July 23 - Morocco
250k maps
I'm planning to print
off 24 old but still useful French-era maps of
the Moroccan Atlas and Sahara at 250K scale. They show
much detail that on the Michelin and all the rest are
simply blank spaces and really open out the potential
of the place. These maps are my selection (below) from
a Darrs CD but I find reading them off a laptop frustrating
and impractical.
To save cost and weight
I'm reducing the size to a still very readable A0 (119
x 84cm - eventual scale 1:350,000). It's going to
cost £204
to print off one set + posting 2.5kg . If anyone
wants a set, let me know soon. If i get a run the price
could drop about 20%.
June 25 - Tunisia
Tunisia has now introduced
restrictions to independent travel in it's southern areas
following the still unresolved kidnapping in February.
Details here.
May 20 - It's only Morocco
Just back from Morocco recce-ing routes for a banger rally and checking over my Sahara Overland routes - updates here. My trip report here or here
As always, saw many interesting things: first snake ever
in the Sahara - as big as my arm near Bou Jerif, lost villages
in hidden canyons not on any map, first real sand storm
since 1984 - the whole 'Wall of Sand' experience with zero
viz. Transit vans and Golfs crawling over passes that ought
to eat them for breakfast; some guys overlanding on quads...
and plenty more. Weather seemed all over the place; 40°C
sand winds out of Foum Zguid for days while some bikers
told me of snow over the Rif around the same time.
Coming soon: a review of the maps for Morocco.
and a fly-in Morocco bike tour for April 2009 in collaboration with Bikershome in Ouarzazate.
April 14 - Austrian hostage update
The latest kidnappers' deadline passed without significant event, although recent Malian army attacks on Tuareg rebel positions in the area ( though not thought to be connected with the kidnappings) brings suggestions that the hostages may have now been moved to northern Mauritania.
April 2 -
Attacks in the Algerian Sahara - more demands from AQIM kidnappers
Smugglers or terrorists? who knows: news here. The location, Rourd Enous, is a gas field in the Gassi Touil, about 70km north of Hassi bel Guebbour.
The kidnappers of the Austrians are also reported to have increased their demands.
Thanks to Yves L and Richard W for links
March 25 - More bombs in Algeria - Malian convoy ambushed in the Iforghas - hostage deadline extended
News here, with links to related stories about the kidnapped Austrians whose captors have extended their deadline until April 6th. (8 Apr: the deadline passed with just another threatening communiqué from AQIM)
A raid on a military convoy by Tuareg militants was reported last Thursday at Aleibara in which 20 soldiers were taken hostage and as many as eight vehicles captured. Yet no one seems to have made the connection that Aleibara is exactly the location given for the hostages in a map (below) produced a few days earlier - surely no coincidence. If both locations are correct was the convoy a rescue operation that went wrong? Were the 'Tuareg' raiders actually entrenched AQIM mudjahadeen defending the camp but labeled, deliberately or otherwise, as 'Tuareg rebels', or are the Tuareg rebels now supporting the AQIM operation - unlikely.
Among other exaggerations and assumptions, the latest in a series of doom-laden analyses from 'counter terrorism experts' like this repeat the old myth that the Adrar des Ifoghas is some kind of modern-day Tora Bora: "... a great hiding location from U.S. satellites since it is very mountainous and full of caves". This was an idea put out in the early days of Pan Sahel Initiative (see p364 in the book) probably to help justify that operation. In fact Wikipedia's less sinister description taken out of a Bradt guide book is correct, if not quite so sensational.
Meanwhile a BBC update on the situation on March 28 does not say anything new other than, by way of explaining the 2000-km transit across Algeria from Tunisia to north Mali: "... it was possible that regional governments had facilitated the transfer of the hostages to neutral ground ".
Elsewhere we hear that Libya has dropped the demand for all tourists to turn up with $1000 'spending money' after just a few short weeks.
March 15 - Two Austrians abducted in Tunisia
Five years almost to the day following the abductions of 32 tourists in the Algerian Sahara in 2003, news has come through that two Austrian tourists declared missing in a Landrover in southern Tunisia since mid-February have indeed been abducted by Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Originally thought to have strayed over the Algerian border and been held by the police (an unlikely scenario), it is now thought a unit of over a dozen AQIM mudjahadeen abducted them while exploring in the Grand Erg of southern Tunisia, probably while close to the Algerian border.
Chilling pictures have been released as threats were made by the kidnappers to kill the hostages unless AQIM prisoners in Algeria and Tunisia are released by midnight Sunday 16th and a ransom was paid. The images show the mudj lounging around the captured Land Rover still in the Grand Erg. Later, another location looks like southern Algeria 
or northern Mali (confirmed 19/3 as Aleibara- click map on the right) where half the 2003 abductees ended up until ransomed. The couple, Andrea Kloiber and Wolfgang Ebner (her face obscured) are shown surrounded by armed, khaki-clad mudjahadeen.
