Adventures in the Sahara

Two weekends ago, some close friends/fellow volunteers and I visited the Sahara. After three hours on a train through the pastoral Moroccan countryside and eight more hours on a winding bus ride through the mountains, I was pleasantly roused from a fitful sleep by the bright, burning Saharan sunrise pouring in through the wide windows of the bus. We proudly stepped onto the sand and headed to our accommodations.

After a quick nap, I began my Saharan adventures by ambling over to a nearby Berber village. The Berbers are an ethnic minority in North Africa, and they speak this nifty language that’s related to Ancient Egyptian. They’re known for their skill in handicrafts (specifically silver jewelry and carpets) and the distinctive tattoos Berber women don upon engagement. (Wikipedia link for your convenience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people)

If I could pick one word to describe the village, it would be organic. All of the walls were made out of a tan adobe-like material built of mud and straw. The burnt beige sand between the buildings matched the color of the earthen concrete, and it eerily seemed as if the village rose out of the ground. Adding to the town’s mystique were the lack of clearly marked storefronts and the general lack of people. 

Oh, yeah, one more thing: as I walked, the buildings and village were at my right and the flowing, staccato dunes of the Sahara rose at my left. I was between some of the most visually enthralling structures the earth has to offer and an ethereal Berber village. It was awe-inspiring. The pointed, rolling dunes clashed yet simultaneously paired up perfectly with the rounded frames of the boxy clay houses. As I walked between them, I couldn’t help but revel in how utterly foreign the landscape around me felt and how glad I was to be there.

            After the walk, my friends and  I rode camels into a camp in the heart of the desert. If you get a chance to ride a camel, do it. The ride is unique, as camels have a really soothing swaying, bobbing gait that almost mimics the ebbing of the dunes.

Speaking of dunes: they’re mesmerizing. They also happen to be really difficult to describe. The best way I can put this into words is that the dunes look kind of fake. You’ve undoubtedly seen pictures of them as a Windows default desktop background or something, and you’ve probably thought to yourself: “Wow, that looks awesome but fake.” On a computer screen, they’re pretty cool. In real life, that whole synthetic shading thing they have going on looks positively otherworldly. They look straight out a Pixar movie. They possess a unique shade of orange that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Now that I think about it, in the right light, it’s almost a Princeton orange. The most spellbinding thing about them, though, is the way they play with the sun. It’s cool stuff. All of the phases of the day have natural and distinct manifestations in the dunes. At dawn, they’re a youthful salmon-pink that perfectly compliments the juvenile morning sun. At midday, they exhibit the brilliant almost-Princeton-orange that elegantly counter balances the pristine light blue of the sky. At sundown, they turn a lavender-purple, and are just as relaxing as the scent of the lavender plant itself.

I will never look at sun nor sand the same way again.

We arrived at camp around sunset. I set out to replicate the photo of Brendan Kutler’s that most resonates with me – White Sands Part 5. (http://l11ll3.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d280tgt)

After we set up in the camp, we all ran to jump off dunes. Outrageously fun?  Take a look:

Before to sleep, I meditated under the stars of the Sahara. Oh, the stars. Now, keep in mind that we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There was zero light pollution. Even the moon was MIA, so the stars were as bright as cosmically possible. You know you’re getting a rare look at the night sky when you can make out the nebulous (no pun intended) band of stellar dust that runs through the heavens. It was the most beautiful night of my life, hands down. I must have been out there for 40 minutes, staring at the sky, spellbound.

We slept beneath the stars. I couldn’t have been happier.

We woke up early to watch the sunrise. Clouds blotted out the orange light only the faintest bit, so the rising sun looked straight out of a Japanese watercolor.

 Here are some more pictures from the desert. Enjoy.

            We rode the camels back and  toured a different area of the desert shortly after in a Jeep. It felt like a videogame and a roller coaster in equal parts. We visited some abandoned villages and the place where “The Little Prince” was filmed!

            When we got back, two friends of mine (Jan and Sam) and I noticed that there was a sandboard in the  hotel’s lobby area. We asked around and learned that we were free to use it. I picked up the board and we set out for the biggest dune we could find. It looked about five minutes away.

            One more thing I should note about the desert: everything looks closer than it actually is. Five minutes stretched into twenty five, but the scenery was so enchanting that we didn’t mind in the slightest. The dune looked pretty big, but nowhere near as utterly massive as it felt from the top.

            The trek up was not easy (especially with a sanboard and in a sandstorm), but the view from the peak was compelling enough that it didn’t matter. I felt so fantastically on top of the world from that vantage point. It seemed as if the entire Sahara poured out from that very dune. As I looked down upon the desert, sand battering my cheeks, sun pounding gently at my chest, I couldn’t think of anything but how perfect it was to be where I was right at that moment.

            I would have taken more pictures from the top, but the sandstorm trashed my camera.  : ( This is the last picture I got:

            I strapped my feet into the board’s tenuous binding, hopped to get over the lip of the dune, and carved sharply into the sand as I barreled down the sharply inclined slope. I was actually able to dip my hand into the sands as I banked into the powdery sand. The mixture of sand, sun, and speed (in spades) was exhilarating as anything I’ve ever experienced. I like to think that Michael, an avid surfer, would have approved.