Michael Asher (explorer) - Travels & Experience

Travels & Experience

In 1979 Asher went to work in the Sudan as a volunteer English teacher. In his first vacation he worked as a camel-herder accompanying a herd up the ancient caravan track, the Darb al-Arba'in (Forty Days Road),to Egypt, covering about 1500 miles (2400 km). He spent the following years in Gineina, Darfur, learning Arabic, acquiring his own camels, and travelling by camel alone and with local tribesmen. He began work on his first book, In Search of the Forty Days Road.

In 1982, Asher went to live with the Kababish – a nomadic tribe - as one of them. At this time, elements of the tribe were almost entirely isolated from the outside world. He remained with them over much of the next three years, travelling thousands of miles by camel, working as a herder, accompanying nomad migrations, and salt-caravans.

He was later asked by UNICEF Sudan to organise a camel caravan in the Red Sea Hills to take aid to Beja nomads cut off by drought and famine. On this expedition Asher met UNICEF publicity officer Mariantonietta Peru, an Italian: they married in 1986. A graduate of the University of Rome, Peru was a fluent Arabic speaker who had studied at the White Fathers institute, and at Ain Shams University in Cairo: she was also a UNICEF-trained photographer.

The same year, Asher and Peru arrived in Nouakchott Mauretania, to make the first west-east crossing of the Sahara desert by camel and on foot. Passing through Mauretania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the Sudan, they finally arrived at the Nile at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt in May 1987, having made a journey of nine months and 4500 miles by camel, the first recorded crossing of the Sahara from west to east by non-mechanical means. The feat was lauded by a report in Reuters as 'the last great journey man had still to make.'

Asher was later employed by UNICEF as Project Officer for the Joint UNICEF/WHO Nutrition Support Project (JNSP), working among the Beja nomads of the Red Sea Hills, in the eastern Sudan.

In 1992, Asher crossed the Western Desert of Egypt, by camel, from Mersa Matruh on the Mediterranean coast, to Aswan in southern Egypt. He travelled with a single Bedouin companion: for almost a month the two travellers did not see another human being, and two of Asher's five camels died on the way. Asher commented that this journey was '"as near as one could get to travelling on another planet".

While living for two years in Morocco, Asher started Lost Oasis Expeditions, organising small-group treks by camel. Having moved back to Nairobi, he extended these treks to the Bayuda Desert of the Sudan, becoming the first operator of camel expeditions in that country. Asher still leads expeditions by camel in Morocco, with the British travel company Journeys Elite, and in the Sudan, with the London-based Secret Compass company.

In 2006, Asher taught courses in Feudalism, Absolutism and Democracy at the International School of Kenya

In 2008, Asher returned to Darfur with team from Tufts University, on a mission sponsored by UNEP, to assess the impact of the civil war there on the livelihoods of the Northern Rizaygat camel herders - the so-called 'Jinjaweed' horsemen-militias.

In 2011, Asher was employed by the British Council to train the police in Nyala,Darfur, and in Wau, Republic of South Sudan,in human rights, as part of the Security and Access to Justice (SAJP)Project, sponsored by DFID. More recently, Asher worked as a consultant for IOM (International Organization for Migration) training peace-keeping forces in Somalia in human rights, on behalf of UNPOS (UN Political Office, Somalia)

Asher has made expeditions in many other desert areas, including the Cholistan and Thar Deserts, Western Australia, Sinai, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Saudi-Arabia, Jibuti, Ethiopia, and Morocco, and has also travelled on foot in Tibet, and by canoe in Papua New Guinea.