Day 6 and if I didn't want to miss a second of it yesterday it seems I got what I wished for. The alarm went off at 4am and after only a couple of hours in our sleeping bags we were heading back up the dunes to watch the sunrise.
It was hard work on the legs first thing in the morning but it was worth it.
When I reached the top of one of the larger dunes that some of the group had already gone up I had the urge to talk to the others - to moan about how hard it was walking up the dune perhaps or how much sand had gone in my shoes - but it wasn't a moment for that, it was a moment for quietness and calmness.
We each watched the sunrise, again in our own way but all together.
It made me realise just how much of life we go through where we all might think we experience the same things but no two people experience something in the same way.
Also, how often do we get the chance to just sit together and think, to reflect - to not fill every moment with chat or TV or noise of some kind?
It was lovely...
The view was breathtaking and the scale of what we were looking at - the enormity of the landscape before us - was just profound.
As someone trying to be a writer there are very few moments in my world where words don't take me over it was nice to embrace the... stillness.
Again the sky changed colours before us and as the day sprang to life I couldn't help but think of how scary it must be for people to try and navigate their way across this terrain and my thoughts turned to the people back home that I loved dearly who I knew would be facing their own challenge today, perhaps the biggest they ever would.
I really believe that if you dig deep down within yourself it's not just you that you feel. I hoped my mum would feel that I was thinking about her and I wished I could show her this sunrise because - for me - it belonged to her.
Because that sunrise with all it's beauty, strength, resilience, power, hope and magnificence was just like her.
It made me realise there might be a million ways to say you love someone but sometimes you don't need to say it out loud.
I wandered down the dune and found a little spot for myself and sat down.
After a few moments and a few tears I let out a whisper, like a little secret between me and the sand.
It was everything I needed to say for everything that I couldn't do.
All I could do then was sit here and hope for the best. So I did.
After breakfast the girls - bless them - let me sit in the front of the car so I could take photos, which I did but if I was honest my head was elsewhere.
When the 4x4s stopped so we could look at fossils in the rocks I wandered off to be by myself and our driver Hussein - though he hardly spoke any english - just came and stood next to me and smiled.
When we arrived back in civilisation most of the group was relieved that the bumpy terrain was over and we had access to cold drinks and normal toilets but I was gutted. It was the end of of this particular adventure for me which was perhaps one of the biggest adevtnures I might ever go on. And I don't just mean the desert.
We headed back onto the bus and stopped in a tiny little town for lunch where we had to wait over an hour for our food. It's not the worst thing in the world to sit in the sun and chat to people while you wait for fresh cooked food but we had just come from one of the most exciting landscapes on the earth and had been ushered into a tiny back garden of a restaurant that had an empty swimming pool to look at and not much else.
I was getting impatient and sunburnt so I took myself off for a walk round the little village we were in. There wasn't much to it but there was a lot going on - people going about their business, selling their wares and sipping mint tea; just getting on with their lives.
I rounded back towards the restaurant and just as I did 2 dust devils whipped up in front of nowhere, flew past me and went zipping down the road - right down the middle of it - as if they had sat nav which was sending them on their way and then they disappeared, just as quickly as they had appeared.
For some reason this made me feel better. Perhaps my impatience at the restaurant was frustration at the lack of control I had over circumstances both here and back home and those dust devils made me realise that control is useless; as soon as you have it, it can disappear again.
It doesn't make you stronger, but maybe not needing it might.
Knowing that you have the strength to face something without knowing quite what it is you are facing is surely a much greater skill than having control.
I sat back down and (finally) ate my food and I realised that on this trip, despite being run by a company called Intrepid Travel, you are really looked after. And I'm not used to being looked after. And maybe travelling to countries where it's much safer to be shepherded around isn't my kind of travelling. If I like to have the freedom to change my route or restaurant as I please does that contradict my last statement about not needing to be in control?
All this echoed lots of things about my life back home and the frustrations I feel about my job and my career and the fact that for me they are still two different things. I have spent time and money equipping myself with the tools to try and be a better writer and I feel like there's a world I know about but I'm just on the outside of it looking in. A strange combination of having a key to open the door to your dreams but also having to wait for someone else to invite you in too.
It seemed this holiday was bringing up lots of questions that I had been trying to avoid in my life especially as I head towards my 30th birthday.
Maybe that's what holidays are supposed to do, because of my MA it had been a while since I've been able to have one and the last time I went on one (Thailand with my wingman) my life was decidedly simpler.
I had just been in one of the most unpopulated places on earth yet I didn't feel like I had gotten away from it all. But maybe that was the point. The more remote the place - the more the only place to go...is within.
After lunch we drove on to Tarradount, a town famed for having large red walls. We didn't see the walls but I didn't mind because the frustration of the day had already left me feeling quite suffocated.
I phoned home and spoke to my mum which was a big relief. It's a universal fact that you can imagine things to be far worse than they are and it had turned out to be true - the not knowing about the thing had been far worse than the thing itself.
We went for a rather strange dinner and then had what was becoming our late night tradition of drinks and card games on the roof but I was shattered.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the extreme temperatures, the overwhelming emotions or all 3 but I had to say goodnight early and this time I couldn't wait to get to bed.
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