"No Way!" said the police officer in Zouar. "You must take a guide, there are land-mines all around! You need to have somebody who knows the area."

"But we do not want to take a guide! We have a Global Positioning System (GPS), detailed maps and route descriptions with us and we will find the way by ourselves" we said.

"If you don't want to take a guide, we will have to ask the Minister for Tourism in N'Djamena, the capital, for permission. Maybe we will have his answer in two weeks. However, if you give me the money and take the guide, you can have your passports back and you're free to go!"

My friend Paul Noy, on a Yamaha TT 600 and myself, Guido Wagner on a Honda XR 600 left Switzerland in February 1997. Our intention was to drive from Switzerland all the way down to Cape Town on motorcycles. After traversing Italy and Tunisia alone, in Libya we met up with two Austrians, Ralf and Horst travelling Africa in a truck. From there we drove to the Northern Chad mountain range of Tibesti, the biggest and highest mountain range in the immense Sahara. Zouar, the first 'city' you come across in the Tibesti, is located in a beautiful valley. On the map, it looks like a city but in reality it is a village of about 500 inhabitants, most of them living in huts made of wooden poles. There's no running water, no tarred roads and no electricity. When the sun goes down the only light is provided by a few scarce torches.

We are negotiating with this PA (Poste Administrative), who is the chief of the village, in his dark 'office'. Fortunately, we are fluent in French, otherwise we would be lost. There is just one old table and one old chair, both are for him. We sit on a ballot-box. There are local men going in and out of this tiny room, as if it were in a public bar. We don't yet realise they all want to be our guides and are trying to influence the police officer.

The first thing the officials do once a tourist appears, is lead them to the police station and take away their passport, so they have them under their control. We want to leave the same evening so we take a guide. He costs an enormous amount of money compared with the average Chadian salary. He will be of little help, but there is no other solution. As a tourist, you have to exchange the guide in every village, so all the villages can earn "a little bit of money".

We squeeze him into the cab soon find out his English is very limited. He has brought no food for the next couple of days which means he expects us to cook for him. He has, however, brought a lot of luggage, including a big sack of shoes he tries to sell at every opportunity. He also has with him a bottle of Chadian whisky, and we soon find out he has an alcohol problem. This home-brewed poor quality whisky makes you blind if you drink it regularly. We name it Kerosene. He offers us some, but we have tasted Pure Single Malt Whiskies and he can't convince us about its quality. He seems to find it quite O.K.

After leaving Zouar, we spend two days in a rocky dried out river canyon, where we relax and enjoy the beautiful landscape. A couple of men of the Tubu, the local Arab population, come over to chat and ask for presents. If you offer them a cigarette, they take two. Our guide Mohammed recommends us to remain very careful all night long, because they might try to steal our things. We don't doubt him, since we know that four months ago a German tourist, travelling alone through Northern Chad with his motorcycle, was the victim of an armed robbery. His money, all his equipment, everything was stolen. They left him with his life and his bike. They can't use bikes, they are too difficult to drive in the sand. When darkness comes, we unpack the Night Sight binoculars of our Austrian friends, but we see nobody. We put a couple of big stones on the roof of the truck where we sleep, to throw on potential thieves. We keep watch and chat for a couple of hours but eventually all fall asleep. In the morning, nothing is stolen.

We continue our trip, passing a well with clear water. Mohammed says, it's not yet necessary to fill up our jerrycans with water. Later, there will be other possibilities. We take his advice.

We pass blown up tanks, trucks and vehicles, ammunition for rifles or rockets, sometimes fully intact; remnants of the twenty-year war between Chad and Libya, that ended in 1994. The route continues north east, only a few wheel-tracks visible through the sand. The sun disappears behind the clouds, the wind starts to blow stronger and the remaining wheel-tracks vanish. But there is no reason to worry. We have a guide, we think. He directs us. All around us, it looks pretty much the same, flat sand. After a while we check the display of the GPS and find, we have done an immense U-turn. The guide had been gradually nudging round to the left. He must have lost his bearings when the sun disappeared. We show him the route we have taken on the screen of the GPS. He gets angry and kicks the GPS with his shoe. From then on, we ignore him and drive according to the GPS and our opinion and later on find ourselves back on the track . The next day, the GPS will stop working.

