I had travelled for 8 years to Morocco before I saw any rain in the Sahara Desert.

For me, the first years that I spent leading groups and running reconnaissance’s in Lac Iriki and the routes across the desert to the 300m high dunes of Merzouga were full of hot, dry and dusty days. Every time I travelled into the Sahara, my idea of how I would see and feel the desert had lived up exactly to expectations.

The night before had been one of those beautiful nights with a sky completely full of stars and our group sat enthralled gazing up at the Milky Way stretching across from one horizon to the next. The Bushmen call the Milky Way “The Backbone of the Sky” as they believed that it held the sky up off the Earth. To them the constellation of Orion is the “Great Hunter in The Sky”, with Orion’s belt and the star just below being the bushman’s painting tools, as he was a great painter, which was more important to them than hunting.

As we packed away our tents the next morning the sun was a pale globe hidden in a yellow haze, a haze that felt ominous, it made the hairs at the back of your neck rise as it held menace and an expectation of a storm. Almost without warning the wind picked up ferociously and a warm rain driven hard against us pelted the earth and everything around.

Those who had not quite finished packing away their camp hastily threw the rest into their vehicles before leaping into the warmth and shelter of the inside of their cars. We started our journey east as the dry desert became very wet indeed.

Some interesting problems were presented to us as the rain continued: The Lake which is normally dry and hard became a slippery pool of mud. We lost directional control and our cars slipped and squirmed their way towards the harder sand near Jebel Bani. Here, on the Lake, I had been told a car can become stuck for weeks if it rains: it was raining hard now and we made it in time to harder ground.

The second problem was one of momentum. We needed momentum to get up enough speed to climb the small dunes and this was, on the slippery mud between the dunes difficult to come by. We had a very exciting and challenging time working our way to the sand track where at least grip would be had.

This picture was taken half way across Lac Iriki. The dunes in the distance are the dunes of Chegega and we have just left the sand track behind us and are heading off to enjoy some big dune driving before deciding where to camp for the night.