Off Road

We had decided before we left Rabat that now we were a team we would try the 520km piste between Nouadibhou and Atar which we had read about. The route follows a train track which carries Iron ore from a mine to the port using the longest train in the world, which goes past the second-largest monolith in the world after Ayers Rock, named Ben Amira. Sounds pretty epic.

We had as much food and water as we could reasonably carry, and a theoretical range of 600kms each based on our fuel usage so far. But on the way I had a paranoid turn and decided that we didn’t have enough water, fuel or skills. I told Laas I did want to do it, but only if we took enough water for a full extra day and however much fuel we could get our hands on. He agreed.

At the village where the piste begins we asked about buying petrol, and ended up basically paying some young guys to drive to a petrol station for us. This meant we could leave the tarmac with brimmed tanks and an extra 6 litres on top of the extra 5 we were each carrying.

I felt confident.

We asked where the piste begins and were pointed over a small, sandy crest which Laas promptly and confidently got stuck in.

I felt less confident.

After helping me get Laas out one of the guys said he’d show us the way to the train tracks, and that it would be easiest to go straight down them and miss out the piste altogether.
“So if there’s a train we get out of the way slowly and carefully, right Laas? Don’t want to rush and fall…”
Thankfully there are no sleepers between the tracks, they’ve all been liberated long ago and now hold up most of the structures in the surrounding area, so it was a good chunky-gravel track with an extra whiff of deadliness for the first 20km or so.

Then Laas indicated we pull over, and we got off the tracks where told me my luggage was coming loose over the bumps. As I got off to sort it out I noticed the train coming straight down the tracks at us only 50 metres away. I had been in front, and supposed to watch for oncoming trains, while Laas was behind checking his mirrors. Somehow I had become fixated with the immediate track and forgotten to look for the distant trains… Luckily Laas had been looking for the both of us.

We got back on the track but it was becoming more and more rutted, then as we passed a small collection of huts a guy came out waving and shouting that we were idiots and that there’s a perfectly good piste nearby and to stop risking our lives. Laas told him it was too sandy.
Some miscommunication between Laas and I meant that I hopped of the track in search of the piste thinking he’d follow me while he carried on the tracks thinking I’d follow. I said I thought we should at least look at the piste and if we couldn’t hack it come back, and Laas agreed to the plan.

The piste was sweet, and we were blasting along at over 60kph, but I would slow right down for even small and shallow sandy sections as I didn’t have the confidence and while I knew the theory of how to ride sand, actually doing it was another matter. Laas had much more confidence and would zoom over them at high revs (as you’re supposed to) while I was still trying to get a feel for it.

Somehow I got caught out riding straight into a deep sand drift much faster than I was comfortable, panicked, tried to slow down and sent the front wheel into a violent right-left jerk and the front wheel dug in and jack-knifed, sending me over the handlebars with the bike flipping over and landing on me.

Laas later told me when he saw it happen he’d assumed I had broken my neck.

But before Laas had stopped after rolling past I was stood up and turning off the ignition. So the sand had been my undoing, but also my savior – it’s blow-cushioning qualities had meant I escaped with only pulled arm and shoulder muscles.

I lifted the bike up and looked it over. My sketchy home-made wooden pannier rack had snapped and lost one fixture and the left hand handlebar electrics had been jam-packed with sand. “I can sort that out in Atar” I said confidently as I noticed the front wheel wasn’t pointing forwards anymore…

As I held the wheel between by legs and pulled the bars straight I had to curse it by saying “As long as the headstock is still true in the frame…” No comment.

My bike and body both survived amazingly considering, I felt lucky to be able to carry on – and with a new goal, to tame the complex beast, sand.
There were a few more sandy stretches that day and starting slow and working up I began to feel and understand the forces involved. I was still slowing Laas up, but he understood.

The next day we set a team-best early-leaving-record and for a few hours kept a high average speed on some smooth piste. After lunch it became more and more just dune, and while I did have a few sketchy moments I was gaining real comprehension of techniques and confidence in them and myself. Any stalls, wobbles or lack of control were caused by a loss of faith or concentration, and I knew I had to think calmly and zen-like to succeed.