We continue for the whole day to the Natron Hole, a vast extinct volcanic crater. We meet nobody on the way but I count twelve dead camels at different points next to the track. We arrive at the crater rim late in the evening. By this stage we have just three litres of water left. Mohammed searches for water but without any success. He reassures us that there is water at the bottom of the crater. But the crater descends to a depth of 900 meters. The next village is still a one day drive away. We have no option but to climb down into the crater. The next morning, we start the descent. We have one liter of water remaining, and we leave it to Ralf, who stays up at the truck and the bikes to watch them. For two hours, we follow a steep narrow track downwards, everybody having an empty ten liter jerrycan in their hand for the water. We arrive at the bottom and see some men sitting under a tree.

"Who sent you, how many are you and what is your mission?" are their first questions. They are armed with rifles and it seems they still have the war in their heads. After explaining that we are tourists and what a tourist is, they tell us that there is no water in the crater. But our guide seems to know better and continues walking onward to the far side of the crater. There we find clear water bubbling up from the ground. It smells a bit weird but we haven't drunk anything for the whole morning so, after watching the guide drink his fill, we assume that can't be too bad and start to gulp it down. It's salty but our raging thirst enables us to ignore our taste buds. After a short, warm bubble bath, we start the three hour ascent back to the vehicles. An hour later we all clasp our stomachs and drop our trousers. It soon turns out to be Natron Water, which cleans up your stomach and produces instant diarrhea.

By this time, we have been walking under the Sahara Sun for about four hours. We haven't eaten anything since yesterday night and have only drunk salty water which is giving us chronic diarrhea. We start to lose strength fast. There still are hours of climbing to do, each of us carrying ten kilos of water. Although we know it will make the situation worse, we have to drink more salty Natron Water. We are THIRSTY.

We bump into a Tubu man going rapidly downwards. He says there IS good water, and looking down, he shows me where: at a part of the crater we haven't visited. We didn't have the energy or the time to go and search there.

I get weaker and walk slower but I force myself to continue. The sun goes down and my friends are out of reach in front of me. It is almost dark. I am sitting on a stony path drinking Natron Water and letting it out behind again. I start talking to myself "I can't walk any more... You have to!! But I have no more force..." and so on. I finally continue fifty meters, have a break, continue fifty meters and have a break until Ralf , who has been waiting the whole day at the vehicles, comes down the path with a torch and helps me. This night I sleep with a dry tongue.

The following morning, I shake the last drops of good water out of the empty jerrycans and get maybe one deciliter of water to wet my mouth a bit. From now on, this guide is not our closest friend. We drive seemingly endless hours before arriving in Bardai, the main village of the Tibesti. Although we are desperate to quench our thirst, the officials first make us go to the police station before we can drink something. Our passports are taken away and we are given another expensive guide, an old man, who speaks nothing but Arabic and Tubu. Only then are we able to drink. We stay for two days in Bardai to fill up our jerrycans and to take advantage of the few provisions we are able to buy.

The old man is a relief. He knows the route and shows us some rock carvings on the way. Before Zoumri, the next village, the rear drive shaft of the truck breaks. We are able to continue, the front wheels pulling us through the sand, while the rear wheels roll behind without power. It takes us two days in Zoumri to repair it. The old man leaves us when we arrive saying he will walk the 120 kilometres back. We want to stay 200 meters outside the village, but they say for security reasons it would be better to come inside the village. We will then have to rent a house and a guardian. We ignore them and remain outside the village. On the first day we are in the village a black guy from the South of Chad shows us the three shops in the village. Unfortunately there is no food to buy. He takes us to a hut where they might sell us a chicken. The girl there says she will sell us one for 3000 CFA, but we have to catch it for ourselves. We refuse and offer 2500 at the next hut on the condition that the girl there catches the chicken. She agrees and spent several minutes trying to get her hands on the terrified chicken using an old towel. Eventually the chicken tires and she traps it.

