Sailing in the Sahara

Sahara Trans-Tunesien-Tour mit 4×4-Experience by Michael Ortner, Januar 2019 – by Monica

The “ships of the desert” are no longer camels but 4x4s. Which isn’t a big improvement, to be fair. 4x4s also make funny noises and smells when driven too hard, require more fuel, break down more often and in many cases give a less comfortable ride.

On the other hand, you can’t sleep in a camel.

Either way, the ships and deserts metaphor is apt. Soon after leaving Tunisia’s Sahara gateway town of Douz you find yourself in an endless ocean of sand dunes rippling out to the horizon.

There’s sand to the left, sand to the right, sand ahead and sand in your rear-view mirror. The wind blows thin sprays of sand over the dunes and shapes them into waves.

Soon there’s sand on the dashboard, sand in your ears and sand between your toes. Weirdly, even with boots on. Your bulging tyres, let down to only 0.8 bar pressure to improve grip, are sinking into the soft sand below.

Above you is not sand, unless you’ve made a big mistake. Instead there’s a huge sun in a really, really huge sky, like a three-year-old child might draw.

Around 5pm each day the sun goes all sleepy red and drops over the horizon.

You arrive at the camp and all of a sudden the temperature plummets to what feels like minus 58 degrees. People like me who insist on shorts and sandals while on holiday go quiet and reach for puffer jackets and woolly hats.

And then the stars come out. You read about these stars in airline magazines but you only really get the full desert night sky experience when you clamber out of the vehicle at 2am for a pee and look up.

For a moment you forget the freezing air on your bare skin and that you’re squatting in an undignified position behind a dune. Because it’s glittering more brightly than the Las Vegas Strip on New Year’s Eve and if it’s a really long pee you’ll probably spot a shooting star.

The group

Enough of the poetry. Back to our sailing trip in the Sahara this January, captained by Michael Ortner.

There were 10 vehicles, including Michael’s well-known Disco 2, a Ford Ranger, two Land Cruisers and several Defenders. Mostly German couples, one Austrian pair with enough equipment to survive an apocalypse, a doctor and nurse from Switzerland, two single guys with more sensible wives back home and two fathers bonding with their sons.

We all met in a castle-shaped motorway hotel on the night before catching the 24-hour ferry from Genoa to Tunis.

Until then, I confess I’d been uneasy. Deserts are dangerous and the destinations in our skeleton itinerary were unknown by Google. Which means they don’t exist. Plus, for over a week we’d have to be self-sufficient, with no chance to stock up on water or wine or ear plugs or socks or whatever other essential item we’ve forgotten. No way to call my mum for a chat or ADAC if we have a breakdown.

But after the first beer I felt immensely relieved, not just because of the beer but because it was clear that our fellow travellers were interesting, knowledgeable, competent, funny and reasonable. And that Michael Ortner is the only man I’d trust to lead an off-road tour in a wild and far-flung place like the Sahara.

He doesn’t baby you with instructions to drink plenty of water and use suncream. He doesn’t bother with fancy marketing tricks or lengthy emails. But he knows his stuff and has been in the 4×4 adventure tour business for many years.

The crew

It was a long drive in convoy down to Douz, half in pitch dark down a poorly lit motorway and half in burning sunshine the next day. We passed sweeping olive groves, roadside stalls selling dodgy fuel in plastic bottles and many pedestrians and sheep wandering along the motorway.

We met the local crew drinking coffee and chewing dates in Douz’s café-lined central square. Eleven guys led by Habib, who’s spent his life taking groups of tourists and motorsport professionals into the Sahara and showing them a good time.

Habib and his crew really made the trip. They would bounce over the sand next to us in vehicles groaning under the weight of 10 tonnes of canvas tents, water tanks, spare fuel, ingredients, battered old pots and pans, assorted tools, at least a million of the juiciest oranges ever, half a dead tree for the fire that night and a couple of shisha pipes balanced on top. They’d roar up a nearby dune and help us with hand signals and shouts of “gas gas gas!”

The mechanic, it was said, knew more about the insides of a Land Rover than the whole of the internet and every mechanic in Europe put together.

The mechanic, it was said, knew more about the insides of a Land Rover than the whole of the internet and every mechanic in Europe put together.

Habib and his crew really made the trip. They would bounce over the sand next to us in vehicles groaning under the weight of 10 tonnes of canvas tents, water tanks, spare fuel, ingredients, battered old pots and pans, assorted tools, at least a million of the juiciest oranges ever, half a dead tree for the fire that night and a couple of shisha pipes balanced on top. They’d roar up a nearby dune and help us with hand signals and shouts of “gas gas gas!”

The mechanic, it was said, knew more about the insides of a Land Rover than the whole of the internet and every mechanic in Europe put together.

Every morning, the baker would slap big circles of dough into a pan in the fire, cover it with ashes and emerge with baskets of steaming bread for us to tear up and smear with our big pots of Nutella. Which we all dutifully brought from Germany because it was on the packing list.

And most importantly, we had a cook whom I secretly nicknamed The Desert Masterchef. Even after six days with no chance to stock up on provisions, he was able to conjure up steaming bowls of soup, plates of couscous and mutton, fried chicken and chips with harissa, fresh salads, the ubiquitous Tunisian brik pastry and one lunchtime even baked potatoes with sour cream.

“A German once showed us how to make baked potatoes and then we made 200 for a rally”, explained Habib with a hint of pride, “and they all disappeared. So we know Germans like baked potatoes.” He was right.

In the evenings it was all laughing and joking and shisha around the campfire. After dinner they’d get out the tam tam and start singing about (I’m guessing wildly) broken hearts and desert journeys and camels. One song was about a Land Rover and the baker got up and danced with a shovel.

