Magic in the Desert

Story and Photographs by Chris Marais

Call me a Desert Rat. A Sand Man or a Crazy Person. There it is: I love a dry space because it’s good for the soul.

Don’t just take my word for it. Heed the advice of the legendary William Charles Scully (1855-1943), pioneer poet and magistrate, who said:

“The wilderness has ever been the rich storehouse of spiritual things. Man gains corporeal, moral and intellectual power in the arid waste, and loses them in the land of corn and wine.”

True enough. After more than three days of wriggling my toes at a beach bar just about anywhere in the world, I do start feeling a little mindless – perhaps even slightly morally bereft.

Release Your Outdoor Lizard

More and more travellers are turning to desert spaces: photographers of all kinds, adventurers who can let their inner outdoor lizards go play, solitude-searchers, those in search of cultural encounters and committed ecotourists.

The growing number of people worldwide who visit deserts has been noted by the World Tourism Organisation.

“The appeal of deserts can largely be explained by the image of purity and serenity associated with them, and by the traveller’s quest for simplicity and well-being.” (Sustainable Development of Tourism in Deserts – A Guide for Decision Makers, 2007).

This is what I know about arid lands – so far.

Lessons from a Dry Space

The desert is The Great Leveller. I have seen raggedy-butt Kunene fishermen with broad smiles and sunlight in their eyes sharing the same riverbank with captains of industry from New York City, pointedly chugging up and down the dunes on their quadbikes.

And for the life of me, I couldn’t say which party was happier.

Here in the Karoo, I listen to the stories of the Nama people who dance the Riel and ride around on donkey carts with the same interest as I would lap up the tales of an old steam train driver or a veteran farmer facing another year of drought.

You can find splendid isolation in most deserts, only not so much at Sossusvlei in southern Nambia. There, the early morning dune-climbing groups resemble a collection of Lost Patrols as the tourists take to the slopes a-chuggin’ and a-puffin’ in the process.

Fort Namutoni

Up north, at Namutoni Rest Camp in the Etosha National Park, is where to get your Beau Geste Moment. Remember the PC Wren novel about life in the French Foreign Legion, about starting afresh in the desert and making amends for past transgressions?

Well, just stand on the parapet of Fort Namutoni at sunset, reach for a glass of something cold and toast the wide-angle horizon out there. And savour the sensation of that invaluable Second Crack at Life. And from this glorious vantage point you can see your enemies approaching from afar.

Another thing I’ve learned from my time in desert hideouts like Arizona, the southern Sahara, the edge of the Gobi and even on a train-honeymoon through Australia’s giant blasted heath called The Nullarbor (no trees here), is that Namibia is the most people-friendly sandbox on Earth.

Nesting Sand Grouse

This is a place of wild and mystical desert steeds, the otherworldly tableau of the Dead Vlei, the grand horse-shoe of the Fish River Canyon and the close-up magic of a nesting sand grouse nestling into the ancient and comforting embrace of a  Welwitschia mirabilis plant.

That’s what you do in the desert, I came to find out. You make discoveries all the time. Not only about Methuselah plants – sometimes even about yourself.

At dry locations all over the globe, one finds a measure of peace and quiet that nourishes the city-mangled soul. Just book in for a night at a far-flung corbelled house on a farm somewhere in the Northern Cape, tilt your head at the stars and let the rush of absolute nothingness in.

AfrikaBurn

And then, just when I began to think of deserts as detox spots, we headed off to our first AfrikaBurn festival out in the Tankwa and we learned about Party! Party! Party! In a parched place. The most isolated experience that weekend was to be had just before dawn while the camp was asleep and the sun was touching the Swartruggens mountain ridges in the distance.

As we travelled the Badlands (I like to think of them as the Goodlands) of southern Africa, we would take great pleasure in finding the odd oasis after a hard day in the bakkie.

That hot-spring pool on the Malopo River in the Kalahari canyonlands of Riemvasmaak. A tasty lime milkshake in the shady courtyard of the Williston Mall in the Northern Cape. Cold beers on the stoep of the Bahnhoff Hotel at Aus, on the road between Keetmanshoop and Luderitz.

Tankwa Padstal

Beer, hmm. Now there’s a good excuse to head out into the desert. Cold Beer-Bucket List this: the Tankwa Padstal in the Northern Cape, the Charles Hotel at Klipplaat and the Wolwefontein Hotel in the Eastern Cape, the Vanzylsrus Hotel up in the Kalahari and The Scotia Inn at Port Nolloth, the gateway to the Richtersveld. And that’s just for starters.

With the desert watering hotels you get the desert creatives – I don’t like to call them eccentrics. They’re a hardy bunch of people who have mostly found a way to earn a living far from civilisation. They’re bakers, they’re barmen, they’re diamond divers, they’re shepherds, they’re cactus farmers; they’re painters, they’re teachers and trackers and they all share a love of the offbeat, the path less travelled.

And the most exotic desert I’ve ever been to? That most “desert” of deserts? Why, that would have to be Mali, where you find Timbuktu, the fabled Niger River, the mud mosques of Djenne and the salt trains of the Sahara.

Timbuktu

I once had the incredible fortune to be invited on a madcap adventure that took me up the Niger, into Dogon country and to the very heart of Timbuktu itself. It was back in 2007, when it was still relatively safe to travel through Mali. Nowadays? I would check the advisories and proceed with caution.

But that was then, this is now and who knows about next week? Things could change.

The West African state of Mali holds nearly 12 million people in a 1.2 million square-kilometre area of sand, scrub, river and escarpment. It’s landlocked, with Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Burkina Fasso and the Ivory Coast as immediate neighbours.

Sacred Timbuktu Scrolls

In this role, Mali – with its legendary Niger River – has always been the trading centre of the region. Salt caravans still appear out of the Sahara in long ‘camelcades’ and stop off at places like Timbuktu where, long ago, salt would be traded for slaves, gold and ivory from the south.

It’s the people, the customs, the cultures, the deep history and the late light on the Mother River as the pirogues sweep into Mopti City. It’s the Grand Mosque in the early hours and sunsets that come with the music of Salif Keita and Boubacar Traore.

It’s watching a blacksmith ply his ancient art, catching the banter at the well between two women gathering water, glancing down the alleyways, wandering joyfully lost in the busy markets and holding a Dogon child’s hand as she guides you though her village for a pittance.

In the desert you can let your thoughts fly…

• For an insider’s view on life in the South African Heartland, get the Karoo Quartet set of books (Karoo Roads I-IV) for only R960, including taxes and courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za

• Limited Stock Offer: Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit cut their travelling teeth with their first book, A Drink of Dry Land – Journeys Through Namibia (Struik, 2005). Only 50 copies remain, at R400 (including taxes and courier costs in SA). For more details, contact Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za