Tea In The Sahara

I've been drinking quite a lot of tea lately, generally of the green variety, brewed up in a knackered old pot on a stick fire in a vast expanse of sand. We've been traversing the deepest reaches of the Sahara for the best part of a week with our Toureg tribesman guides. They're a hell of a lot of fun, and do like a nice cuppa as often as possible, mostly I suspect because the extended ritual of the brewing process gives them every opportunity for a good old chinwag. Each thimblefull of the sugary liqueur is presented to you with a lovingly crafted foam head that will have taken a good twenty minutes of brewing and repeated pouring to create. In Libya, it is a criminal offence to drink alcohol, so you can't blame the people for making the most of those other more humble beverages that are available.

Libya has been a breath of fresh air after Egypt, though I have to admit that I had one of the most interesting and insightful encounters of the trip on my long bus journey to the Libyan border. If all Egyptians were like the chap I passed the hours with in deep conversation then it would be a very fine country indeed. Libya has unreservably been an amazing experience however, and much of this is because of the extremely friendly and good natured attitude of the people. In fact a customs official actually gave us money at the border to buy coffees because we'd not been able to change currency by that stage, something I couldn't quite imagine happening at Dover. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting a thing for totalitarian states as I haven't enjoyed a country this much since I left Syria!

I spent my birthday as sober as a judge wandering the spectacular ruins of Cyrene, an atmospheric ancient Greek city perched on a cliff overlooking the blue Mediterranean. It was rather overgrown a bit like Termessos in Turkey, but much more extensive and easier to work out. We had the place completely to ourselves which would be unimaginable in any of the other Mediterranran countries we've visited.

However, the highlight has been a week away from the world in the Sahara. It's easy to understand why people fall in love with the Sahara, it is breathtakingly beautiful in south-west Libya, everything you ever imagine a desert to be. Apart from our Toureg guides, we hardly saw another sole, local or tourist for the whole time we toured around. Early one morning I climbed a 200m dune and watched the dawn arrive. I could see for miles in every direction and there was nothing but sand dunes and solitude, framed by the fantastical wind sculpted pinacles of a distant mountain range upon the horizon. As the sun burnished the sand a blazing orange colour I thought to myself that this was perhaps the most beautiful place I had ever seen. A few days later we even managed to take a swim in a tiny lake tucked in the folds of an enveloping high dune, finding the water so salty one could simply float. The improbably of taking a dip in the middle of a desert amused me no end.