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The desert strips life down to its barest elements. There are no distractions, no noise, no easy comforts. Just heat, wind, and the long silence of a horizon that never seems to end.
I’ve cycled across deserts on several continents - the eerie stillness of a sandstorm in Uzbekistan, the endless flatness of the Mongolian steppe, the harsh yet strangely beautiful stretches of northern Africa . Each desert has its own personality, but all of them share one truth: they demand stillness.
At first, that stillness can feel intimidating. The silence is so complete it almost roars in your ears. The vulnerability is real: a flat tyre miles from anywhere, a sudden change in weather, the uncertainty of how you’ll get through the day . It’s natural to feel fear.
But if you stay long enough, fear softens into presence. The desert teaches you to let go of the illusion of control. You can’t rush the road, you can’t command the climate. What you can do is notice. The warmth of the sun on your skin. The crunch of tyres against sand. The way shadows shift as the day slowly unfolds.
And in that noticing, something shifts inside. Stillness stops being uncomfortable and starts becoming expansive. The desert becomes not a place of absence, but a place of clarity.
For me, those desert days are a mirror. They remind me how much noise we carry in everyday life — digital alerts, crowded schedules, constant comparison. The desert asks us to put it all down, even just for a moment, and sit with ourselves. Vulnerable. Present. Real.
Not everyone will cycle across a desert, but all of us can learn from one. We can pause before we answer the next email. We can sit in silence instead of reaching for a screen. We can allow a moment of emptiness without trying to fill it.
Because stillness, like the desert, isn’t empty at all. It’s full of everything we usually race past.
