After not seeing a single camel in Azougi the previous day, our trip to the Atar camel market was accompanied by high expectations. I’m not sure what Bill or Lenny had in mind but I was imagining a bustling marketplace with perhaps a hundred camels on show and buyers and sellers haggling with each other on all sides.

One of the main reasons we chose Mauritania for our trip in the Sahara desert was because of the continuing existence of camel trade throughout the country.

Michael Asher had also informed us that the Atar region, where we were based, was probably the best place to buy camels.

Having secured lodgings, we had business to get on with. Our first days in Atar were spent on a mix of looking for a suitable guide, trying to find where we could buy some camels and poring excitedly over our maps looking at possible routes.
It was quite different to the usual backpacking holidays I had been on, where the first move might be to explore the local market or take a photo of a temple. It felt like we had come with a real purpose.

This was the worst possible start to our adventure.

I woke at sunrise as our plane approached Atar and peered out through my little window to see what lay waiting for us. A vast expanse of empty desert stretched all the way to the horizon, a land where time barely moved. I felt a nervous excitement about spending the next three months walking and living in such a place.