Wed 24 Mar
Early the next morning the camels arrive along with what seems like every child in the area. Mousa cooks us breakfast and shares some with the camel-hand. By 8:00am we have loaded-up the camels and begun our trek. At first, in the cool of the morning, we walk alongside. After an hour or so, the day is beginning to warm up, and we take a ride.

When we mount the camels I find my saddle has "handle-bars" (which I only hold on to for my camel’s enthusiastic standing and sitting) and a backrest that I’m told repeatedly not to lean on. I find I'm using lots of new muscles to maintain a good posture but all in all it's quite comfortable.

We experience most agreeable weather: blue skies, refreshing breeze, and clear views of the Aïr Mountains. We skirt around on the lowland for a couple of kilometres; landscape: bushes and acacia trees, underfoot: mostly gravel and rocks. We cross broad sandy riverbeds that carry the wet season floods. Mousa thinks the water is 3-4m below. We see beautiful coloured birds flitting from tree to tree, and occasionally black rock strata exposed.

Mousa occasionally checks I am happy and then each time takes the opportunity to remind me how everything he has done is good, only the car ride (which has become my fault) is bad. "Lots of me work, me make good programme, car no good, he business business, money money, hurry hurry, he no good, he big problem." Each time the amount that Mousa claims to have paid for the car varies, but he always gives me a figure between what I had negotiated with the driver and the amount that Mousa wanted to charge me for "his" car.

From time to time we see other people, usually out with their goats. Other human signs are the occasional meaningful arrangements of stones: a raised "flowerbed" of sand and gravel is a grave, rocks arranged in two lines 3m long and 30cm apart are "obviously" a wet-weather luggage stand (well that’s what I am told), and surprisingly a perimeter line of stones around a sandy rectangle (say 3m x 4m) is a mosque.

We stop around 11:30am. Mousa makes another delicious salad of tomato, carrot, onion with salt, salad cream and oil, and serves it with another hunk of yesterday’s baguette. Curiously, though tea is much enjoyed and fussed over, it's not drunk at every opportunity, so after eating and without tea we settle down to a siesta; a lazy, lounging wait for the day to cool.

At times, when Mousa is telling me about good programmes and big problems, I am reminded of the many trips I have made with my friend Oliver and the various guides we have worked with. Oliver has a knack of asking diligent questions and they wouldn’t have gone amiss here. "How long will we walk today?" "And after four days walking, how long will it take the camel man to get back home?" "What does his camel eat?" "Does he have to buy food for it?" "How often does he work with tourists?" "What does he do other days?" At the end of it all Oliver will conclude something like: “A camel man working with tourists for one day doubles his monthly income”, and more painfully that: “We are paying a phenomenal amount in local terms for the privilege of being here.”