What is it like to ride a camel in the Sahara?

The first thing nobody warns you about is the standing up. You climb onto a kneeling camel — a wide, warm, surprisingly soft saddle of blankets — and then the animal heaves itself upright in two violent jerks, back end first, so you pitch forward and grab the pommel and laugh nervously while you're flung backward again. From the ground the camel looked patient and sleepy; from the saddle you are suddenly two and a half metres up and swaying, and the world tilts in a way that makes everyone gasp the same gasp.

Then it settles into that gait, and the gait is the whole experience. It is a long, rolling, side-to-side rock — people compare it to a small boat in a swell, and that's right. You don't steer; a guide in a blue robe walks ahead with the lead rope, his sandals hissing in the sand, and you just ride. The caravan strings out in a line, each camel roped to the next, and the only sounds are the soft thud of padded feet, the creak of the saddles, the occasional groan or belch from a camel, and the wind. After ten minutes you stop gripping and start looking.

And the looking is what stays with you. Erg Chebbi at the end of the day turns from gold to apricot to a deep rose, the shadows in the dune valleys go blue and then violet, and your own caravan throws a long thin shadow across the ripples beside you. It is genuinely, almost embarrassingly beautiful, and it is quiet in a way cities never are — a silence with a faint hiss in it. You feel small and slow and lucky, perched up there, the sand running to the horizon in every direction.

I'll be honest about the body, though, because the photos never show it. An hour is plenty. By the end your inner thighs are stretched and sore, your tailbone has opinions, and if you're tall the lack of stirrups means your legs just dangle and stiffen. Wear long trousers or the saddle blanket will chafe, wrap a scarf over your nose because the sand finds it, and don't expect comfort — expect wonder. You climb down stiff and grinning, a little bow-legged, already telling the story.