29:31
Car problems, unexpected company, my first time being stuck in the desert, and a massive sandstorm. Oh, what am I doing here? I'm all alone. Today, I tackle another long off-road trail in the Sahara for several days of driving across some of the most remote areas of Morocco. You cannot see the track right now. Just a reminder of where we left off last week. I had just done a 200-mile off-road trail when I heard a very disturbing sound coming out of my truck, Odyssey. Is everything kind of like a little lower than it should be? Thank god I could still drive her all the way to the
nearest town, Zagora, where I was lucky to find a wellrespected mechanic. So, that's where we pick up today. Okay, here we are. the guys at the mechanic shop got straight to work diagnosing the issue. Okay. So, what happened is that the coil springs on both sides in the back came out of their socket, which explains the noise, the sound that I heard. Um, fortunately, it's not a massive repair at all. It's relatively simple. Um, and Ali, who is the boss of this workshop, said that he would um, put in like a little bit of rubber or something like that to make sure that the coils coil springs don't fall out of place again.
They found a couple of other small issues that needed some work. So, we agreed that Odyssey would stay for the night for a little dose of TLC. Okay. Bye, Odyssey. tomorrow. Yeah, see you tomorrow. But this expedition isn't just about dropping by the local garages. There's also a good amount of daily survival logistics to manage. One of the craziest things about being in Morocco is that my food costs way less than Vil's food out here. So, you know, I'm vegetarian for the most part and Vil is a carnivore. He's on a raw meat diet. So, when I bought his food yesterday for the upcoming week, it cost me like $70, $80, something like that for his food
for one week. My food for one week cost me about 20 bucks. Pick, you have it so good, you don't even know. But, you have it so good. Some lovely people I'd met recently invited me to join them for an evening in the dunes. It's nice to have some company sometimes. So, I was excited to pick up Odyssey and head out to join them. Bye. Cha. Okay, we're all good, fixed up, ready to go. And she's clean. Look at her. They washed her, too. Let's get going.
I think I've got a leak. Yeah, that is definitely diesel. I'm just going to give it a moment. See if it stops. If it stops leaking in the next minute or so, that means that we've just overfilled it. If it doesn't stop leaking, that means there's an actual leak somewhere. I do not want to go back to the garage. Okay, I just drove her for about a mile or so just to see if the leak has stopped or if it's still going. Oh god, not another freaking thing. Oh, it's still going. Definitely going less now. So, I'll give her a couple more minutes and check again in another couple of miles.
Okay. All right. One more check. Still leaking, but the trend is downwards. It's leaking less and less. Not sure if I should head back to town and have it checked out or just keep heading towards the desert. I mean, I'm I'll I'll be seeing people tonight, so I don't think there's any immediate danger. Should we go to the desert with a leaky truck? Yeah. Is it a good idea? You always have good advice. The guys I was meeting, we're staying at a campsite near town. From here, we will be driving into the raw desert along some serious off-road trails and dunes. Oo, I would have never come here on my own. This is
like a dune field. It's a little scary. I haven't gotten stuck just yet. You know what they say, don't cut your chickens before they hatch. It's time to air down the tires finally all the way to make these tires sand friendly. Adventure. It took a bit of time, effort, and encouragement, but eventually with all hands on board and Hassan, an experienced desert driver behind the wheel, Odyssey slid out of the sand like she had never been stuck at all. And this here is just Hassan showing off. Totally fair enough. How was it?
Good. Good job. I don't think I could have gotten it out myself, honestly. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Thank you. There's definitely something to be said for traveling with other people. It really does take the edge off honestly because you know that you can always rely on each other if something goes wrong. It's so different from solo travel. Okay, we have made it to our camp and the little group that I'm with, we're all staying here. Uh they've got their tents. I'm going to be staying in the truck. Obviously has already found a June to dig through. But check this out. How amazing is this?
