The Sahara has always intrigued me
largely because it's so close to Europe,
it's just the other side of the Mediterranean,
and yet we know it as well as we know the surface of the moon.
So it's a mystery. We have images of sand and palm trees,
and I just wanted to find out what more there was to it.
It's the size of the United States,
and I wanted to see how varied it was,
and to meet the people who lived there.
There was a touch of bravado as well.
I knew it would be physically demanding,
but I needed a challenge to show I haven't gone soft.
But it was mainly curiosity about a place that's so close,
and a word we know so well,
and yet we know little more than that.
We filmed in eight countries,
in some of the biggest countries in Africa,
places like Algeria and Libya.
We started in Gibraltar -
you know, a little enclave of Britishness
which is only about 300 miles away from the desert -
and went through places like Morocco, Senegal and Mali.
So about eight countries in all.
We were away altogether about four and a half months,
but it's a very difficult area to film in one go
because you have a lot of bureaucracy
and there are certain times of year
when it's impossible to film -
during high summer for instance.
The temperature goes up to the mid-50s.
The real problems are mainly just accessibility -
it's just getting out to the place where you want to film.
There are really no roads, so you have to find tracks,
and go at the time of year when the sand is solid enough.
Some places, we tried to mix and match transport.
We found an iron ore train
that crosses Mauritania, carrying iron ore to the coast.
People sit on the iron ore trucks
and there's a little thing at the end
which looks like a waste-recycling bin
which is actually first class and where they take passengers.
Other areas, we just travelled with camels.
One of the problems once we were there is just blowing sand.
The wind blows all the time
because the Sahara's fairly unprotected.
There was sand in the camera, in your underwear, in the food.
So keeping the camera equipment clean
and making sure that all the technical material we had
survived the sand and the wind
was a really tough job, and the crew did brilliantly.
They've never had to work on anything so difficult before.
I found that we had very few problems
with working in Islamic countries.
You have to obey a different set of rules generally,
but hospitality is very important
to the people who live out there.
The first thing they must do is to make you feel welcome,
to share what little food they have with you...
We went and stayed in a refugee camp,
and lived in the mud buildings of the family themselves.
They had children to look after, relatives as well,
but they still insisted on looking after us.
So I never felt uneasy
except in areas where there were security problems,
especially in Algeria
where we were warned that we were very much targets
as Western journalists.
We were protected there,
but there was a kind of frisson of danger
to go into a place like that.
Everybody was friendly. Despite the fact that we filmed there
during September 11th,
there was no animosity towards us.
After September 11th, people were anxious to reassure us
that they were friendly and wanted to see us out there.
Generally, people are interested if you're interested in them.
We're not doing a political, judgmental programme,
we want to talk to the people who live in the Sahara
about how they live, about how similar we are,
and I think people respond to that.
There were one or two moments
where I felt a sense of "Oh, my God!
"Where are we? And how are we going to get out?"
Generally speaking, we...
We engaged the people to show us around who know the desert,
but there were one or two moments.
We had very strong sandstorms in Mauritania,
and there were one or two places where we got completely lost.
Landmarks disappeared, and even the people who knew the desert
were saying, "It's over there. No, it's over there."
And I wondered, "What does happen if we get stuck?"
And the other time when I got quite shaken up
was when I was walking with the camel train
across the Ténéré Desert - part of the Sahara that's in Niger.
It's one of the hottest parts of the Sahara.
I decided to walk with them. The camera crew had all gone on,
and I thought, "This'll be fine."
The camels go at a regular rate, it's a fairly steady pattern.
I stopped to write in a notebook
and realised that three or four camels had gone on ahead.
Later, I stopped for a swig of water, a few more had gone on.
I realised that as fast as I moved, I couldn't catch them up,
and even if I caught up a little way,
I suddenly felt the intensity of the heat,
and I realised I didn't know the language these people spoke.
We just sort of talked to each other -
one of us spoke a bit of French - but mainly by gesture.
I couldn't see the guy at the front and I was slipping back,
and I'd heard how quickly you become dehydrated
once the water runs out,
and people don't survive more than a day in that sun,
and I thought, "God! If they just go on a bit further,
"it may be too late!" It was all right,
but I knew what it was like to be dehydrated
and run out of water in the Sahara!
There are a number of tribes right across the Sahara.
In fact, the country boundaries don't mean very much,
especially in the centre,
so we spent time with a number of small tribal groups,
one group particularly called the Wodaabe.
They're nomads and every year they walk with their cattle
south to where the water is
and back north to where they came from when it gets cooler.
They walk enormous distances so I tried to walk with them
to see what it was like to live like that, on the move.
You never spend more than six or seven days in one place.
They move everything.
We had these very natty little tents
that sort of scrumple up into a tiny ball,
and sleeping bags that go into a bag the size of a tea cup,
but they had proper beds, even though they had to carry them
every six or seven days.
They were lashed on top of a donkey -
beds with four posts -
because that was a status thing for them.
So it was interesting to work out how they lived.
Various tribes that we were with...
There was also a tribe called the Dogon
who live right down in the southern part of Mali.
They ran from the Islamic invasions and hid in the rocks
and have been cut off from the world for about 600 years.
Now people are visiting them,
but their way of life is wonderfully strange
and different,
and their idea of how the universe was created
is something that really sort of shakes you.
They all laid on dances and things.
The celebration's very important.
And I remember thinking with the Dogon people,
"They've laid on a nice celebration for us.
"They're all dancing."
