TLC HJ61 - Nov-Dec 2002
Tunis - Hassi M - Illizi - Fadnoun Afara junction - Toukmatine mtn - back to Djanet - Tazat - Toukmatine - Erg Tiodane - Amguid piste - Foum Mahek - Sli Edrar inselberg - Arak - Tam - Taghrera - Erg Killian - Monts Gautier - Balise Line - Djanet - Erg Bouharet
"It's never over till it's over" I've learned to say to myself over the years but it had barely begun when at Tunis port they whipped away my newly illegal GPS "telephone" unless I chose to arse about getting a permit from the Ministry of Stupid Ideas. I deposited it in a room full of CBs (fair enough) and what-nots while others did the same, a bit stunned about how to navigate down south. Luckily my sat phone (which I had the presence of mind not to declare) had a rudimentary GPS.
Coming off the boat I'd met David Lambeth coming back from supporting a bike rally - he was not keen on lending me his bells and buzzers Garmin 5 but some geezer in a pink LR kindly lent me an eTrex to back up the untried sat phone navigator.
Then, trying to call g-friend down the road it turned out my PAYG Thuraya had expired its SIM (don't use it much in London you see). This undermined the security of my solo route plans somewhat until my rendezvous with the esteemed Prof. Nimbus in Djanet in 10 days time. I was beginning to wonder was this going to be "one of those" trips - after all all had gone remarkably to plan these past couple of years …
A fax to G-friend from Nefta saw some new SIMs on the way to Nimbus. Until then I was out of comms. Part of my job on this trip - my first solo venture into the dz in a car it transpired - was to dump food and fuel for my Desert Riders caper for early 2003. D Rider Jon had gone shopping for food just before I left and had been called by DR Andy asking him to buy one more of everything. I then spent a night by the Grand Erg scoffing at their taste in food and sorting the stuff out into packages they would be able to carry on a bike from the fuel drops.
Next morning more probs. After fueling up for 1500km plus half a dozen petrol jerries to bury, HbG checkpoint made me take a soldier to B o Driss but failed to tell me the piste from there was closed to Amguid (otherwise I would not have bothered with the lift of course!). I'd heard this piste had been closed (due to smugglers he told me on the way back) and a barrier was pushed up against the piste at 4 Chemins. It was the direct route to my planned fuel dump south of Amguid but anyway the weather was dodgy &endash; oddly hot, windy, hazy and even spitting rain. If nothing else my 3 Alg trips this year have confirmed the seasonal unpredictability of Saharan weather. It boded ill for our much-postponed filming of Desert Driving in a couple of weeks…
I'd half expected a closed piste so had plans to hit Amguid from the Djanet truck piste side. I had a hot/cold, windy/rainy night near Ohanet in the back of the car, and with time to kill before meeting Nimbus, soon got to savour the relaxed non-tour-leading pace driving alone in the dz. I checked out the hotel at In Amenas (a dump, fyi) and explored Erg Bouharet as a great location for some planned DD scenes. We camped here in 1988 on my first bike tour (described in Desert Travels) and I was amazed to see my so-called "apostrophe dune" pictured on my g-friend's wall unchanged in 14 years. As I suspected, the myth of some dunes' mobility is much exaggerated.
That night I popped out to Oued Djerat past Illizi, the site for some rock art it is said. Clear tracks lead into the canyon and after it got narrow I parked up but found nothing but a quiet night out. Next morning a Tuareg cameleer creeped up on me as they do while I was finishing off Palin's book. I'd left a colourful array of kids clothes hanging from the nearby trees. He helped himself to the booty and told me the art was a bit further up the canyon where I'd spotted an encampment earlier on. Now that I knew where, it was one for next time.
A UK call from a taxiphone in Illizi was a pound a minute, fyi (a Thuraya is 80p). Over the Fadnoun the weather was still hot and windy from the south. I washed the car in a guelta and recced a D Riders route along which we planned to emerge from Oued Samene (to Ifni) - it looked good, as the TPC suggested. Down the road at Afara junction I headed onto the piste. I did this route in 1989 and some images remained: the nice dune/outcrops where I camped that night and a very steep rocky descent to the Afara plain which I managed to negotiate without a scrape, despite the half ton of fuel on board.
Afara north is pretty amazing - sort of Monument Valley without Indians, and the south bit coming onto the 'Borne' plain is nice too, but in between it's a basalt bashing butt-jabber (something that had not affected me on a bike in 89). Still, at least the weather was blue.
I came off this slow route in mid-afternoon trying to find the sandy pass on Route A9 KM195 with my sat phone GPS (Sam's eTrex could not do a "go to" it transpired, or I could not work it out how to do it). I'd been here a few months before on a tour but still stumbled around until I found the pass. Then, again I got off track not concentrating on the compass or GPS but finally picked up A9 and with the sun setting, dumped the cans for collection later with Nimbus. I then retraced the route back east, enjoying the 120kgs missing off the roof.
