A MONTH IN AFRICA
Travel behemoth Chris Scott tackles Africa’s deserty bit ably assisted by an Enfield Himalayan…
Travel behemoth Chris Scott gets to grips with Africa, and the Sahara.
ITHINK I’M IN love,’ said the German biker woman. Not with me of course. She’d just clapped eyes on my Himalayan outside the overpriced kasbah hotel where I’d chosen to spend the night in Morocco’s Atlas mountains. Compared with her Yamaha XT660Z – not much smaller than her burly partner’s Triumph XC Tiger – my Chennai thumper looked like a Dinky toy. As Marmite bikes go, it seems she too could see the potential. In the arid wastes of the Sahara, which I’ve ridden for nearly 40 years, reliability was always paramount. There’s too much else on your mind, so choosing a Himalayan for this trip had been a gamble. The original BS3 model from 2016 had been released in haste. So far, so Enfield. And anyway, I’d long been immune to their Bullet’s supposed retro charm. I’m not one to give bikes
cute names, or slather them in stickers, but the heavily revised BS4 wasn’t some dewy-eyed throwback. In fact, it didn’t resemble anything so much as a brutally functional Rokon left on a desert island with only an MZ for company. The Himalayan wasn’t another ‘adventure motorcycle’. I’m credited with coining that term, but its meaning has changed. ‘Travel bike’ is the new, less amorphous label and the Himalayan appeared to fit that category while gratifying my ‘just-enough-to-get-the-job-done’ preference. I bought one with 950 miles on the clock, fitted knobblies and throw-overs, crossed myself and set off for a month in Morocco’s High Atlas and the Sahara beyond.
A couple of days south of Tangier I pulled over at an 8000-foot col buffeted by near-freezing gusts of wind. Thousands of feet below was the hamlet of Anergui, perched on a bluff by a birch-lined stream, where a few hundred Berbers continue to eek out a living. Prior to the newly laid road I had just ridden if the clappedout village van couldn’t manage the climb the only way out was by mule, either over the pass or out through a narrow, flood-prone gorge. A challenge, then. There was a track through that gorge, but who knew what shape it was in after the winter, or if anyone even used it now there was a proper road? I asked around, weighing up the responses.
‘No problems. It’s about 34 kilometres to the junction. On a bike you’ll do it in an hour,’ advised one sage, while another counselled riding it alone was hazardous. With due deference to Opinion 2, I liked the assurance of Opinion 1. If things got sketchy I would turn around and head back. Decades of this sort of riding have made me good at this.
The following morning, as the spring sun lit the way ahead, the gorge provided me with a beautiful ride and a memorable way to christen the Enfield on the dirt. The long-stroke motor clawed resolutely up loose climbs and when gnarly cliffs pushed me towards a rock-strewn abyss I appreciated the slim and squishy Kriegas over four-foot wide alloy cabinets.
Eventually I joined a route I’d logged years ago on a Rally Raid CB500X, and continued deeper into the Atlas. Helped by the Michelin knobblies, the unassuming Himalayan railed the gravelly hairpins like a proper trail bike. At nearly 10,000 feet, about as
‘If your plane started spluttering and was forced down here your best plan was to save the last bullet for yourself’
high as roads get here, I shivered through the snow flurries and by the evening was down in the adjacent valley, huddled round a heater with the German couple.
Increasingly confident the Himalayan could deliver, I set about ticking off a list of possible new routes for my guidebook and tours. The great thing with ‘mainland Morocco’ (north of the Western Sahara) is distances are relatively short. With the right bike you can wing it up any rideable track and see where it goes. But I’m acutely aware of how easily things can go wrong out here, and when alone ride remote routes with caution. In search of a Unified Theory of Overlanding, I’d narrowed it down to a single word, and that word is ‘anticipation’.
Amzeria was another intriguing High Atlas village in my search for magical places. ‘Yes, there’s a good road there now. Turn left at the bridge,’ said the bloke in the lodge that night.
By the following mid-morning I was splashing along a river bed, regretting not getting a second opinion. Still, once your feet are soaked they can’t get any wetter and anyway the orientation felt right. Amzeria emerged as a disappointingly bleak huddle of flat
roofed dwellings beneath barren red slopes. I chugged through the village and over a snowy pass before freewheeling down to Skoura for a lunch break. By the time I reached a familiar oasis south of Ouarzazate my feet were dry.