Then we went back to our camp where we'd put our tents up,
and we could hear them dancing for the rest of the night.
It was clearly for them and not for us.
I think after we'd gone, they got out the millet beer,
and their party went on for about four or five days.
Again, that was an insight into how people relax,
how they enjoy themselves, the importance of ritual.
So three or four separate tribal groups.
We were working and living with the Touareg for a week -
just walking with the camels or filming the camels.
That was interesting. They have a different language
and we'd have language courses in the evening.
They'd teach me Tamahaq which is their language,
so I learnt various things like "Izzot",
and I taught them things like "Bottoms up"
which they got the hang of very quickly.
Some of the great memories of the journey
were really about the sense of isolation and space,
and silence.
I remember one particular time in the Hoggar mountains
which are about 9,000 feet up.
The Sahara has three big mountain ranges.
And the Hoggar, as I say, are 9,000 feet up,
and sunrise and sunset there are absolutely magical,
because the mountains themselves are so extraordinary.
They're like the cores of old volcanoes,
all twisted in different directions,
and there's nobody there. You're on your own.
I suppose some of the other moments
were being with the Touareg, walking with the camels,
and just seeing this vast, open area
where one tree becomes like a village or a house -
it becomes that important.
Most of the time there's nothing,
just moving along very slowly.
It's so elemental and so basic,
it starts you thinking about yourself.
I can understand why Judaism, Christianity and Islam
all came from the desert,
because you start thinking inside yourself
because outside there's nothing to see.
So there were moments like that,
and I suppose the evenings we spent with the Touareg
trying to teach other the language -
a lot of laughter there which I'll remember very fondly.
I suppose other things
were being able to go somewhere like Algeria
that's very, very hard to film in.
I think we were one of the first
to get permission to film there for a long while.
We went into the Casbah. Anyone who's seen "The Battle of Algiers"
knows about the importance of the Casbah
in the Algerian Revolution against the French.
That was the heart of the resistance
and it's still a hot bed of violence and revolt,
so we had armed guards discreetly hidden.
I remember going in. We were told to be very careful,
you never know what might happen.
We were just about to go into the Casbah
when suddenly there was this terrific noise
of a vehicle coming round the corner and shouting,
but it turned out to be a wedding party,
and there were some people playing in the back of the van.
They were playing little pipes and drums and smiling at us.
I was told that we were probably the first Western journalists
to film there for six or seven years,
and I feel privileged to have done that.
I've always...
One of the reasons why I wanted to do the Sahara
was because I'd heard that it was magical and strange,
and it wasn't just flat, sandy plains,
and I'm glad to say that was proved to be exactly right.
Not only are there mountain ranges,
there's also lakes, there are rivers.
The River Niger flows right into the centre of the desert.
It flows up to Timbuktu which we went to.
The beautiful sand dunes that you see on date packets -
the sort of classic Sahara -
only comprise about 15 per cent of the land area,
and they are beautiful.
The sand seas where there's just the wind blowing the grains
into the most beautiful shapes is wonderful to see,
but deadly to cross because the sand is so soft.
Vehicles get stuck up sand dunes and almost tip over.
It's best not to touch, just to look, and it is fantastic.
A lot of it is very rocky.
There are some wonderful escarpments
and volcanic cones of mountains like the Hoggar.
So it was always different.
We went quite long distances in our vehicles
and every time I looked up, it looked different.
I said, "Where's that mountain gone?"
or "Why are we in a ravine?"
And there IS wildlife there.
You don't see much of it,
but suddenly one night we were with the Touareg
and they found this baby gazelle
that had been born the night before.
I thought, "Gazelles in the Sahara?!"
but there are wild gazelles and this baby was discovered
so there are lots of surprises.
The Sahara was the hardest journey that I've ever done.
Maybe because I'm getting older,
but in logistical terms it was the most difficult.
There aren't creature comforts in the Sahara, basically.
There aren't hotels where you can go and rest up
while you have four or five hard days.
A lot of the time was spent camping.
More than half the journey was spent in tents and campsites.
We couldn't film in the middle of the day
for about three or four hours,
just because it was incredibly hot.
In fact, the hottest sequence I've ever filmed
was done amongst the Dogon people who live near the rocks,
so the heat is reflected off the rock.
And we did this lunchtime sequence at 12 o'clock
in the open so the director could get the light in there.
Our soundman had a watch with numbers and gadgets on,
and he said it was 56 degrees centigrade
in the middle of that scene
which is 132 degrees Fahrenheit.
So I was burning on top, and the food was very hot as well,
and they kept laughing at me.
They said, "Here, it is a sign of a real man
"if you can eat hot food!"
I said, "Thanks very much! I'm not a real man today!
"I'm a cinder on a pile of ashes!"
So, um... I've never had heat like that before,
and I don't think I've ever had to film
only mornings and evenings
because of the intensity of the heat.
And as I say, just getting there.
No roads so you're bumping across very difficult terrain,
being thrown about a lot,
and if you get ill as I did - just a 24-hour bug -
it's awful because your body's like a Kenwood mixer,
just being thrown around.
But I survived!
Well, probably North London for a while!
Which is quite a dangerous area to live!
One or two ideas.
I don't want to go to extremes any more.
I'd like somewhere in the middle,
possibly nice four star hotels.
Something will come up. At the end of every journey I do,
I say, "That's the last journey",
and I'll say that for this one
because I don't think we could go through this again,
but the travel bug is something that once you're bitten by it,
you're infected.
After two or three weeks at home,
I start looking at the atlas, wondering where to go next.