I Remember Bidon 5

The camel caravan has disappeared from the long trails of the Trans-Saharan routes and the Land Rovers have created new routes and new places.

The lines across the Great Desert of the Sahara have furnished an economic and political link between settled and increasingly important northern Algeria and the undeveloped areas of the Niger Basin.

From bidon to bidon for over five and a half hours: this is a memory I would rather forgo. It ranks with the flashback of my family and I who got lost in the Sahara Desert for seven days. I was seven years old.

Bidon 5 was a desert halt in the Sahara Desert.

I used to travel every summer through the Sahara, through the Tanezrouft and Bidon 5. I remember on our first night of our crossing of the desert, we stopped at a well right in the heart of the Sahara Desert known simply as Bidon 5. One could easily get lost and perish for lack of water. 

Wrapping my scarf around my face to shield my eyes from the sand and dirt, I climbed and reached the top of the Land Rover.

An endless line of dunes stretched out to the horizon; to either side, a landscape of boundless sandy plains and low dunes, pin-sharp in the limpid light of the Sahara.

Travelling through Tanezrouft in a Land Rover is not a zen-like voyage: the booming and grinding, the constant tremors rippling through the body, the grit swirling through your hair in the hot breeze, the desert sun pricking your eyelids.

Imagine travelling hundred miles into the Sahara Desert in a Land Rover, then getting off before dawn in the middle of the desert, praying you have stopped at the right Bidon 5 stop!

It is known as Bidon 5 because its sign board was an empty gas-can with the numeral 5 painted upon it. Bidon is French for 'gas-can'

Our progress through the Sahara Desert was slow. We got stuck and we had to dig our way out several times. The heat was devastating. 

When we reached Bidon 5, a desperate little waterhole, my uncle sat off by himself and he let the engine cool for five hours. 

My uncle decided to stay for the night.

I was lying on my side on a blanket. I was thinking about the oasis. I was already far away from Niger, Niamey, the French school, the tap water, the electricity... 

Another life was waiting for me at the oasis. Another summer time, another summer holiday!