The desert effect

When I think about it, I've seen quite a few deserts in my time. There were the dunes I sandboarded on in Huacachina. I remember looking over the top of the dunes and feeling nothing but desolation. It took me *forever* to walk up the dune. I was too cheap to pay for the "chairlift" - a plastic schoolchair pulley system powered by a tractor. At the top, I slipped my feet through some laughable rope bindings on a waxed plank. I looped my camera strap around my shoelace and attached it to the plank. 10mins later, I was at the bottom of the dune :) All that effort resulted in loads of sand in body crevices sand was never meant to exist in! *lol*

There was the Burning Man playa in Black Rock City, Nevada. Flat as far as the eye could see. Never a still moment. In fact, I had issues trying to pee on the playa at night. Simply because no matter how far I wandered, the desert was lit up by glow-in-the-dark people, bicycles and vehicles!

Then there's the Sahara. The burnt tangerine dunes, the cloud scudded azure sky. My camel plodding tracks in the sand. It's quiet, and I literally felt the ambiance being soaked up by my soul. The sun starts to set real fast, and the sky changes into the most amazing hues of yellow, orange, red and purple.

I've always thought sunrises and sunsets were the same all over the world. None of them particularly memorable. From the top of a volcano in Maui, to the summit of Mt Kinabalu, to the top of a ruin in Tekal, to the background choons of Cafe Mambo... I take it all back. Sunset at the Sahara from the top of a camel hump won my heart over. Colours have never been soo violently vivid for me.

I don't really think my pix do it justice, but here goes. It's a mix of sunset and sunrise at the Sahara:

Next on my desert list - Skeleton Coast in Namibia looks awesome :)