And of course, there was always a pot of sweet mint tea steaming on the edge of the fire. “Ein Tee”, the cook would shout joyfully as he poured it into tiny glasses from at least a metre up, without looking.

Even if it were possible to drive through the Tunisian desert without local guides – which it’s not, unless you’re very experienced or very mad – it wouldn’t be half as much fun.

But while fun was one big aspect of the Sahara Trans-Tunisia tour, another highlight was everything we learned. A random selection:

Lesson 1: how to drive in sand

We learned a lot about driving in sand. What gear you need to make it to the top of the next dune without getting stranded on the crest like a tortoise. How to resist the temptation to jam on the brake and clutch while reversing or descending a frighteningly steep slope. How to avoid slipping when traversing a dune at an angle.

That last one still needs a bit of work.

I learned that the Defender can do a lot more than I thought and so can I. I learned a lot through trial and error.

I also learned that it’s easier to drive than to be a passenger. Except when your boyfriend is shouting things like “Left! Right! Don’t steer so much!” But most of the time he behaved.

Lesson 2: listen to Michael

We learned a lot about technique and maintenance, both from Michael and from our fellow travellers.

In the morning meetings, we would stand in a circle hopping from foot to foot to stop our toes freezing. Michael would scrabble around in the sand making miniature model landscapes. And then demonstrate what happens when you don’t hold the steering wheel straight on the way down a hill or discuss the difference between a rear locking differential and a limited slip differential.

In general, we all learned to pay attention to Michael’s advice because otherwise we would end up hanging out of the seatbelt at an uncomfortable angle or being winched out of a deep hole.

One lunchtime we played a game: find our own way through the dunes, in teams of two or three, to a destination of our choice like a tree or a rock on the horizon. It took about three minutes for most of us to get hopelessly stuck.

Lesson 3: notice the small things

We learned that it’s about the journey not the destination, because the “Lost Lake” we were aiming for turned out to be a small pool of steaming water surrounded by braying donkeys, some other people (a shock after seeing no one for a week) and plastic waste.

But with no shopping malls or sightseeing stops, we did have time to notice the small things we’d usually flash past.

A fox hole. A couple of lucky people saw a fox. Tufts of grass or even a flower. A rusted skeleton of a car with its insides spilled out all over the sand (owner’s fate unknown). An abandoned café shack. A random pillar which we all photographed without knowing why. Camels strolling across the horizon. A swim in Ksar Ghilane oasis. Crows. And did I mention the sand and the stars?

Lesson 4: less is more

We learned that the number of things you can buy and bolt onto a Defender is infinity + 1.

However, my boyfriend and I learned the value of resisting that temptation. Because our light and unadulterated Defender 110 helped make up for our lack of experience in off-road driving.

Lesson 5: dry places are not always hot

Weight considerations aside, we learned that a functioning auxiliary heating system is a very nice thing. One night the temperature hit minus 5.5. “It’s snow!” cried the local crew, who had never seen the dunes all white and frosty before.

I guess they’d never seen snow either.

Lesson 6: fixing stuff

We learned from other drivers’ mechanical problems, including a dripping radiator fixed by some unidentified Arabic powder, a tyre that popped off due to sand in the rim, and something sticking out of Team Austria’s underbody that required a lot of sawing of metal and sparks.

We also learned, unfortunately, how to right Team Munich’s car when it tipped over sideways. The fading light was playing tricks with shadows on the sand. Despite having to climb vertically out of the door, the owners were unhurt and the roof only a little out of shape. It was the first time such an accident had happened on one of Michael’s Tunisia trips, and hopefully the last.

Less dramatically, my boyfriend learned how to repair glasses with dental floss and electrical tape after stepping on them in the night. He refused to allow me to insert a photo.

Lesson 7: switch off and sleep

In our tech-addicted age, I thought seeing “no signal” on my phone for days on end might be distressing. But actually, it’s really nice.

At one point we found a hill with a 3G signal and everyone scrambled up to send a photo of their lunch to their mum and to learn that northern Europe was buried in snow and freezing rain.

I was happy to shut out the squelch of everyday life and swap my phone for a book. You would think I’d have got through more pages, but I also found that it is perfectly possible to sleep 10 hours each night.

And last but not least, I learned the lyrics to every Pink Floyd song ever produced.

Home

The full Trans-Tunisia Tour lasts two weeks with 10 days in the desert. We and four other vehicles took the shorter option and drove back after a week.

As a first-timer, seven days in the Sahara sandpit was enough for me. But I’ve been back in the land of supermarket sausages and self-flushing toilets for three days now and already I find myself daydreaming about the desert.

And browsing the other 4×4 Experience by Michael Ortner off-road tours. I think Iceland is next. It’s probably warmer there at night.

Recommendations

If you’re reading this because you’re thinking about booking Michael Ortner’s Sahara Trans-Tunisia Tour, I recommend the following

●     If you’re new to off-road driving, do at least a weekend course to practise the basics. Then your steep learning curve will be a little less steep and your insides are less likely to spin like a washing machine.

●     When packing for a trip to the desert in January, pretend you’re packing for a solo expedition to the North Pole. Then you’ll have the right clothes.

●     To avoid embarrassment, make sure your vehicle is in good working order. After peering with interest at other people’s mechanical problems, I was grateful for the hours my boyfriend has spent lying on the sofa watching YouTube videos and reading forum threads.

●     If you want to be popular, bring a bottle of liqueur to share around after dinner.

If your idea of a good holiday involves shopping, sunbeds and an umbrella in your cocktail, Tunisia with Michael Ortner is probably not for you. If you prefer wilderness and adventure, it probably is.

You sail across endless oceans of wavy sand to places you would otherwise never see and that very few others have the privilege of seeing.

Bon voyage.