Can you walk the dunes barefoot / what's the sand like?

Walking the dunes barefoot is something I always encourage, and most people end up doing it without prompting. The sand at Erg Chebbi is famously fine — it has been ground and sifted by wind over a very long time, so it is soft, almost powdery, and runs through your fingers like dry flour. Up in the heart of the high dunes there are virtually no stones, just clean, deep, silky sand, which is exactly why barefoot feels so good there.

Timing is everything, though. In the early morning and at dusk the sand is cool, even cold at dawn in winter, and walking the crests barefoot then is blissful — the surface gives slightly under each step and the ridgelines are firm enough to walk along. At midday under full sun it is the opposite: the surface can get genuinely scorching, hot enough to make you hop, so that is the time for closed shoes or sandals, not bare feet.

The texture changes with the terrain too. On the windward faces the sand is often firm and rippled, easy to walk on; on the steep leeward faces it is loose and deep, and you sink to your ankles and slide, which is hard work going up and great fun coming down. Climbing a big dune barefoot is a proper calf workout — two steps up, one slide back — but the view from a high crest is always worth it.

A couple of honest cautions. Right at the desert edge, where dunes meet the scrubby hammada, there can be small thorny plants and the odd sharp stone, so look before you stride out barefoot there. And while it is very rare, this is wild country — shake out your shoes in the morning and be sensible about where you put bare feet near rocks. Up in the clean high dunes, though, kick your shoes off and enjoy it; it is one of the simple joys of the Sahara.