North Africa - 3

We reached Colomb-Bechar on the 15th July, ten days after leaving England, arranged to leave Olga at the prefecture, and then sat in that sweltering, dusty town for six days trying to get a lift south. The normal flow of massive trucks had stopped: there had been floods in Niger! So we gave up on that route, determining instead to hitch-hike east along the north African coast before working our way up the Nile to Uganda. Fortunately, we both had proper backpacks, so we loaded them and turned north.

Algeria is beautiful, its citizens generous with their lifts and only too keen to tell of the terrible war of independence they had just fought with the French. We travelled fast, to Saida the first night and to Algiers the second, the last lift with a man who owned a plumbing business and allowed us to sleep in his warehouse, which was close to the city centre. We spent three days in Algiers while we waited for visas for Egypt - for which this picture was taken.

Throughout the trip we ate simply, subsisting on local bread, tins of sardines, grapes, tomatoes and melons. We only allowed ourselves the occasional cup of coffee in a cafe and, very rarely, a proper restaurant meal. The lifts were good but we walked when we couldn't get one. We weren't proud: our slowest lift was in a cart pulled by a camel. We washed when the opportunity arose, and bathed in the irrigation channels or, when we were near it, the Mediterranean, where we found some stunning beaches.

At night we walked well out of a town or village, rolled out our sleeping bags and slept by the roadside. Nobody bothered us. Our main worries were scorpions and, if we were near a village, the local dogs, which often kept us awake with their barking.

On 28th July we crossed the border into Tunisia, at which point the lifts dried up. In the weeks to come we learned to sit in the dirt at the wayside and wait but we were impatient so, for the first and only time, we caught a bus....

....as far as Gafsa. On the 30th we were at the Libyan border, at Ben Gardane, where immigration found I had a problem with my visa. I had no choice but to turn back for Tunis, leaving Michael to cross into Libya as his visa was about to expire. The journey marked in blue was done in just over two days, some of the fastest hitch-hiking I have ever done - and in that time I collected the visa.

Along most of the Libyan coast the desert runs down to the sea but, in Roman times, the area was one of the breadbaskets of the empire. Leptis Magna, between Tripoli and Misrata, is one of the finest Roman cities in North Africa. When the guards closed it at night we hid. We slept in the ruins, took baths in the ladies' toilets (much cleaner than the mens'), and imagined what it would have been like to live in Leptis' neat houses, to walk in its public squares, and to enjoy its magnificent theatre.

We left Leptis on August 3rd, almost a month out from England. For most of the next stage the road ran through rocky, empty desert. Traffic was light. The local people were less friendly and generous. The lifts became increasingly hard work. I have always thought that we finally mastered the art of long-distance hitch-hiking - and, believe me, it is an art - on the desert roads of Libya.