Catchy title eh? We'll get to it soon enough. Laayoune was brilliant, the city, the people, all fantastic. But enough gushing and back to the present. I had hoped to buy oil for Donkey this morning and service her. It could wait a little longer really, but there are worse things to be premature in than oil changes... Alas, motorcycle oil seemingly does not exist in these parts and I grudgingly had to accept car oil. Let's hope Donkey's clutch is okay with this. When it came to doing said oil change tonight I found that I hadn't bought the right socket (what a bell), so tomorrow, before venturing off the Mauritania, I will have to find a 12mm socket somewhere.

Today's ride can be summarised, as is generally the case around here, as 'go straight -don't die'. The roads are vast, the desert is vast, I am spec amongst it travelling through its endless expanse. The horizon barely shifts, everywhere is blanket of sand and rock. The only break, an occasional truck or car, there are no motorcycles around, the distances are simply too great. Every hundred or so miles there is a fuel station; they are hubs of life against a backdrop of nothingness. They are the only thing that maintains movement when all else away from the road seems dead.

Now this is all very dramatic, and let's be real, it's just a bloody massive sand pit really. Whilst it's incredibly windy and this is definitely not the place to be having an accident or breakdown, the journey itself is as straightforward as they come. Nothing really changes on the road and so the mind can wonder, gladly distracted by singing Call me maybe or Katy Perry's Firework for the 400th time that day (I have no idea why I do this). That is until out of nowhere there is a man, slowly trudging across the nothingness armed with nothing more than a bicycle and carrying a small dog. I stop, he speaks, but from his dark, toothless mouth he utters only Arabic and frankly, I have as much chance of understanding Marshan (quite fitting given the landscape). He is approximately 150 miles in either direction from the nearest city and at least 50 miles from the nearest petrol station. What on earth is this man doing here and why is there a dog attached (or laid across) his bicycle?

Some things must remain a mystery and this is one of them. I do not understand him but surmise that he perhaps belongs to one of the caravans of nomads one sees on the thousands of miles of beach lining Africa's coast. I cannot offer him conversation, so I give him my spare water and some to the dog too. Despite his situation, he seems unfazed. This is his life, this is as normal for him as me driving to Aldi for a cheesy bean bake; yet whilst I will have a tantrum about the momentary disruption of road works, he moves unperturbed, unrelenting against the barren leviathan which he exists within. Perspective is a wonderful thing and seeing how other people exist in this world truly demonstrates how lucky I am to simply be born in Europe, and even more so to be able to experience life outside of it. Tomorrow Mauritania await, but now, sleep. Ma’a salama.