BEAR FACED

EXTREME CAMPING

Have you ever been stung on the… er, the backside by a mosquito the size of a hummingbird? I mean, for all I know it actually was a hummingbird that got me near Ain Salah in the Sahara; a vampire desert hummingbird. Whatever it was, I was reminded of its attentions and those of its friends every time I sat down for a week after our night camping at the palmeries.

Ain Salah is quite a pleasant sort of place, but then again any place would look pleasant if you had just covered near enough to 700km from Ghardaia without seeing anything other than sand. This is the real desert, and when we were there the road was a narrow ribbon of poorly maintained tar, swallowed regularly by peripatetic sandhills which challenged the XS1100 Yamaha Mrs Bear and I were riding. Not that the bike was short of power, but there is only so much soft, windblown sand any bike can manage.