The Desert, She is Deceptively Beautiful.

Enter at your own peril. This is the Sahara, in Libya, 17 years ago, when I was a little bit younger, and the heart was stronger.

When the sun is low in the sky at dusk and dawn, the dust in the air will refract light rays of the sun, transforming the sun a near bloody red, and creating beautiful light for photography

And the photo below, are my friends Larry and Daisy, admiring the sunset in the Makgadikgadi Pans of Botswana.

Below is a caravan of camels hauling out salt slabs dug out of the salt flats in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia, which the BBC in its documentary some years ago, called the Cruellest Place on earth.

Imagine driving across those dunes in this .... its the stuff of dreams for many a red blooded adventurer. The list of African states listed on my tee shirt says a little more. We were on a little adventure in 2011, driving from South Africa, through Namibia, Botswana, Malawi, and Tanzania to Kenya..

The photo below was in the Sahara Desert 17 years ago in 2004. That time we were driving from Khartoum in Sudan, through Egypt and across the Sahara Desert of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and over the Atlas Mountains to Casablanca in Morocco. It took just over 40 days to do it, including 3 days marooned in the middle of the Libyan Sahara Desert without fuel .... but that's another yarn for another day. Proud to say, we were the first Malaysians ever, to drive right across the Sahara Desert from Khartoum to Casablanca.

The photo below was shot in the Dunes of Merzouga, deep in the Moroccan Sahara. near the border with Algeria. We were riding camels to our Berber encampment in the desert. My ass was hurting after an hour on the lead camel of camel train #1 which I led. We were riding parallel to camel train #2 for a few minutes, which enabled me to shoot this photo as they came alongside.

Yusuf Hashim

25 May 2021