There is a particular silence in the deep desert that people travel a very long way to hear. It arrives at dusk, after the wind drops, and it is so complete that you become aware of your own pulse.
Getting there is half the pleasure. You leave Marrakech in the morning, climb over the High Atlas by the Tizi n'Tichka pass, and watch the country empty out — green to ochre to gold — until the road gives way to track, and the track gives way to sand. By late afternoon a 4x4 delivers you to the foot of Erg Chebbi, where the dunes rise a hundred and fifty metres against the sky.
The camp you cannot see from the road
The camp we use is not the kind with a hundred tents in rows. It is a small, private encampment, set in a fold of the dunes where no other lights are visible — Berber rugs, a proper bed, lanterns, and a fire. You arrive by camel as the sun goes down, which sounds like a cliché until you are doing it, and then it is simply one of the great hours of travel.
Dinner is served under more stars than most people have seen in their lives — and then someone takes out a drum.
The food is better than it has any right to be in the middle of a desert: a tagine that has cooked all afternoon, bread baked in the sand, mint tea poured from a great height. Afterward, the staff drift away, the fire burns down, and you lie back on a rug and watch the Milky Way wheel overhead. In the morning, tea is brought to you as the light returns and turns the whole erg the colour of a peach.
One night is enough to change how you think about quiet. Two, and you start to understand why people have crossed this desert for a thousand years.