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

Exploring the history of the world's largest arid land is a hugely diverse venture

Last updated: June 04, 2020 | 10:13

2 MIN READ

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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".

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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".

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