On a caravan, with one of the Sahara's last European explorers

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Climbing into the saddle, he adjusts the scarf protecting his head from the sun and, with a tap on the camel's back, the caravan sets off. Image Credit: AFP

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Thierry Tillet is again off to explore the vast Saharan desert, at the head of a nine-camel convoy with three other riders. Image Credit: AFP

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At 68, the Frenchman is one of the last European explorers since the end of the 19th century to dedicate much of his life - 47 years - to crisscrossing the Sahara. Image Credit: AFP

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This expedition, which began before the coronavirus epidemic, starts and ends at two desert jewels in central Mauritania. Image Credit: AFP

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From Tichitt, the convoy is headed east to Oualata, 300 kilometres (185 miles) away, travelling in single file over a sandy, rocky landscape. Image Credit: AFP

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For the first time, Tillet - or Ghabidine, as a Tuareg friend renamed him - is taking journalists along "so that this knowledge reaches the general public". Image Credit: AFP

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Perched on the back of his swaying camel, Tillet wears an old, holey T-shirt and worn sandals. Image Credit: AFP

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With his tousled, white hair and stubbled chin, it's easy to forget he's an authority in his field. Image Credit: AFP

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For many years he was a member of the anthropology laboratory at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Image Credit: AFP

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He was also professor of prehistoric archaeology at Grenoble University and taught in Chad, Niger and Mali. Throughout, he would go back and forth to the Sahara. Image Credit: AFP

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He has documented Neolithic civilisations, overseen the inventory of Malian archaeological sites and discovered a dinosaur skeleton in the Tenere desert in Niger. Image Credit: AFP

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"Sometimes, small fragments of discovered tools contain more information than a dinosaur, even if it's less spectacular," Tillet says. Image Credit: AFP

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This desert is "the place where I feel the best, where you can't go wrong", he says. Image Credit: AFP

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For next year he is planning his longest route so far, at more than 1,000 km, back in the Sahara, with its many silences but, as he says, "where it's never boring". Image Credit: AFP

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