Sahara: The Salt Caravan Must Never Stop

Between Bilma and Agades, in Niger’s Sahara, the wells are so far apart, and so much happens along the way of the Tuareg caravans, that they can never stop until men and camels must rest for the night. But as interminably as the caravans plow forward, they never reach the next well before the men are half dead of thirst and dangerously dehydrated.

     Many things delay them. Here they come upon scattered blades of grass on which they must release the camels,which will help spare the straw the camels carry and must feed on every morning.

     Next day, after spending hours gathering the widely scattered camels, the Tuareg discover that two of them are missing. They release the lot again and go hunting for the lost two, taking all day. By then the water goat skins are hanging nearly flat from their makeshift tripods--water of which the Tuareg never bring enough, preferring to load the camels with more salt.

     Farther along the way a camel breaks a leg and must be butchered. Or a sand storm keeps everyone lying under blankets for as long as three days (the storms abate at night).

     Another reason why the caravan must never stop is that, if it did for as little as a few minutes, the camels would gather together, rub sides, throw down the breakable salt cones, and leave the Tuareg poorer for it.

In 1965 I traveled for 22 days across the Tenere, one of the Sahara’s most dangerous regions, with a Tuareg salt caravan. At the salt pits of Bilma, an oasis in Niger, hundreds of Tuareg, among thousands of camels, were wrapping salt cones in straw mats and preparing for the long return journey to their camps in the AÏr Mountains.

     Not one group accepted my company. They all said that a European was not prepared for the agony of hunger, thirst, and fatigue they would live, and that they would rather not have to bury my bones in the desert’s sands.

     I was on my first National Geographic assignment, and there was no way I could say amen to this. Had I had money to offer the Tuareg, they would probably have removed their objections. But I did not. And I was only at the beginning of a four-month stay among the Tuareg.

     As I was untested by National Geographic, the editors had given me only enough money to fly from New York to Europe. From there, traveling overland, I had been struck by a knee infection that had nailed me for two weeks in a small Algerian oasis’ flyblown hospital. Still unable to walk at the end, I had had to resign myself to seek medical help in Brussels, my home town, where I lost another two weeks. I flew this time—both ways, as I feared to reach the caravans’ departures too late.  

     Fortunately, by the time I reached Bilma I had already spent two weeks traveling on camel back with a Tuareg man to photograph Tuareg tribes around the Sahara’s  Ahaggar Mountains. A year earlier I had spent a month with two Tuareg brothers, traveling on camel back between Agades, in Niger, and Tamanrasset, in Algeria.

     I have a passion for languages and learn them easily. With the help of a lexicon I had learned enough of the Tuareg language to communicate with them without the need for an interpreter. And I knew all I had to know about camels and desert life.

     After finding an undermanned group of nine men and 102 camels, I offered them to join them as a working member of the caravan who would give priority to caravan work over photography.

     That proved irresistible and they accepted. My story appeared on the cover of National Geographic’s November 1965 issue. The magazine paid all my past expenses, besides a generous fee and an invitation to keep adventuring in their name. Over the years I would live a total of nine months among the Tuareg, three times for National Geographic and once for a children’s book.

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