After the excitement of a mornings driving in amongst the dunes of the absolutely enormous Sea of Sand that fills the middle of Libya, it is always such a pleasure to rig up some shade and sit to enjoy a simple lunch.

The roar of our engines mixed with the heat streaming of hard pressed gearboxes has stopped, leaving us with the utter silence of the desert and it is an incredible silence. It is very difficult in our world of sounds here in Europe, where often the song of a bird breaks any silence that you are enjoying to actually understand how noisy absolute silence is.

As you sit at midday nothing moves, not even the air here deep within the desert, yet your ears are full of a distant high pitched singing sound, not intrusive but ever present. For me it is part of the essence of this landscape and I imagine that it is the sound of the sun’s furnace pounding away many millions of miles away. This sound and this place transports your mind back to a time before our ancestors left Africa and I always leave this place with a very settled spirit.

This picture was taken in such a place in the company of good friends on a fantastically challenging adventure into Libya’s Sea of Sand, a special time, as I believe that this sea will for many years be a dangerous one to cross, only for the foolhardy to attempt.