Wow. That evening, we climbed one of the tallest dunes in Morocco, then sat around the fire and shattered the evening away. You at the top of the dune. It was so much fun. I didn't even take any videos. And the next day, we all went our separate ways again. And we're on our own again. So silent around here all of a sudden. The plan today was to drive a little further and camp by the biggest June sea in Morocco. Of course, that meant more June driving, but this time alone. This place really is amazing. I mean, right now I'm driving towards the giant June
of Eric Chaga, which I think is the biggest June in Morocco. And yet, I'm driving through a little green forest. Amazing trees with big round waxy leaves everywhere around me. Definitely did not expect to see this in the middle of the Sahara. Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to drive into the dunes, see if I can find a good campsite and not get stuck. Honestly, no clue what I'm doing. Just learning by experience. YouTube University has taught me that less tire pressure is good. Momentum is good. Not getting stuck, yep, definitely good. I made it. Made it up the dune. Check it out. And over there in the distance, an unobstructed view of the tallest dune in Morocco, Chaga.
I've just gone out for a little sunset photo shoot with Vio and I have stumbled upon this fire pit with some unused firewood which I am promptly going to steal and make my own fire. Come on, buddy. Let's go. We're firewood thieves. Good morning. Good morning from my little palace. Here's V. You just woke up. Hi, buddy. Oh, hi buddy. And that is my view. Yeah, the last few days have been so unpredictable and so different from what I've been used to on this trip that all I want to do is just get back into my routine. I want to get back into my
running routine, my morning workout routine, my driving routine, just all the things that have made this trip so beautiful and wonderful. So, I'm rebuilding my routine again today. Going out for a run in the dunes. Uh, the only thing about going for a run in the dunes is that I need to make sure that I know how to get back here to the truck because there's like a million dunes out here and obviously they all look the same. So, I'm going to mark my location on my GPS app. So excited about my run today. What you see here is called an urg in Arabic. A bit of an awkward word to describe something really beautiful, a dune sea. You can kind of see why they're called that, right? This here, I
think, is just the quintessential picture of the Sahara. You know, in the end, I didn't even need my GPS position to get back because V led me back. But the advantages of having a dog like I need to start putting my dates in some kind of um container because they're just covered in dog hair and sand. Another big off-road day ahead of us. The plan for today was to cover just under 100 miles across dried out lakes and river beds and hopefully end up at a picture perfect oasis. Oh my god, there's so much sun. Okay, so now officially these long soft sandy stretches are like my favorite thing in the world to try. They're just so much fun. Feels so smooth. So good.
Trail update. I'm in a bit of a pickle right now because I left my campsite today quite late. Like very late. Too late. And then it took me a little while too long to drive the distance that I wanted to drive today. And um basically we're nearing sunset. See the sun? It is very close to setting and I still haven't reached my campsite for the night. Now, I have a golden rule, like a pact that I've made with myself that whenever I'm doing these overlanding trips, I never drive in the dark unless it's an emergency because driving in the dark is dangerous. There's a lot of camels, donkeys, wild animals here. The trail is well, look at the trail. it becomes completely invisible in the dark, even with good headlights.
And I still have probably like half an hour to go until I reach the campsite that I found. So, I really hope that I make it there before the night falls. This is not a road. It is not a track. Oh, it's just some rocks. There. How amazing are those rocks? Where am I? Okay, we're just about to arrive, but there's other people there. I see other trucks and tents. No, no, no, no, no. This hermit wants this place all to herself. Well, I just needed to drive another 100 m to feel very much alone again. Pretty cool. Now, my only complaint is the company. But I think I can get over it.
