Deserts

I am a regular reader of Wanderlust magazine which always poses a particular question to everyone they interview:

‘Mountain, desert, ocean or jungle - which are you ?’

When I consider what I would reply, I am always torn between desert and mountains as both landscapes create in me the same sense of awe. For this entry though, I will focus (pun intended!) on deserts.

Syria

We were fortunate to have travelled in Syria in 1996, and therefore long before the current troubles facing the country erupted. It was there that I first experienced the vastness of a desert sky, as our bus travelled the long distances between sights. One day I should share my old slides of that trip here but for now here is just one, taken at a remote desert fuel station.

Tunisia

Here’s an even older photo, showing my very first taste of the desert, on the edge of the Sahara in Tunisia in 1986 – our first sunset camel ride.

Namibia

A more recent holiday in Africa took us to Namibia, where we hired a car to explore independently. Our route took in both the Kalahari and Namib Deserts, which are very different – the former more scrub, the latter classic sand dunes.

Kalahari sunset

The ultimate desert experience here was our balloon flight over the dunes at sunrise:

Arizona and Utah

The number of old photos in this blog is emphasising for me how long my attraction to desert landscapes has lasted. Here is a selection from a road trip through the desert states of the US south west back in 1993.

Uzbekistan

While on a Silk Road tour of Uzbekistan in 2007 we spent one night in a yurt in the Kyzylkum Desert. This is the 16th largest desert in the world and its name means Red Sand in the Turkic language, although as you can see, where we camped the sand was more yellow than red!

And again we had the obligatory sunset camel ride:

Rajasthan

These sunset camel rides are becoming a bit of a recurring theme! Here’s our most recent one, in the deserts of western Rajasthan (with apologies for reposting photos of a trip already shared on a separate blog here):

Chile

Most recently I have had my ‘desert fix’ in the Atacama region of Chile. As with Rajasthan, I have shared many photos of that trip on a separate blog here, but here are just a few of my favourites to finish this entry:

Water in the desert, at the Salar de Atacama