My childlike romantic view of the Sahara Desert has always been like something out of Star Wars: rolling dunes from horizon to horizon, seductive in their vastness.  I imagined it as a different planet, a Magic Kingdom made of sand. 

The desert is big.  Uncompromising. Its enchantment has nothing to do with beauty; the real Sahara Desert makes you feel small because of its emptiness – its infinite, ugly emptiness.

The world’s largest desert, covering 3.3 million square miles, the Sahara stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean in Northern Africa and reaches as far south as Niger, Chad and Sudan.  The Sahara evokes romantic ideas just by name alone.  It’s one of those places where, as one of my travelling companions explains, “you can lose yourself.”

The phrase, though, begs for an explanation. Understand this is different from taking a left instead of a right.  It strikes at the heart of the Sahara’s mystique.  It explains the Western fascination with the desert, a lure traced back to the very beginnings of French colonialism. 

Isabelle Eberhardt was one of the first Europeans to head for the desert and adopt a nomadic lifestyle at the turn of the twentieth century.  “The act of departure is the bravest and most beautiful of all,” she wrote. 

On Morocco's western border, in Merzouga, people come to the see the natural wonders of the Erg Chebbi Dunes.  They drive right through what looks like an endless asphalt parking lot.  It is only the lack of painted white lines, parcelling off individual spaces, that separates the nothingness of the desert from a deserted strip mall.  Not part of the fantasy.

The dunes are a tourist gold mine.  It is here we come looking for the Sahara experience, not to be confused with a Sahara experience.  We want the Sahara experience.  We want to get lost in the desert.

But we fool ourselves.  Really want to get lost?  Go to the coral-colored no-name towns that spring up at every scarce growing palm tree.  It is these towns, without addresses or street signs, that define the true essence of the desert.  Emptiness. 

“How long until you don’t notice the flies on you anymore?” my friend asks.  Dozens of flies buzz around us and our lunches.  We have stopped in one of these oases at a sign that said “Restaurant.”  There are no menus.  We eat on plastic chairs outside.  Inside there are even more flies.  They only serve tangine.   

I think about the flies.  Maybe it's not about noticing; perhaps just a question of caring.  We care.  The regular patrons don’t. Stay here long enough and the flies blend into the scenery.  That’s lost.  Maybe too lost.  A night on a camel in the dunes is enough – the safe kind of lost.

On a 4x4 tour of the desert there is a stop for mint tea in a Bedouin tent, a nomadic home. Always one of the key selling points of any desert excursion company, it is a must in the Sahara experience. 

Today there is no such thing as a nomad.  In decades and centuries past nomads followed the water through Morocco and Algeria.  Today the Algerian border is closed and there is no more water.  The nomads built houses or moved to the cities to look for work.  Those that stayed now make a living serving tea to tourists driven to their doorsteps. 

“You like Berber whiskey?” he asks.  We nod enthusiastically.    

“Very different here.”  Yes.  Very different. 

We finish our tea and tip our Berber host, who we take a picture with, of course.  As we get in our 4x4 to drive away there is an identical truck pulling up behind us.  It's always tea time. 

There are four colors in the Erg Chebbi Dunes.  The dusty green of the grasses that grow sporadically.  Very little of the plant is visible above ground.  Most of it exists beneath the sand, its elaborate root system looking for water deep below.  The soft, gentle brown of the dunes stretching and rolling in all directions.  The sand meets the azure of the cloudless sky and forms the horizon.  Then the charcoal shadows cast by the guides, camels and ourselves, brilliantly clear in the sand. 

On camel back through the dunes there is little to do but think.  Just like driving through the emptiness that brought us here.  It is nicer to look at, but this scenery doesn’t change either.  The dunes change shape, old ones passed replaced by new ones to climb.

It is said that the desert is unforgiving.  It makes sense.  Footprints are fleeting, gone in a few short hours, covered by fresh sand blown by the wind.  The desert has no memory. 

Here is where reality meets fantasy, the magic formula for any tourist.  Time and quiet to ponder anything from tax returns to old lovers to the imperialist history of the Sahara--if one dares. This is lost.  But with a camel man leading the way and a camp site with dinner waiting, it’s not too lost. 

What does it take to get really lost, to take the leap from vacation to journey?  A vacation is about getting lost.  A journey is about finding something.  Somewhere in the Sahara there is more. I am just afraid to get too lost.