Although I didn’t return home with a camel hair coat, I did return with a cord belt, woven by the Bedouin from the fur clipped from my camel’s fluffy hump after our seven day trek was over. I was thrilled when I got back home at the beginning of June to find in the latest Vogue that one of the “Looks” for high summer is “Way Out West” – complete with ethnic belts like mine! Zeydoun, my camel, will also be thrilled – it is now very hot in his desert village of Sabria, and having transported me in his usual armchair fashion across the ever shifting dunes of the wind blown Sahara, he is now better equipped to cope with the intense summer heat sans his winter overcoat!

This entire trip was a huge success. Tunis Air flights were on time, the wonderfully warm welcome from the Dar Faiza Hotel, Djerba was quite literally all embracing, and the ultra stylish   hotel restaurant, The Fort, now managed by the Palm Beach organisation was a delight; the original hotel chef Monir has been retained, the waitress, Oueded, one of the most professional I have ever encountered and the food and wine she served with such grace were delicious.

I always write a journal, and on re-reading my notes, it is the closely knit family life of the Sabria Bedouin that strikes such a beautifully harmonious chord, also the spontaneous camaraderie so prevalent amongst friends and neighbours. Daily village life centres around the vivacious children who are enchanting and engaging. Tasks are shared – cooking, baby sitting, feeding the sheep, goats, chickens, horses and camels, spinning, weaving, tent making, grinding corn into flour.  And the gathering of fodder from the emerald green floor of the oasis which is piled neatly onto the horse drawn cart.

When my driver Belgacem dropped me off at the Saoud family home in Sabria at the start of my trip, he said well here you are, Diana Saoud, I wish you a lovely time! What an apt remark, because they are my second family! I would love to share all this and more with one or two fellow travellers who would be as touched as I always am by the sophisticated simplicity of my dear desert friends.

Diana