Baking in the Sahara: My Budget Student Odyssey Near Niamey

i'm not sure why i thought coming to the sahara in july was a good idea. maybe it was the cheap flight to niamey, or the promise of endless stars. anyway, here i am, sweating buckets at 35.3°c with a humidity of 6%-yeah, you read that right, 6. the thermometer says 35.3 but the feels-like is 32.55? that's lower, but who trusts that anyway? the heat is just sitting there, waiting to burn you. hope you love that sort of misery. i just checked the weather station (id 2448705) and it spits out these numbers at unix time 1562582841. i guess that's my life now.

i got here on a shoestring. flew into niamey for like $200 return from paris, then shared a bush taxi to the edge of the desert. the taxi driver spoke no english, just hausa and songhai, and we crammed nine people into a van that should've held five. the road turned to sand about a hundred klicks out, and i ended up hitchhiking with a truck carrying dates. the driver, mamadou, let me ride in the back with the crates, under the worst sun imaginable. i'd read on TripAdvisor that hitchhiking in mali can be sketchy, but i met a girl from sweden who swore by it. she vanished three days later-maybe she's still out here, who knows.

anyway, my current coordinates are 15.1197°n, 2.0006°e. that's basically the middle of nowhere, but if you're curious, here's a map:

as you can see, there's not a whole lot. the nearest settlement is a dust bowl called abeibara, maybe an hour's drive if the sand isn't too deep. i'm camped near a tiny nomadic camp; the families move with their goats and camels. the sky at night is insane, milky way so bright it casts shadows. i took a few attempts at astrophotography but my lens kept fogging from the dry air. speaking of photos, here's one of the dunes at golden hour:

the desert doesn't look like the photos you see in travel brochures. it's more subtle, the sand is paler, almost pinkish at sunset. i heard from a local that the sand here contains iron oxide, hence the color. i also heard that if you dig a meter down you might hit water, but that could be a myth. i'm not digging.

if you get bored, abeibara is a two-hour drive across the dunes if you have a 4x4. it has a weekly market where they sell leather goods and dried figs. it's a forty-minute walk through sand, but totally worth it for the human chaos. i bargained for a woven bracelet and got it for like 50 cents. someone told me that the market used to be a major stop on the trans-saharan trade route centuries ago. i'm not sure i believe that, but it's a good story. the guys at the market also warned me about the sandstorm that rolls in every afternoon around 4. they called it the "harmattan lite" because it's not as bad as in winter, but still enough to coat everything in grit. i learned the hard way-my notebook is full of sand.

i've been eating mostly instant noodles and canned sardines. i packed a tiny camp stove, which is basically illegal in this region because of fire risk. i also heard a rumor on Yelp that the police turn a blind eye if you're discreet and not near the dunes' vegetation. but i also read on a local board, the Sahara Travel Forum, that a backpacker got fined 50,000 cfa for cooking too close to a settlement. i'll keep that in mind. for water, i buy 1.5l bottles from the occasional vendor; they charge double what you'd pay in niamey. that's the price of remoteness. there's a natural spring near abeibara, but i'm not taking chances. i read a tripadvisor horror story about giardia from desert wells.

the pressure here is 1008 millibars, ground level 977. i have no clue what that means, but my ears pop when the wind shifts. the wind itself is a dry, hot blade. i've never sweat so much in my life, but the sweat evaporates instantly, leaving a fine salt crust on my skin. it's like being a walking pretzel.

last night, i tried sleeping without the tent. the stars are unreal. i could see satellites crawling across the sky, and i swear i heard the desert breathing. or maybe it was a camel. anyway, around midnight the temperature finally dropped to a balmy 28°c. i took another long-exposure shot:

that's the milky way core, or at least what i could capture. the camera struggled with noise, but i think it turned out. i'll upload to instagram later when i find signal.

as a budget student, the total cost so far: flight $200, visa $50, transport $30, food/water $15 for five days. that's like $300 for a week in one of the most remote places on earth. not bad, right? i'll leave you with some tips: bring more water than you think (like double), get a multifuel stove that's low-profile, and always keep a sarong for sand protection. also, learn a few phrases in hausa; it'll get you far. finally, check the weather station updates on the mali met website-i think they use that 2448705 sensor. it's oddly accurate, even if the humidity reading is a cruel joke.

if you're thinking of doing this solo, go for it. just respect the desert. it doesn't care about your plans. and maybe bring a book for the endless nothingness.

i'm probably going to hitchhike back to niamey in the next couple days, see if i can catch a ride with a truck full of goats. wish me luck.

Baking in the Sahara: My Budget Student Odyssey Near Niamey

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About the author: Mia Sinclair

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