Next day, another promising link track ended abruptly at a pass by a digger and a road-builder’s tent. With thunder rumbling through the ranges, I backed out of there quick before the slategrey clouds let loose. One more mountain recce remained, and it turned out to be the best yet. Some dots needed joining for a bike tour I was leading in a couple of weeks. Fuelled up, I followed a new road out of Igli, dodging fresh landslides as it snaked up and up into the hills, not far from the 13,700-foot mass of Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak. As the asphalt turned to dirt I found myself above the clouds among stunted, centuries-old junipers which had managed to evade the village woodcutter’s axe. Right on cue, a spur trail connected with a junction I’d logged a year earlier on a BMW G310GS. Dots duly joined, the unstoppable Himalayan merrily zinged its undercarriage on the long descent back to the main highway. It was time to turn south for the sharp end of the trip.
The overlanders’ desert camp near the humble village of Icht was an oasis of incongruity. French ladies-who’d-lunched bobbed in the pool while their pot-bellied spouses propped up Philippe’s bar, swapping tales of Land Cruiser and Hymer. In a far corner off compound a lone figure stood in the shade by his tent. It was Romat, a young Estonian, Cape-bound on his KTM 450 EXC. I cast my eyes over his gangly overlander with its hip-high saddle that looked thin enough to shave with. ‘Oh it’s not so bad, it’s the thicker version from the Six-day model,’ he affirmed.
He’d left Tallinn five months ago and had spent the winter following the Trans-europe Trail over to Ukraine, down to Greece and across to Portugal. He reckoned he’d covered 80% of Europe off-road. If he’d been any more hardcore, they’d use him as a tunnel-boring machine.
From Icht, he’d follow the Atlantic Highway before pole-vaulting into sub-saharan Africa from where there was no turning back. He carried a spare fuel pump, injector and clutch. Me, I had a spare pair of boxers. In fact, I’d brought two by mistake. One would have to go. Romat was curious about my 690-mile, all-dirt route down to Dakhla, the last town before the Mauritanian border. So was I. In 2015 I’d asked some intrepid Belgian overlanders if they’d mind burying me some fuel in the middle of the Western Sahara. This they’d done, sending me a GPS waypoint and a photo of my initials carved on an acacia: the Digtree.
‘March two metres north, and dig,’ said the message.
Two years later, riding a lithe but revvy Yamaha WR250R, I’d pulled up by a faint track stretching off into the wasteland. ‘Digtree: 250km,’ said the GPS.
‘Sod that’, I replied.
Not for the first time an exciting idea on Google Earth became intimidating when faced by navigating a desolate track alone for three days. Via that, Belgian executed, fuel cache. I reset the Garmin and continued west.
The question now was: how had the cans of Chinese plastic – let alone the fuel inside them – weathered their years under the sand? To reduce the risks, this time I’d arranged to meet up with old chum Colin, and Mark in his 4x4.
We’d be traversing a bleak region which writer and pioneering French aviator Antoine de St Exupéry had dubbed le Terre des Hommes – the Land of Men. The pitiless Saharawi nomads were a rapacious and feared foe. If your Aéropostale mail plane started spluttering and was forced down here your best plan was to save the last bullet for yourself.
A century later, this makes the Western Sahara (WS) sound more interesting than it is. As desert landscapes go, it’s a dreary, unpopulated plain where what few trees there are get bent southwards by the relentless northerlies. But both Mark and I were keen to see WS for ourselves. We planned to follow an old Dakar Rally route from 1995, but we’d also be crossing battlefields from
‘Not for the first time an exciting idea became intimidating when faced by navigating a desolate track alone for three days’
the 1970s Polisario War, which had seen Morocco annex this mineral-rich territory. One reason few come here is the enduring menace of land mines and unexploded ordnance.
Despite the gale which had blown round the clock since we met up, progress was good. We skimmed the Mauritanian border until, just 110 clicks from the Digtree, the semi-tubeless arrangement I’d reluctantly fitted to my front tyre failed. With no way to fix it reliably we turned for the coast – a five-hour ride at a tyre-preserving 30mph. Once again the Digtree would have to wait. Now with plenty of time to reach Marrakech for my bike tour, we took a leisurely ride up the Atlantic coast and near Agadir went our separate ways.
Ten days later the tour had passed without incident and I was back at Tan Med port. Perhaps because of my many Saharan misadventures over the years, even before that ferry pulled away champagne-like endorphins flooded my brain. Hamdullah, as they say out there. I’d scrapped through. Again.
Next morning the Himalayan thrummed up the Costa del Sol like it’d gained 5bhp. Was it the Repsol? Who knows, but at Fly & Ride’s Malaga depot I gave it a chummy pat on the tank. Despite my anxieties from the start I’d had a good feeling about this one. It felt solid. The Himalayan might look like a yeti, but it has the go-anywhere stealth of a snow leopard. No one was more surprised – or relieved – than me.