What did you bring? Oh my god, look at that stick. Good morning. It's another beautiful day out in the Sahara Desert and I'm still in the same spot where I was last night except um now it's just me. So, I'm about to set off, but first there is something I need to do. I'm going to show you exactly what it is. So, we need to uh adjust and change and tweak that corner of the truck. All right. So, as you can tell, I don't have a passenger seat in this truck. Um, I took it out a few years back on purpose because it was just me and I wasn't expecting to have any passengers sitting here with me, so I just took it out to make more space. And that's great. I'm keeping it this way. However, I've been
noticing that V has been a little like restless and he's been wanting to get to this window as we're driving. Tell me what these are and I'll tell you how old you are. Okay, V. You want to get inside? Get inside. Try it out. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Yeah. Is that nice? You can now look out the window. Okay, so today is a bit of a different kind of day because today I need to head up to a town that's just north of here. I reckon it's going to take me about maybe an hour to get there because my inverter is still being a little annoying. You may remember from the last episode I had some trouble with it and it won't charge my battery. So, I want to head into town to get my battery charged from like a wall socket just so I have that as a
backup so I'm not, you know, running around the desert with zero connectivity and zero option to connect to the internet. And while I'm there, I'm going to try and get some water. Um, maybe some fresh veggies, something like that. We're back on asphalt. It's so smooth. It doesn't even feel real. It's like we're driving through butter. Okay, so there's a campsite here. I'm going to go in and check if they'll allow me to um grab some water and charge my battery.
It's looking pretty empty. Hello. There's nobody here. Okay, it seems like the um owner of the campsite isn't here, but his kids are, and they said that I can come in and do all the things. Okay, no luck getting a water hose, but that's fine because it's not really an urgent per purchase. However, what is very urgent is food. I am starving and I also need to get some groceries. So, let's go and do that and then pick up the battery and then go back into the desert. Are you at the restaurant? As soon as my errands were done, I headed back out into the desert to stay at the oasis for one more night. But as I approached it, I realized that things
were suddenly looking very different out there. Wow, look at that wind blowing across the plains. There is so much sand coming from that direction. Wow. You see that haze on the horizon? That's all sand. Oh my gosh. I think we might have ourselves a sandstorm tonight. Holy Little did I know that this sandstorm would haunt me and my plans for much longer than just today. Well, this is something I didn't expect. And I was just cruising around in circles here because when there's a sandstorm like
this, you can't really see the tracks very well anymore because the sand that's coming in just covers the ground. So, any tracks that were visible yesterday no longer are. At least it's very easy to lose them. But thankfully, I've been uh tracking my route. So, I'm just following the little yellow line right now on my app. And uh yeah, hopefully we can make it to the camp soon because I feel like the sandstorm is only intensifying now. Sandstorms sweep over the Sahara with more and more regularity, which is linked to the climate crisis. This place looks a lot more eerie this afternoon than it did this morning. In a sandstorm, dust particles are lifted high into the air, as high as even
20,000 ft and carried on the wind over incredible distances. Okay, we've got ourselves a spot. I'm going to go out, but first I'm just going to close my windows. Close these holes. This is a Land Rover Air Con. There we go. Okay, I think this is an okay spot. It's in the shade. It's close to these palm trees, which gives me a little bit of shelter, but it's far enough from them that if they fall due to the wind, they won't reach the truck. Well, I'm very curious as to how this is going to unfold. In the past, the haze of Saharan sandstorms has even reached as far as London. As for this sandstorm, the worst was yet to come. I am just hunkered
hunkered down here in the truck with V doing some work. Anyway, everything looks quite eerie right now. Quite dark, quite misty. Very different from last night. Good morning. Whoop! Oh, that wind really blew throughout the night. Woke me up a couple of times. The car became kind of like a boat in the wind just swaying to and fro. Uh, but all is well and it's a still pretty windy but beautiful morning out here in the desert. I am a bit of a dirt bag when I'm out here. I'm definitely a
major dirt bag when I'm out here, but I still do take care of myself in some way. I wash my face every day. I do my little skincare routine. It's two or three products, but it's something. And speaking of beauty routines, it's pretty wild how when you get out to places like this where you know there's nothing and no one and you don't get the incessant kind of pressure to look a certain way, smell a certain way. All of that stuff falls away so quickly. You just stop caring. You do not care. couldn't care less about, you know, what filler would do to your lips or how you would look if you had Botox injected into your face. None of that stuff matters. You realize how little it actually matters.
