![]() ![]() ![]() Later he also wrote for the Guardian and the Financial Times on a freelance basis. A few years later he went to Eritrea where he joined the guerrillas and from where he wrote for the Observer. When he returned to the Sahara a year or so later the Polisario were in charge of Mauritania and the feeling of the country he had so admired had changed. Trench wrote convincingly about his fears but also about his love of the country. Other Europeans have crossed the Sahara by camel, including Geoffrey Moorhouse in 1972, but this does not detract from the omnipresent dangers of the desert: sandstorms, isolation, constant thirst, rumblings of war from the Spanish Sahara and fear of both discovery and imprisonment. His account of the journey, Forbidden Sands, was published in 1978. In the late Seventies, starting from Mauritania, he crossed the Sahara by camel caravan to try and find out what was happening at the notorious Mali salt mines at Taoudenni where political prisoners were sent to die. He was always keen to learn something new and was generous about sharing his knowledge. This desire for knowledge made him a very lively companion he took a keen interest in what one had to say and was positively delighted if he stumbled across an arcane fact in the course of a conversation. He was a scavenger for information and because he found almost everything interesting he adapted to any situation with relative ease. By nature, the writer and traveller Richard Trench was a nomad. ![]()
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