Countries Visited: Gibraltar, Morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia

After 1999s Hemingway Adventure smaller scale adventure, Sahara sees Palin return to his larger scale trips which he had become known for. From travelling the vertical and horizontal expanses of the world, circumnavigating the world’s largest ocean this time Palin embarks on another adventure around of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders: the mighty Sahara Desert. Palin’s book once again accompanies the 2002 BBC television series of the same name.

Like Palin’s previous travelogues, Sahara is written in a diary style format with each day representing a different day within his journey. The book begins in Gibraltar before following a more or less counter clockwise route across the majority of countries that share the great expanses of the Sahara Desert.

Unlike most of Palin’s previous trips, the trip around the Sahara was undertaken in several smaller trips instead of one continuous journey. This may have been due to Palin’s age, who would have been close to 60 years old in 2002, or logistical issues traversing an area roughly the same size of the United States. Nevertheless, this doesn’t detract from the narrative with the book easy to follow and never feeling disjointed.

Sahara was the first of Palin’s travelogue that saw the author begin to focus on certain parts of the world rather than the multi country, transcontinental journeys that were covered on this first four journeys. Restricting himself to one area allows him to focus on the influence of such a monumental land mass as the Sahara desert has on the people and culture which live in and around it.