Merzouga: nomads, camels and The Sahara Desert

A smaller side road led from the highway to the Hassilabied settlement, near Merzouga that is just on the boarder of the Sahara desert. We could already see sand dunes towering at a distance.

We booked a stay at the camp in the desert. A nomad tribe that lives now in Hassilabied (they lived in the desert before through out the year) was arranging all the details. The owner, Mohammed, was waiting for us at his house. We could park the car there, and start our desert experience.
Following Mohammed, we walked towards the bottom of Erg Chebbi, a Saharan erg, which offers the best desert experience. The dunes here are very high and stretch for hundreds of kilometers, all the way to the Algerian boarder and beyond. There, one of the tribe members was waiting for us with a couple of camels to take us to the camp.

 Once sitting safely on the camels, we started our ride to the desert.

The rest of the group, that was also staying at the camp that night already left, so there were just the two of us. We had no idea how long it will be before we will reach the camp, so we asked the guide. He said that we will be going faster than normally, as he wants to catch up with the rest of the group, and that he expects us to be at the camp within an hour.
Our guide was walking the whole time, and the hot sand apparently didn't bother him that much.

The sun was still up, and being behind us, ensured that the pictures of the dunes turned out to be simply gorgeous.

The ride was very bumpy, but nonetheless, I tried to make some pictures of Dima on the camel, while riding one myself. Since you really need to hold on to the camel, hence, using only one hand to hold the camera, and turning fully isn't really possible either, half of the pictures taken were quite useless, but a couple did turned out to be all right.

Dima was laughing at me the whole time I was attempting to get a decent shot.

In about 30 minutes we finally caught up with the rest of the group, and slowed down. The ride became much less bumpy, and we could relax a little and not to worry about falling of the camel.

At this point I must say that riding a camel is not very pleasant, because despite multiple blankets used as a saddle, it is still very hard, and after some time your behind starts to hurt like hell. Also riding up and down the dunes doesn't help the situation. So, by the time we got to the camp, Dima and I were both more than happy to get off the damn animal. At this time I tried not to imagine how we will go back the next day...
When we all got off our camels, the nomad guys "parked" them for the night. "Parking" was binding one of camel's front legs, while they were lying down, so that the animals will not be able to stand up and walk away.

Our camp was 6-7 tents placed in a circle and was surround by the dunes from all sides, preventing the wind gusts and the sand from flying around. Just behind the tents, there was a WC, with a proper toilet and no water :-) Also, we had a round table and some chairs outside where we could later sit, drink and watch the stars above.

In the mean time the sun was slowly setting down and we went to watch it disappear behind the dunes.

 Dima had a sudden urge to fly :-)

After dark, the guides started to make dinner - classic Berber chicken tajine. While waiting for it to be ready, we had the chance to properly meet the rest of the group. There were 12 of us in total, 6 couples and everybody about the same age. And one of the couples was Dutch :-)

When dinner was over, we all went outside hoping to watch the stars. Unfortunately, the night was cloudy and we could only see a few. Too bad, I was really looking forward to it. 
For entertainment, the guides took out their drums and started to play.

It was really a unique experience to be in the Sahara, between the endless dunes, watching the desert fall a sleep and listening to our guides singing old nomad songs.

The guides warned everybody that we will need to wake up at 5am the next morning if we want to see the sunrise and slowly people started to disperse to their tents.

When we were waken by the bell the next morning it was just starting to get light. Being one of the first up, we climbed the tallest dune closest to the camp and waited. It was a bit funny to see all the couples sitting about 100 meters from each other waiting for the sun to come up. 

Luckily, we didn't have to wait long and the sunrise was gorgeous.

In about half an hour, the sun was completely up and after making some final pics of the camp and of the surroundings from our watching post, we headed back to our tent to pick up the stuff we had.

The guides were preparing the camels for the ride back to the settlement, where we would have breakfast at the Mohammed's house.

We asked the Dutch couple to take our pic together before climbing our camels one more time.

The way back, although gorgeous from the scenery perspective, was a true test of our pain tolerance:-) Crazy bumpy all the time, going up and down the dunes - half way I started to feel desperate and really had to force myself from not screaming "get me off this stupid camel, I will walk the rest of the way!" Dima was in pain too, but he bravely suffered in silence. I think the rest were pretty much feeling the same.

Finally, 30 excruciatingly painful minutes later we finally got back to Hassilabied and the guides laid the camels on the ground so that we could get off. I swear, the relief of not having my ass bumped anymore was probably one of the best feeling I've ever had. Dima felt exactly the same way, and his words were "you would have to kill me, to get me ride the camel again". I agreed :-) May be we had bad luck with the way the saddles were put together, or may be our much too sensitive behinds are to blame, I don't know. What I do know is this: I am never, ever going to ride a camel again!

Anyway, despite the drama and the trauma (:-)), the whole trip was absolutely worth taking and we enjoyed immensely being out in the Sahara desert and learning some things about nomads and their way of life. 

Next: Stunning Todgha Gorge, Dades Gorge and Ouarzazate.