The statement also warned Western tourists not to visit Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania (where a French family was shot to death in December by AQIM) and also warned against rescue attempts on the Austrians which further suggests their Malian location is now no secret.
More news, comment and speculation here.
Thanks to various contributors for finding pictures
March 3 - Trans-Sahara smuggling
Interesting report on smuggling in the Sahara which may partly explain why security gets worse and tourist access ever more restricted.
....................................................................................................................................................................Thanks to Yves for this news
February 20 - New S-Files and Algeria 2008 4WD tour
Esteemed contributors have posted new S-Files. Prof. Richard Washington has a highly detailed report from Algeria with kids and an old Landrover and Toby Savage's has an account of the dune crossing to Ubari with old Landrover - but no kids.
February 11 - Algeria and Chad
Another deadly ambush on police in northeast Algeria about 50km north of El Oued town. This area around Tebessa along the Tunisian border has long been dangerous. A few days later the inevitably highly successful retaliation is detailed here.
And I hear the route between the Hoggar and the Tassili N'Ajjer is to be closed to tourists by the Wilaya of Tam for security reasons. More details and MHO here.
Thanks to Yves for this news
In Chad last week's rebel invasion on N'Djamena seems to have run it's course (the story is on Wikipedia already!) once the government 'received support' from the French forces based there. It's said 300 vehicles were involved in the raid led by a former government minister with - it's suggested - support from Sudan. One wonders if the 3 vehicles stolen in the Gilf a few days earlier (see below) may have been taken for this purpose.
(thanks to Prof. Nimbus for these updates)
February 9 - Found: the Ancient Land of Yam and other discoveries
The BBC reported a diplomatic incident when it became clear that UN officers were defacing rock art sites at Lajuad in Polisario-controlled Western Sahara. As has happened before some individuals were so taken by immortalizing themselves that they virtually depicted their name rank and serial number across the 6000-year-old sites. Normally blamed on that wretched cabal known internationally as 'tourists', I suggested such an origin for this vandalism when Sahara 2 came out in 2004 (see the picture on p.400) - now there is proof.
Meanwhile in Libya a team of leading British academics team including my Desert Driving co-presenter Toby Savage unearthed what is thought to be an intact Garamantean mummy near Germa where they've been excavating for years.
And far out in the Libyan Desert Mark Borda (who attended my 2006 Eclipse tour) and Mahmoud Marei (with whom we travelled in the Gilf in 2004) discovered "engravings on a large rock consisting of hieroglyphic writing, Pharaonic cartouche, an image of the king and other Pharaonic iconography". The site is thought to be several hundred kilometres further west than the previously agreed location of such imagery at Abu Ballas (see p.622). Translation of the hieroglyphs revealed references to the hitherto legendary Land of Yam.
Of course it's discovery does not mean that Tutankhamen necessarily took his skiing holidays on Jebel Uweinat any more than graffiti claiming "Petar from Croatia rocks!" proves the Croats had an early colony south of the Hammada du Draa. But it does greatly extend what is thought to be the range of Ancient Egyptian influence across what is now the Libyan Desert.
This is something which the Swiss Carlo Bergman (see previous page ref) has been suggesting for years with his Water Mountain discovery out of Dakhla (Borda travelled with Bergman a year ago) along with the realisation that an item of Tutankhamen's funerary jewelry included a piece of Libya Desert Glass which is only found north of the Gilf, hundreds of miles from established pharaonic sites.
One hopes that with their chance to rewrite history Marco and Mahmoud won't fall out as Foggini and Colonel Mets did over the New Cave nearby (see p.634) a few years ago. All is said to be revealed to journalists and scientists this month, but if the presumed location is where many think it is, the events below may make it bother risky as well as politically complicated.
February 4 - Hijack in the Gilf
and other bad news
Not much good news to report
this week: the Israeli
embassy got attacked in
Nouakchott which suggests the murder of the French
family in December was not a merely to give
the Dakar Rally threat some clout. There was another
bomb in Algiers, Nigeran rebels vowed to attack
the mines at Arlit and Ndjamena looks
like it's been over-run by rebels thought to be
backed by Sudan. On the bright side Libya has managed
to pass the days without issuing a new restriction
on tourism but today I hear that 3
tourist vehicles
were stolen at
Eight Bells on the eastern edge of the Gilf Kebir
plateau in Egypt by over a dozen well-armed 'paramilitary'
bandits in two pickups mounted
with machine guns and assumed to be from Sudan
or Chad. One car (they local driver/guide's?) was
left.
This is the first such recorded
attack in an extremely remote region where one
usually sees no one for weeks. An official permit
was present but the mandatory accompanying soldier needed
to travel in the Gilf was not (for all the good it would have done). Recently I have heard of local operators
offering such semi-official visits into the Gilf,
probably because doing so officially takes so
long, people want to go there and the chances of
getting found out are slim. More speculation here which also now includes a report from one of the individuals (a Brit) involved.