All right, it's time to leave. The trail I had been following told me to head west, but I drove south because on a map I spotted a trail that had a very cool name and I just needed to follow it. Well, this is pretty exciting. So, if you look at those two mountains, there's a pass that goes right in the middle of them, right through them. And it's called the Cobra Pass, which sounds very cool. So, I'm that's where I'm headed to the Cobra Pass. The little things I feel like that's part of the adventure. No, leaving the welltrodden path behind in favor of a hunch, a feeling, or just a glimpse of something more exciting around the corner. Okay, this looks, you know, the problem with the camera is
that it never shows you just how steep something is. This is actually a really steep little drop, and I'm not convinced that I feel safe. I'm sure it's fine, but I'm gonna see if I can find a way around it. I did see a faint little track right there. So, I'm guessing that's a little detour. Let's go check it out. Okay, there we go. All done. Haha. Well, that was quick. The sandstorm I got a glimpse of the night before suddenly came back with a vengeance. Once I got so far that turning back around was no longer viable, the wind sped up and the sand raged all around me. That wind is really blowing and
we're going right into the storm. You cannot see the track right now because of all the sand that's blowing towards me, towards us. So, I'm just going to have to stick to my uh GPS tracks as close as possible. Wow, this is pretty wild. At times I couldn't see any tracks in front of me. But once in a while a sign popped up from the dust warning me about landmines and military zones all around. So the guys at the military checkpoint told me that I can't continue along my intended route that I have to turn uh north a little earlier because where I wanted to go is a military zone. So I can't go there. However, we've got one cool thing coming up. Completely unexpected water.
What the heck? I did not see that coming. We're completely covered in water. Holy I just need to make sure that Odyssey is fine. No, no, no, no, no. Stay there. Holy Okay, it's not very deep, but because of the wind, that splash was so intense. Holy crap. Oh my god, this is horrific. These are really, really bad conditions to drive in. And I really hope that I'm on the right road because yeah, these are not tracks that I don't have these tracks. One thing that I find worrying which is that just as I did that water crossing
um this light switched on. I don't know if you can see it right here. Uh this is the light to tell me that the diff lock is on, but it is not on. So, I don't know why it's telling me that it's on because certainly it is not on. I hope I didn't break anything. Oh, holy This is a pretty intense track. Oh. Oh my god. I think I just need a minute to calm down. I think we both need a minute to calm down. Oh my god. This is really intense. I have no idea where I'm going. Okay, let's keep going.
A driving through remote Sahara in a sandstorm. This is an experience I did not know I signed up for. What am I doing here? I'm all alone. Another half hour and I knew I'd be leaving the dirt road and along with it the most pressing dangers of getting lost in the sandstorm, but also I'd be leaving behind the freedom that comes with traveling off road. And there it is, asphalt. You know, every time I step off the dirt and onto asphalt, I feel like I'm leaving behind this kingdom that's mystical and available to the select few, you know, full of magic and wildness and a place where you can really be feral.
And on the one hand, I feel like a giddy kid, like I'm just a little kid in, you know, wonderland. On the other hand, I feel like in the last 5 days, I've aged like 10 years covered in dust, dirty, smelly, but it's been really amazing. Um, the last 5 days or so have been just incredible. And then the days before that, I've been on dirt for a while. Anyhow, I need to prepare for the next stage of this journey. And the next stage is going to be quite demanding, a little dangerous. So, I want to make sure that I'm really well prepped for it. Um, but yeah, it's going to be a really exciting one. Very different. Okay, let's find a place to stay for tonight and then keep going. In the next episode, I drive across what is known as
the world's longest minefield, following yet another long and remote off-road trail. And when I say mines, I do mean landmines. Millions of landmines.