By the time the track became really deep with opposing ruts and banks made by 4x4’s I was in a kind of meditative trance and no longer needed to think, look or concentrate – I just went.
I realized Laas had fallen. I had already stopped for a couple of stalls and seen him have some very hairy-looking wobbles, but I could see the fall had a big mental effect. The fall became the first of many, and it was a downward mental spiral. Struggling all the time with his heavy bike was tiring him massively as well.

“I can’t do it. It’s just too heavy.” He said, referring to his luggage weighing down the back end, hampering the floating effect needed.

“You just need the zen.” I replied, knowing he could do it with more calm and confidence. But there was nothing I could say to help his mental funk.

He wanted to ride the tracks again, but I pointed out we hadn’t seen a train in over five hours and one must be due. He couldn't ride the piste, I wouldn't ride the tracks and we knew it would be sheer idiocy to seperate. I eventually settled for riding next to the tracks, which looked a simpler sand track.

But Laas was already a state. After paddling, digging, lifting and wrestling with his bike he had become exhausted.

Once we got to the tracks, a guy waved at Laas from a shabby hut, and by the time I arrived on the scene we had been invited in for tea. This was fate, heaven-sent or whatever you want to call it. Laas stretched out on the camp bed with crackly Mauritanian radio in the background, and we had milk and nuts as we were told about the guys job on the railroad while he was performing the complicated ritual of making a Mauritanian cup of tea.

We gave him a box of the green tea.

There could have been nothing better for our minds, bodies and spirits. The combination of genuine, warm hospitality in a harsh and alien environment, nourish- and refreshment, and a cool comfortable space out of the sun was perfect.

When we finally got back on the road (apparently it’s polite to take three cups of tea) there was only another hour of sunlight, but the mood was changed entirely.

I went to sleep that night watching a field mouse hopping and scurrying over our stuff from my bivi-bag, under the almost unbelievably strong moonlight.

The next day we were both In The Zone from the start, there were lots more dunes, and we dominated them all. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had with my pants on. We smashed it almost non-stop, pausing at the village by Ben Amira where a local kid got a photo of himself on Laas’ bike and we checked in with the local Gendarmerie (who weren’t best pleased when we told them we’d camped wild).

After the final stretch beyond civilisation at the village of Choum we were assailed by people selling food, drinks and petrol. We had tanked the five litres we were each carrying the day before, and I had the extra from the first village in my pannier. Or so I thought.

We got some bread, but I had said we didn’t need water or fuel. We were only 100kms from Atar, so carried on until I ran out of fuel. I calmly got off to get the fuel out of my pannier, and found the whole thing missing.

“I can fix that in Atar” I had said. Balls.

While the instinct was to stick together, by Laas sharing his fuel, but I reasoned that by doing that we could easily both run out of fuel and be stranded, and that the best bet was for Laas to go back to Choum alone, fill up and bring back spare for me.

We thought we’d probably only gone fifteen minutes from the village, so I said I’d ring Laas if he wasn’t back after 40 minutes (Choum had had the first mobile phone signal we’d seen for the three days). I found out after those forty minutes that I couldn’t call any numbers from Mauritania on my phone, and realized I didn’t have Laas’ new Mauritel number.

I saw one Hilux going from Choum to Atar, and they stopped to see if I was okay. I told them my friend was getting some petrol, but as soon as they were gone wondered if Laas had enough himself to get there...

After an hour and a half I was quite pleased to see Laas. I had also lost a full litre of water and my map.

Laas admitted that his eyes were getting very painful as the sand had been irritating his contact lenses, they were streaming more and more and we were both exhausted from two and a half days off-road riding.

Not long after Laas got into a huge slide on some gravel and when his back wheel gripped again I thought he was going to high-side it and be catapulted from the seat. Somehow he caught it, but only to go down low-side the other way. He was going at least 60 kph.

He skidded quite a way on his side and his foot was trapped under the bike when it stopped. I got to him, helped pull the bike off his foot and turned off the ignition. Luckily his protective gear had done its job and he was only shaken up.

He said he’d been riding with only about one-third strength vision, and by the look of his eyes I believed him. He washed out his eyes the best he could, lost both lenses in the wind (I found one) and carried on with just one.

We made it to Atar before dusk, but it felt ridiculous calmly explaining where had come from and were going at the police checkpoints back on the tarmac roads without describing any of our trials and tribulations – it had felt like a huge adventure, which we had narrowly scraped through.