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Sahara Crossing
Writer Michael Finkel raps about crossing the Ténéré—154,000 square miles [398,860 square kilometers] of the planet gone dead.
While working one day in his Bozeman, Montana, writing studio, Michael Finkel's eyes drifted to a blank spot on the world map hanging on his wall.
The spot was smack dab in the Sahara's center and it was called the Ténéré, a 154,000-square-mile (398,860-square-kilometer) sheet of sand that covers half of Niger and chunks of Algeria, Libya, and Chad. He had never heard of it before. That was enough to pique his interest.
Finkel, a writer who purposely seeks out remote corners, found in the Ténéré a sand-scoured place few writers venture to. A journey across it often means sharing a seat on a dump truck so crammed with passengers, that you're forced to stand upright for hours on end. It also means that you could break down anywhere along a road that cuts across the desert like a line in the sand—totally arbitrary and prone to the wind's whims—and not see another person for days. But the Ténéré is not without its pleasures: trekking across a sand sea by camel, peering at starry skies of diamond clarity, hearing nothing but your own heartbeat at night.
"Ténéré," in the Tuareg language, means nothingness, or emptiness. For "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Void" (read excerpt) in the September/October 2001 Adventure, Finkel went there to find out how merchants, guides, drivers, and tourists felt about the void they had chosen to visit—or call home. To make things
even, we asked Finkel, what does he think about the void? Hear his answers in the "Audio" column at upper left.
—Nicole Davis
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Read "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Void" (excerpt) in the September/October 2001 issue of Adventure.
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Arrival in Agadez (2:32)
"I got off the plane and everything was red and the sand was swirling ... and I knew that I had traveled."
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Adrift in the Desert (1:02)
"It felt like Agadez [Niger] was a very large raft in an ocean."
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Being Nowhere, Doing Nothing (1:40)
"There's a sort of funny, odd, unexpected spiritual aspect to the desert."
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The Truck Ride (3:54)
"We had 190 passengers on it. … I'd say it could comfortably fit 15. You want to talk about forced intimacy?"
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Camel Comforts (2:03)
"I had just gotten off a truck with 189 passengers and myself, and a camel felt like the ultimate Barcalounger in comparison."
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Toubou Songs (2:12)
"When two Toubou [people] meet in the desert … they kind of sing this song. …"
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Horrible and Wonderful (2:54)
"I like the fact that I have a complex relationship with the Ténéré."
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Extreme Classics: Arabian Sands
A look at Wilfred Thesiger's classic desert adventure tome. Plus, highlights from the 100 greatest adventure books of all time, as chosen by the editors of Adventure magazine. |
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National Geographic Atlas of the World