Sahara (Michael Palin)

infobox Book |
name = Sahara
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Hardcover first edition, 2002, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
author = Michael Palin
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = [http://www.palinstravels.co.uk/ Michael Palin's Trips]
genre = Travel literature
publisher = Weidenfeld & Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson
release_date = 2002
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 288
isbn = 0-297-84303-6
preceded_by = Hemingway Adventure
followed_by = Himalaya

"Sahara" is the book that Michael Palin wrote to accompany the BBC television documentary series "Sahara with Michael Palin".

This book, like the other books that Palin wrote following each of his seven trips for the BBC, consists both of his text and of many photographs to illustrate the trip. All of the pictures in this book were taken by Basil Pao, the stills photographer who was part of the team who did the trip (Basil Pao also produced a book, "Inside Sahara", containing many more of his pictures).

This trip involved traveling all around and through the Sahara Desert, starting and ending at Gibraltar. The book contains 13 chapters: "Gibraltar", "Morocco", "Algeria", "Western Sahara", "Mauritania", "Senegal", "Mali", "Niger", "Algeria", "Libya", "Tunisia", "Algeria", and "Gibraltar". The reason Algeria is featured three times is that the trip first cut through part of western Algeria, then later up through south, central and eastern Algeria, and finally on the return trip followed the Mediterranean coast of northern Algeria. Some of these countries are huge; for example, Algeria is four times the size of France or three times the size of Texas. The Sahara Desert is roughly the same size as the United States, and the trip covered 10,000 miles (16,000 km.) and took three months.

To book is presented in a diary format; Palin starts each section of the book with a heading like "Day Forty-Two: Djenne". However, not all days are mentioned, a result of this trip being broken up into shorter trips, a fact that is not mentioned in the TV programme.

Audio edition

This book was released as an audio book, read by Palin himself, allowing the listener to hear his wit and charm, and his ability to do accents. Two versions of the audio book exist, an abridged version that lasts 6 hours and a difficult-to-find unabridged version that lasts 9 hours 52 minutes.

External links

* [http://www.palinstravels.co.uk/static-128 Full text of "Sahara"] at Palin's Travels