The Stunning Sahara

As I write (on our little tablet - what a handy tool!), we're high above what has to be one of the world's most stunning landscapes. We got our first glimpse of Africa over the Mediterranean coast of Libya, surprisingly built up for the first bit - cities, intense agriculture and lots of roads. Rolling green hills surprised - I pictured dry, dusty and flat. These gave way to rockier mountains, maybe the Atlas range, deeply fissured, harder to navigate, and therefore less people. Further south these met a sand desert, and for a while there were irrigated circles dotting the encroaching sand.
Then... Nothing! Just vastness, first an ocean of sand dunes, each ogne and each group uniquely and exquisitely sculpted by wind. Then black rock escarpments, rippled stone with huge canyons and cliffs, looking giant even from 30,000 feet. And I was constantly struck by the scale and the emptiness of it, almost an hour of flying with no sign of humans, not even a track. Maybe there are nomadic people somewhere down there; if so, they must be adapted in some brilliant way.

I shot these pics above the border of Algeria and Niger, missing the dunes and the best mountains, but even through the very hazy plane window you might get a sense of the extraordinary colours: ochres, blacks, pinks, browns, and fantastic patterns. If you know my strange habit of exploring landscapes in Google Earth, you can imagine my joy in seeing a whole continent roll by live!