In November 2012, after two years of preparation and hard work, my truck MAN Kat1 A1 was released as a converted camper off-road.
It was a former minelayer of the Belgian army, purchased used at the end of his 20 years of service, and finally ready to start a new journey.
I decided to test it with a group of friends, so we left for Algeria, a wonderful country in which I have been for 3 times.
The trip started from Genoa, where we took the ferry that brought us to Tunis. Then we crossed half the country and we have entered Algeria at the border post of Taleb Larbi.
After a long drive on the Trans-Saharan Road, we went into the area called Adrar Hanet to explore it. Adrar Hanet is a vast desert characterized by Erg of sand dunes.
There we spent an entire week in complete solitude, no meetings, not even the Touareg nomads who live in this desert. Probably their absence was due to the lack of water of the period; certainly they moved to better areas to allow their herds to survive. We crossed many Erg along the way, each of them with the sand of different colors, from light beige to orange, even purple sand areas.
During the last day of 2012 one of our trucks has slipped into a deep hollow of soft sand while searching for a path through the dunes.
With great difficulty, after about 4 hours of work‚ we finally managed to pull it off and put it safely. Our efforts were rewarded with a fantastic sunset that burned the sands of a nearby barcana, where we decided to camp.
Once out from Adrar Hanet, we arrived in Tamanrasset, the Touareg ancient capital where we could rest and make supplies of water and fuel.
From here, we drove through the 80 kilometers of tracks to Assekrem, in the Hoggar, the place that Father Charles de Foucauld chose as his hermitage. There we met two monks, Father Edouard, living there for 40 years, and Father Zibi, a very jovial and generous person that offers a cup of hot tea with cookies to anyone who has the desire to climb up there at dawn.
Once we left Assekrem, in 5-days trip we reached Tunis, where we took the ferry and we came back to Italy.