Part 3: 600 miles of sand, heat, intrigue and illness

By Henry Homeyer
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

When Gretchen and I arrived at the oasis of Tamanrasset, the jumping off place for sub-Saharan Africa, we were told there was no fuel — no diesel or gasoline — so no vehicles would be leaving.

For how long, I asked. “Maybe a few days, Allah willing,” was the answer. So, we walked around town, had an early dinner in a cafe then walked out of town with our packs. We set up our bright orange tent near the customs and border control building, and after a few hands of cards, we went to sleep.

The next morning, I was awakened by the roar of a lion. It seemed as though it was right outside our tent, and it sounded hungry. Timidly, I unzipped the tent, which by that point was shabby and certainly would not have protected us.  And there it was, a large, cranky but quite curious camel. Gretchen and I started out the day with a laugh, then we made coffee on our little stove and ate a chunk of stale baguette slathered with jam. Butter was not on the menu — none was available.

We went into town during the cool of the early morning, with the intention of buying supplies for the next leg of our trip: more than 550 miles, with nothing in-between the start and the finish. No oasis, no wells, no little encampments. Just sand and rock. Perhaps there would be an abandoned vehicle — we saw some dating back to the 1930s earlier in the trip. Or maybe we would see desert nomads on camels in the far distance.

Pickings were slim in Tamanrasset. We bought sardines, dried soup packets and Vache Qui Rit cheese. We found some dubious-looking batteries for our flashlights, and matches, but no toilet paper.

We ended up waiting 10 days in Tamanrasset for transportation but spent our time trying to learn as much as we could about the town — the traditions, the climate and how people survived with no apparent way to grow food or keep livestock. The countryside was barren. Buying and selling items to travelers seemed to be the main source of income.

We asked if it ever rained there. “Yes,” one man told me. “It rained once last year, and my head got wet, but the rain never hit the ground.”  The heat there is pretty intense.

We read the paperback books we had brought along. For me, it was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment” — a slow, tough read. I tore out pages I’d read to use as toilet paper, and also gave pages to Gretch.

After we arrived in Cameroon, we both discovered we had contracted amoebic dysentery, which ebbed and flowed but caused serious intestinal distress. Eventually, our distress meant that I would have to forgo reading passages of Crime and Punishment for the emergency at hand, and that I would have to find something else to read.  I’ve never gotten back to that book, although I suppose I will now that I am completely healed, well-stocked and mostly retired.

Gretch and I met a German in a Land Rover who was heading to Agadez and on to Niamey, Niger. His Land Rover was stocked with jerricans of petrol and could take short day trips and, one day, he invited us along. We went with him to view prehistoric petroglyphs — ancient art etched or painted on rocks. But he seemed to keep trying to get us farther  from the Land Rover, while looping back to the vehicle himself. I decided he may have planned to leave us there, so we kept close.

I had always depended on my hunches while hitchhiking. We didn’t want to trust our lives crossing a vast expanse of the Sahara to him, even if the ride was free. Later, we ran into another hitchhiker in Algiers who had ridden with him. The hitchhiker decided to abandon his free ride in the middle of nowhere because he decided the driver was crazy, and he indeed feared for his life.

Each day, we packed up our tent in the morning to be ready if fuel arrived in Tamanrasset. Eventually, it did. We found passage in a commercial Land Rover going to Agadez, carrying people, trade goods and livestock. A vehicle designed for eight people was packed with a dozen, and the roof rack was loaded sky high. My memory tells me we paid about $50 (in French francs from the grape harvest, which were a very desirable commodity) to get the two of us nearly 600 miles through the desert. Or maybe it was $50 each.

Our driver was a professional, and he knew how to get to Agadez — even without a road or a single marker showing us the way. Blowing sand covered all tracks quickly, but drivers let the other drivers know when they expected to reach their destination. If we hadn’t arrived the day we were due, I was told, a brother or cousin or friend would go looking for us. And all vehicles carried goat skin water bags, which hung outside the trucks. They were crucial to keep passengers alive in the extreme heat.  We drank some of that water when our canteens were empty, and treated it with iodine tablets to kill any pathogens.

On the second night on route, I slept under the stars without the tent. The stars seemed so close that I wanted to reach up and touch them. It was cold, even in my down bag, but I knew the driver would want to get going at first light, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Or get left behind — a death sentence. We were all anxious to get to Agadez.

Part 1: The 10-year desert journey begins

Part 2: Our first days on the Sahara Desert

Part 3: 600 miles of sand, heat, intrigue and illness

Part 4: Preparing for that long journey home

This four-part series from gardening writer Henry Homeyer’s memoir-in-progress tells about traveling across the Sahara in 1972, using public transportation — cargo vehicles — and by hitchhiking.  Homeyer, of New Hampshire, ended up living in Africa for 10 years, three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, two short contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development  and more than four years as the Peace Corps country director in Mali.