing tides. We pass a wrecked fishing boat, startle flocks of white sea birds that wheel in great clamouring rings around the truck. Then we set up camp on a rock escarpment, before feasting on the last of our rations and falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves. The sound of an ocean amid the searingly dry heat of the Sahara - it could only be Mauritania.