Michael Asher In 1986, Michael Asher and his wife Mariantonietta Peru set out to cross the Sahara from west to east, by camel and on foot. Asher was already a seasoned desert traveler who’d learned his camel skills in Sudan’s Darfur region. He met his wife — an aid worker and photographer — in Khartoum, but they’d only been married for five days when they ventured into the sands. Their...
I first read about Jasper Evans in a book by the explorer John Hare called Shadows Across the Sahara. Hare set out to retrace an ancient trade route from Lake Chad to Tripoli, a three month south-to-north crossing of the Sahara — 1,462 miles of barren desert known in the days of slavery as a place strewn with the carcasses of men and camels. The route was last crossed by Hanns...