Camping behind a fin of rock just past the KM195 pass, I decided to construct a new balise to assist others. Even first time last March it had been tricky. I excavated an old truck tyre and dragged in a fallen balise over to the pass "gateway". The balise had three sticky-out feet and by hoicking the truck tyre over the balise, it rested on the feet and, once filled with sand, held up the balise, sort of, now at KM 195 on A9, (N24 40" 24' / E 07 39" 01', fyi - not decimal mins).
That night I was freaked out by a car coming off the pass at 2am. It did not spot me behind my fin, but seeing the new balise, circled it and swept me in its lights. By then I was already dressed and poised for a locked-in get away, but the Patrol carried on back the way it came …. phew … and then came back! I was now slinging stuff into the car and ready to move out when it turned north before reaching me. I watched it trundle away for half an hour to make sure. Turns out they were probably as lost as I had been earlier - maybe a lot of driving goes on at night in Ramadan.
One the way back to Djanet I explored north of Tazat, looking for a possible pass to Bordj as indicated on the TPC-H3D fantasy map. Climbing an outcrop and surveying the Tehe-N-Essegh pass. it was all sanded up, no way from this side but maybe up the east with a slide down. I then slipped through the Tazat corridor and followed a clear track almost all the way to Bordj, dumping the rest of my old clothes with some hyena-like Tuareg kids.
The run from Bordj El H' to Djanet is one of the loveliest drives in the Sahara IMHO, even if it is now sealed. Even tho I'd done it several times over the years it still looks amazing and I enjoyed doing most of it on the sands alongside, looking for new camps and generally marvelling at the scenery.
A couple of days later Prof. Nimbus, laden with Thuraya SIMs arrived at Djanet airport and I gave him the bad news - our double deep southern run to Tam and back had been changed to a run up to boring Amguid then down to Tam and then back, dropping fuel and food along the way. Naturally he was not bothered and we camped at Tazat that night, on the way trying out my airbag jack for the first time when I got sunk on a knoll of soft stuff. "I've never seen a car sink so deep" observed Nimbus without sarcasm. Turns out his petrol 2A hasn't got the poke to sink itself like my tractor-engined TLC: an interesting advantage of an modestly powered machine, but not quite enough to chuck in my 61 for a 2A with ears. The airbag was nifty in the extreme, as you will see graphically demonstrated in D Driving next summer.
Next day we tried to climb Tazat mountain (2165m), but things got as complicated as they looked near the summit so we satisfied ourselves with some low-angled shots that looked as good. Far below ribbons of oueds rolled off to the hazy horizon and the Tojo was but a spec.
We carried on along A9, eventually locating the jerries I'd dumped a few days ago w/out doing a GPS (all hillocks look the same it seems…) and on up a new track to me - A99 (to follow) up past Toukmatine ridge and Tiodane Erg. We lost the balises for a while but it was fast going until the complicated hills and knackered tracks which jam the entrance to the Amguid Valley. Clouds rolled in that night and a mini sandstorm hit next day as we emerged onto the Amguid valley and set course for Foum Mahek on the other side. What a trucking slog this old route to Djanet would have been in the old days!
The Foum emerged from the haze, bigger than I'd imagined and - bollocks - a family of Tuaregs camped by the mouth. Not a good spot to dump fuel then, so we blundered around and that night, 28 degrees C at 8pm - crawled up a stony hill to stash 120 litres and a bottle of Dubonet, followed by a hot windy night.
On my very first trip to the dz in 81 I'd photographed a distinctive cluster of cone mountains near Moulay Lahsane on the highway, and always vowed to go back one day for a look around. Nimbus reckoned he'd visited 'Death Trip Mountains' [as we shall cryptically name them], last year, so we set course alongside Tefedest west. Other granite inselbergs proved to be decoys, but when we finally rolled up to the DTMs it was nearly clear that my 20-year old aspiration was about to be fulfilled. But the flies were a pain and curious caterpillars were crawling all around and dying in the sands, fullfilling their own death trips it seems. I went for a wander and found some Neolithics in the crunchy granite, including a nice bone cruncher and for sunset we climbed up to spot an unnoticed old camp in our hidden valley below.
DT Mountains or Sli Edrar are just a few clicks off the highway, but hearing of fuel probs in Tam, we turned north 100km to Arak and tanked up there with 250 litres of diesel plus another 120 of petrol and rolled down the highway to Tam, arguing bitterly whether In Ecker mountain was visibly shaken by its nuking in the early sixties. In Tam cars where indeed queuing into the hills for fuel - not due to washed out roads (all OK apart from Arak canyon), but because of local politics (since resolved one hears).
