The Colors of the Sand

Those who have never enterend the desert imagine it to be a huge expanse of sand, all looking the same. In reality it is not like this. None of the six deserts I have crossed are similar to one another and the sand of esch is different in color and consistency. It changes from yellow in the Kalahari, to red in teh Simpson Desert, to pink in the Tenere and Akakus deserts and a golden grey in the Taklimakin Desert. The Salar of Uyuni is composed only of salt, clearly creating a different look. Sometimes, in the same desert, you will find different types of sand with totally different shades and wonder from what material it has originated. Also near rocks, as is the case in the Akakus Desert, it is very dark, while in other deserts the presense of salt or other materials creates a light color, almost white. At the end of the my crossing in the Simpson Desert in Australia, the aboriginies gave me a bottle of sand showing the particularity of all five of the differnt zones: from beige to dark red.

I have all the sand from the differnt deserts lined up in glass bottles next to one another, and the difference is quickly noticed by the eye. These are enough for me to look at to reawaken my memories of the deserts.