After two days, the village chief lets us know that he wants to see us in his office the following morning at eight. So, the next morning, we are in front of the closed office sitting on a stone at eight. Nothing is happening, apart from a boy that hangs around, saying "He will come, he will come". Punctuality here is not a big preoccupation, we know that. At eight thirty, a man in a arab robe walks down from the nearby hill. He has a long beard and big frizzy hair. We call him Moses because it looks like the scene in the bible when Moses descends from the mountain with the ten commandments. He opens up the office and as everybody is seated, he asks us why we have come. We reply that it was he who asked us to come. He starts on the now familiar discussion of the price of a guide while absentmindedly searching for something in his desk drawers. Sitting by the side of his desk I can see that there is absolutely nothing inside, except a needle and a thread. The needle is in fact what he is searching for. While he is speaking with us, he takes off his worn out sandal and starts to repair it. He informs us that the security situation has deteriorated and bandits are in the area, so we really have to rent the house and the guardian now, or he can't guarantee our safety anymore. We interpret him as saying "we want the money for a house and guardian or we will steal your things at night". We decide to leave immediately, the truck now back in working order. We take our new guide, a young Tubu, Hissin who knows the area quiet well and head towards Yebbi Bou . He shows us the craters of exploded grenades just besides the track. We have to remain strictly on the track, if we don't want to be blown up ourselves. During the evening, discussing around the fire, the young guide explains that there are no real guides with their own car, speaking foreign languages, having navigation instruments and maybe cooking for you. The PA might just give you a man who has to go your way.

If someone wants to drive from Europe to South Africa or vice-versa, they have to cross the Sahara somewhere. There are seven more or less common routes. The Mauretania route is currently the most commonly used by overlander travellers. I did this two years before. The Libya-Chad route we took this time, is one of the most difficult ones. Officially, you're not allowed to leave Libya this way. You travel 800 km without fuel station or water. Administrative chaos, corrupt police officers, landmines and orientation difficulties are just some of the problems you will be confronted with.

One day later, we are in Yebbi Bou, and they lead us into a fort, where we have to stay for the night. There are 2,5 meter high rockets leaning on the wall. "They left them here as a reserve" the guardian said. He wants to know if we have a battery for him, because his is empty. Asked after the purpose, he says he needs to radio through, that we have arrived in his village. We are the first tourists they have seen in three months. "They will know this group of two motorcycles and a truck in N'Djamena. Every village has to report about foreigners" he says. After this, we certainly have no battery the size he wants. Early the next morning, there is a loud discussion amongst some Tubu men. When we come to the office to talk about the new guide, another big discussion with us. We are informed the following: the PA has elected one man as our guide. Another man wanted to be our guide too, but he was turned down by the PA, although he threatened to shoot at us. And now this man has left the village with a rifle, running in the direction we want to drive to. Somewhere he will wait for us, behind the rocks of the valley we have to go through. So we are accompanied by the PA with his pick up with one soldier with a Kalachnikov standing on the platform. After seven kilometers, we discover him on the right side up in the rocks. We are ordered to drive away fast and continue to follow the track. We don't know what happens to him afterwards. With the new guide Adum we receive in Yebbi Bou, we can communicate with a mixture between his limited French and our limited Arab, and somehow we understand each other. He is a nice guy, but he is afraid of spiders and scorpions. One morning when the truck starts to drive, there are three scorpions running away. And that particular night, I have slept right next to the truck on the floor in my sleeping bag. The temperatures were that high, we didn't put up the tent. At noon, we sometimes measure up to 43 degrees Celsius. The guide starts to pray, if he sees a spider. They have 10 cm diameter. They are lethal, he says. And they run after you. And they are FAST. So we step on it with the Moto Cross Boot. Paul would call them 'Agressor'. And then it happens, what we have foreseen but never wished it happened to us: what do you do if your truck is stuck in deep sand and the starter stopped working a couple of days ago already? And you're standing in the middle of a 'oued', a valley, and you should never do that in the Sahara because of sudden flash flood /wall of water , caused by a thunderstorm 50 kilometers away you don't even notice. Suddenly you and your car are brushed / swept away.

Because N'Djamena, the next possibility to repair the starter, is 2000 kilometers away, we always restart it by driving on a little hill in the evening and let the truck roll down in the morning. But when you're stuck in deep sand, you can't let roll anything anymore. Furthermore the trick with the rope around the wheel and four persons pulling on it and starting the engine like that, doesn't work either. So over night, our Austrian friends take the starter out, part it into pieces, repair it and put it in again. And it works. In the morning, we can continue towards Faya, the center of Mid-Chad and the first city with electricity and cold beer. Looking at the fact, that Chad five years ago still was the poorest country of the planet, we understand that everybody wants to earn 'a little bit of money'. In the Tibesti, they say, there are almost no other possibilities. But the Tibesti has a chance. They could certainly have a piece of the cake from the Sahara-tourism that can't go to Algeria anymore and now goes to Libya. But under the conditions we found, Tibesti will never be a major spot for the desert explorer.

by Guido Wagner