Michael Asher on crossing the Sahara by camel

In 1986, Michael Asher and his wife Mariantonietta Peru set out to cross the Sahara from west to east, by camel and on foot.

Asher was already a seasoned desert traveler who’d learned his camel skills in Sudan’s Darfur region.

He met his wife — an aid worker and photographer — in Khartoum, but they’d only been married for five days when they ventured into the sands.

Their 4,500 mile (7,200 km) journey is the longest trek ever made by Westerners in the Sahara, and the first recorded crossing from west to east by non-mechanical means.

I read Asher’s book about this trip more than twenty years ago, and it’s been in my travel literature top ten ever since.

He wrote about the dangers they faced, the cultures they encountered, and the hypnotic rhythm of travel by camel. He also wrote about what it was like to forge a relationship — a marriage — under these conditions.

It’s an absolutely incredible story, and an unforgettable book.

Michael Asher is the author of Impossible Journey: Two Against the Sahara, In Search of the Forty Days Road, A Desert Dies, and many other novels and works of non-fiction. A former Parachute Regiment and SAS soldier, Asher has been granted the Ness Award of the Royal Geographical Society, the Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.

He is currently helping to set up Nomad Ways, a course for school students in the UAE, whose aim is to revive the values and skills of desert nomads.

We spoke about traveling by camel, Saharan cultures, and what it was like to see the Nile after nine desert months.

• Impossible Journey: Two Against the Sahara

• In Search of the Forty Days Road

• Thesiger

• Last of the Bedu

• The Oasis of the Last Story – Tales from the Desert

• The Fearful Void by Geoffrey Moorhouse

• Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

• Michael’s new Nomad Ways course in Dubai