By mid-morning, ants and black beetles were already out, scuttling about in the heat, as we left the thin rocky trail and headed into the sands, moving from vehicle civilized life to camel wilderness life.

In the Sahara, movement slowed to the speed of our 3 camels. We were to live at camel walking pace crossing over sand and and stone for a week. Camel walking when they get moving is a lot faster than one might think.

Trees appeared on the far horizon and crawled closer. Trees that were a hazy shadow, then became more distinct, sprouting umbrella like, dark green against brown baked ground, leaping from the sandy mini-wadis we passed in and out of. The desert was so quiet it hummed, strangely similar to Antarctica. Wind moved through the Acacia trees, changing the light. How is every part of the planet adapted to be alive in so different ways?

In the evening, a white teapot rested on the coals. Firelight streamed yellow into a starlit sky. Neptune and Saturn hung overhead, so close they were one shimmering star.

That first night, tethered camels chomped steadily through the darkness. Heat radiated out of the sand from the day. It was just the dunes and the sense of the earth turning beneath us. We realised, without drama, that we could live as nomads.

Walking across open land provided a sense of passage — over the earth and through time. Camel dynamics matter: big and in charge, medium and brown and complacent (the one we liked to ride best) and the small, young and shy. They were respectedly, black, brown and white, an easy formula to follow.

Foxes circled our camp at night, their tracks evident in the fresh morning sand, living in the cool and chasing their prey in the dark.

Getting up onto the camel in the morning was elevating, the camel doubled our height and the views expanded in all directions, doubled the dunes. From that height, the curvature of the earth seemed visible — subtle but undeniable. Six antelope passed, one still young, trailing along behind its mother, skittering over the rocks. In a wadi, sunburned white and bright orange rock contrasted with acacia trees, an azure sky, and a pale three-quarter moon.

By the third morning, black instant coffee tasted improbably good. Bread warmed over the fire, jam and Laughing Cow cheese softened into it. We climbed naturally aboard our ships of the desert and rolled away across the earth.

We had now settled into a rhythm. Our big red blanket becomes ours to lunch, dine and sleep on. Camels lunched at our feet. Tea was made by throwing leaves in a bowling pot over the coals. Camels hobbled off to graze on what plant and brush they could, and were brought back looking faintly contrite.

Loading camels became ritual rather than effort: hump pads, folded blankets, green plastic baskets balanced by instinct, ropes crossed and pulled tight. Then silence, broken only by more camel crunching of their lunch. Leftover bread, vegetable peelings, orange skins: all disappeared in the camels churning teeth.

Our camel herder does a million things, one at a time, with a quiet efficiency. Everything comes off the camels in an orchestrated order. It goes where it should. Our comfy blankets are laid out under the tree for dinner, then moved to nearby dune to sleep under. Nothing is hurried, everything gets done. It is 5 star service under the stars. Food is fresh cooked over coals, bread is made in the sand, fresh fruit buldges from bags.

We sleep when it is dark. We awake when the sun washes over us.

We moved through low dunes and unexpectedly green bushes, rolling along atop the camels. Lunch is tagine beneath a taliser tree. There are camel portraits, and then farewells. They are not pets, but they have personality, and they are good company.

Unladen, the camels, disappeared at a clip over black rocky desert. A motorcycle nomad herder follow them, briefly collapsing centuries into a single moment.

Our final camp is simple and complete: a sand blanket, a pad, a caftan, vegetables on the fire, endless sweet tea. A nomad arrives with his goats. Wealth here has a hierarchy — goats first, then a bigger herd of goats and a few camels. Then camels, lots of camels. The herds that we see of four hundred camels are serious wealth.

Meanwhile, the Nomad’s hut we visit holds little: a tipped over gas bottle, a broken plastic chair, an empty 5 litre water bottle, random wooden boards, squealing baby goats. He has four eggs and insists on cooking them for us.

“What, leaving already,” he asks? ‘You must have tea.”

He asks if we have goats? What is our tribe? With no goats and no tribe, how can we be happy?

The full moon is so bright it wakes us up under the stars. We hide inside your sleeping bags, the tent never having been pitched, the milky way is our blanket. Life feels very far away.

The final morning arrives quietly. A kettle bangs lightly. Mohamed gives a small wave. Dunes are soft as sugar, clean as ground cinnamon around and beneath us. Bread, cheese, jam. Black coffee. Again. We have learned to cherish even this.

With an actual threat of rain, we opt for a tour west, to the Big Dune. A vintage Land Cruiser threaded small rocks and along invisible trails. The driver feathered the wheel, never braked, never missed a gear. At a solar-powered well, camels and goats drank. We circled a massive dune — long, steep, convoluted. Wind and cloud made it feel alpine. From the top the view stretched without end, washing machine gray clouds above, glowing orange dunes below.

On our return to camp, Ostriches appeared, quick and wild — the red-legged male, his grey-white partner, luminous-eyed and alert.

At sunset, a final yellow dune glowed. A big fire. Tea taken like a cocktail, heavy with sugar. Wind and rain threaten but never quite arrive. Stone bread is made — flour, water, salt, yeast, quick knead, into the coals, flipped and scraped clean. Toasty. Steaming. Perfect.

Pre-dawn grey light reveals a camel under the hill. A billion stars thin and fade.

Bread, jam, cheese, black coffee. Farewells to Mohamed — a magic man, all efficiency of movement.

We cross the desert to a waiting taxi and the long ride back to Marrakesh, washing the desert off out the open windows us as we go.