From Tam we were taking on an ambitious route to Djanet - 900kms via Erg Killian deep south with a 20 year old route description (RD) in German including a splattering of Nav Star (pre GPS) waypoints. Nimbus was worried about my fatalistic Zen-like attitude to spares and safety "I can't believe you wrote that book" he said in horror as he trapped me in an arm lock and forced me to buy an engine's worth of motor oil. It began a interesting branch to the erstwhile LR/TLC debate. Nimbo carries a complete change of undies for his pre-Cambrian 2A. Me, I've long forgotten what I stashed in the back wings of my Eocene 61 years ago. Rad hoses and Pocket Cluedo spring to mind.
Seriously though, we were much encouraged by our Thurayas. If the Tojo crapped its kaks we could ring any agency in south Alg or even get a message on the web for an eventual rescue (you'd come, wouldn't you?). A pre-dept check revealed the 61's front wheels were pretty floppy. I'm sure I had them done once - or was that the TLC before? We tried to tighten them but some poxy 'cone washers' in the hub made it too hard - destiny it seems wanted them left untouched. Anyway, the other 60s in Moktar's stable were all as loose and in the end the car got all the way here with onlya tad of shimmy @ 101kph.
We'd used a lot of water on the Amguid truck piste and with no known wells till Djanet, 4 unknown days away, we stocked up with plenty and some fizzy drinks besides. Down out of town, past the south gas station queues people were running amok. Good tarmac led to bad and then none right up to the ancient In Azaoua sign right on cue. From here it was fast SE past a Rally truck wreck down to a hook where we turned a pass into the Taghrera and headed north over grassy power-sapping sands with the classic Taghrera mushroom outcrops beyond. With half a mind to check out In Ebeggui well, we eventually found a little outcrop of our own, changed the TLCs oil for Algerian honey and enjoyed a nice desert camp.
Next day into the unknown, we weaved through some barchans and got stuck in a nasty sandy/rocky pass (our RD was not too specific) where you have to choose soft sand or tyre-shredding rocks. Further south we found a better crossing and headed west from ridge to ridge to ridge very nice and quiet, cutting across masses of north-south tracks (some even corrugated!) of what must be contrabanders. A full RD will follow, but several passes later we turned up for Killian Erg and headed for a good spot to dump a barrel of nosh and a pile of jerries for us to dig up in Jan 2003.
West over Taffassasset oued to the balise line was eerily fast until we spotted some striking mountains unnamed on any map I've got of the area (the TPC J3B is particularly crap, btw). We tucked up under the cliff in this spectacular setting, satisfied that we had broken the back of the Deep South link from Tam to Djan.
Heading for the Niger Balise Line (RD to follow) we got stick again, filmed it for posterity and hit the Line (over a 1000 markers planted every half km all the way to Chirfa!) just below Berliet 21. If anyone's still listening, note that I have left a Special Object in the drum at Balise 112, a bit south of Berliet 21. Retrieve it or present evidence of it and you can claim a tax-free prize from the corporate sponsors of Sahara Overland.
Hitting the Balise Line after so many years was a seminal Saharan experience for me. Nimbus had rolled down it and into a whole lot of bother a couple of years back and at the famous Berliet Balise 21 we took some commemorative pics and met a tooled up Austrian G-Wagen with a nice 16mm Bolex retracing our route to Tam.
Nim had buried water along the Line in 2000 and we were interested to see if his GPS location worked 40 paces east off the balise. No such luck, After much digging about at 2 locations we decided in a featureless area like to north Tenere (as some philistines like to call it!) you need a bit of stone or something to pull off a fuel dump with any hope of retrieval.
We eased past Adrar Mariaou checkpoint w/o being machine gunned to bits and hit the very soft sands near Djanet which, I like to think, killed the kpl down to a pretty poor 5.8 since topping up at Killian. We blundered around all sorts of unknown back tracks (including Djanet's clandestine bitumen depot) until we hit the Libyan piste and rolled into Djanet for some fish and chips.
With a couple of days to spare we had a day off and then organised a day out to Jabbaren with the Zeriba guys - only 30 euros and well worth it. A pre-dawn drive to the Tassili's edge is followed by a lung-stretching slog up to the plateau - leaving smoking bikers Ahmed and Ian T (and the guide) far below. I've never actually been on the plateau but some of the rock art at Jab (let alone the weird rock shapes) is amazing - even if you do get "cattled out" after a couple of hours.
Nimbus flew back to his day job next day and I rolled back out to the Tassili plateau, exploring some nice canyons and slowly over the Fadnoun to Erg Bouharet camp, south of In Amenas, where I was set to meet Toby Savage and a cam called Rich to film the long-awaited sequel to Lawrence of Arabia: Desert Driving.
Travellers reports from the Sahara