Fresh bread from the street ovens is one of the pleasures of Timbuktu.
A Touareg cross. One thing I did buy outside the hotel.
Looking out of the upstairs window of the house which gave brief protection to Alexander Gordon Laing, the Scottish explorer who rediscovered Timbuktu in 1826 and was killed on his way home, aged thirtythree.
NIGER
The yellow base used on the faces of these Gerewol is made from a local stone. Cowrie shells and ostrich feathers are essential ingredients in the art of seduction.
NIGER
Camel-driven irrigation system at the oasis of Tabelot.
NIGER
Tabelot. At home with Omar (centre), his four wives and some of their fifteen children.
For the young Wodaabe, eye-rolling means sex appeal. The lips and eyes are accentuated with kohl, made from ground stibnite.
Life with the camels. Lunchtime.
In the foreground, they graze the acacia trees, their heavy-duty tongues stripping thorns as sharp as nails to get to the leaves.
A loosening of the turban to get some air to the brain.
A trans-Saharan camion carries workers and all their worldly goods, from Libya back south.
Another Tamahaq language class with Izambar.
A baby gazelle, deserted by its mother, was found near the camp one morning. Gazelles are able to survive in the desert as they never need water, drawing all the moisture they require from plants.
Divided loyalties. Izambar, in indigo robe at far right of picture, and Omar, next to him, watch as I try to tear myself away from the team. A sad and happy leave-taking, after almost a week together.
Which way is Algeria?
ALGERIA
Back of beyond. The Niger-Algeria border posts.
ALGERIA
On the road to Tamanrasset we pass what’s known as the ‘Cemetery’, a graveyard of hopes that driving across the Sahara was easy.
ALGERIA
Whatever happened here? One probably turned without indicating.
Sahara sunset on the way north through Algeria.
With Tom Sheppard, doyen of the desert.
In the heart of the Hoggar Mountains. The peaks are the cores of old volcanoes.
With Brother Edward of Les Petits Freres de Jesus, successor of Charles de Foucauld at the remote refuge at Assakrem, over 9000 feet above the Sahara.
Algeria’s Aladdin’s Cave. Oil pipes and flares foul the desert near Hassi-Messaoud but, along with natural gas, the fields provide 90 per cent of the country’s foreign earnings.
Salah Benyoub at the CNDG at Hassi-R’Mel. Natural gas that will cook lunches from Milan to Mannheim to Madrid is prepared here and despatched along sub-Mediterranean pipelines.
The scale of Hassi-R’Mel shows the hidden potential of the Sahara. Soon the first ever trans-Saharan pipeline will bring natural gas here from northern Nigeria.
Main picture: The Libyan frontier near In Amenas is marked by a single tree. This spare, uncluttered, beautiful spot was one of my favourite places in the Sahara.
LIBYA
With Ray Ellis in the cemetery - all ranks and nationalities have exactly the same size gravestones.
LIBYA
Preparing for the last ceremony of the day: the floating of a wreath on the waters of the harbour that the Rats defended for so long.
LIBYA
With the Australian memorial rising behind them, Lady Randell comforts relatives of Australian and Maori war dead.
The Rats of Tobruk, sixty years on. ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ in the Second World War taunted in his propaganda broadcasts: ‘Come out of your holes you rats!’ And they did. Left to right: Francis Cload, Douglas Waller, Leslie Meek, Frank Plant, Peter Vaux, Frank Harrison, Harry Day, James Pearce, Stephen Dawson, Ray Ellis.
At Acroma-Knightsbridge Cemetery, Mohamed Haneish and his wife keep the place immaculate, working wonders with limited resources. Water is scarce and, because they’re close to the sea, it’s brackish and salty. Mohamed, whose father taught him the job, calls the dead ‘my boys’.
Apollonia. Remains of a 2000-year-old mosaic flooring, showing palm trees and wild animals.
Abdul Gerawi, our chief Libyan guide (in the well-cut Western-style clothes worn by most professional Libyans), watches filming in the magical Roman theatre at Apollonia, rediscovered only forty years ago.
Sweeping gaze. Plenty of brushes, but where are all the people?
Benghazi schoolchildren stop to watch the filming.
Inside the Great Manmade River Project. This is the size of the pipes, of which 1000 miles are already laid, as part of Colonel Gaddafi’s ambitious plan to water his country by tapping underground reservoirs deep in the desert.
Camel delivery service stops to offer assistance.
More old ruins at Leptis Magna. Well, I had been filming for three months.
TUNISIA
Like rows of open oyster shells, sunbathers flank the pool of one of the big hotels on the lotuseating Isle of Djerba. In Tunisia, tourist revenue makes up for the lack of oil earnings with which neighbours Libya and Algeria have been blessed. Or cursed.
TUNISIA
Greek amphorae stacked on the harbourside at Houmt Souk. They’re not for sale; they’re for catching octopuses.
TUNISIA
There Must Be Easier Ways to Make A Living, Number 24: wrestling freshly caught octopus.
Return to the crucifixion scene. Walking round a troglodyte home in El Haddej. Both Life of Brian and Star Wars were filmed in this unique, moon-like landscape.
Taking tea with Bilgessou and his wife and daughter. Refusing to move from the cave he’s lived in all his life, he makes money by providing accommodation for curious travellers.
The Roman amphitheatre at El Jem was the third biggest they ever built; I walk the underground chambers where both the gladiators and the lions were kept before a fight. They still have a deeply unsettling atmosphere.
Nostalgic return to the Ribat at Monastir, a ninth-century Arab fortress, in which the tolerant Tunisians let us film Life of Brian, twenty-four years ago. Aficionados will recognise the tower from which Brian leapt only to be rescued by a flying saucer.