Morocco to Mauritania: crossing the minefield border

Between the last Moroccan post in Western Sahara and the first Mauritanian one there is a strip of desert that belongs to nobody. Part asphalt, part gravel, no signs, nobody in charge - a few kilometres between two barriers, and you drive it yourself.

We crossed it in May 2023, three old Subarus into our Africa Rally. Before we rolled in, locals gave us one instruction and repeated it until it stuck: drive where other cars have driven. Away from the tracks, they told us, the ground is mined - left over from the Western Sahara conflict and never fully cleared. Nobody offered a map of what was where. The instruction was the map.

So that is what we did. We came down off the tarmac, found the most-driven ruts we could see, and followed them. No shortcuts, no curiosity, no pulling aside for photos. Where more than one line ran ahead, we took the one that looked most used.

We never saw a mine, and I cannot tell you where a single one is - that is not the kind of thing you get to verify. What I can pass on is the rule every driver there follows, and the strange feeling that comes with it: for a few kilometres, the usual assumption that someone has checked the ground under your wheels simply does not hold.

On the far side there was a barrier, a stamp, and a country that turned out to be one of the best surprises of the whole rally. But the border is where Mauritania starts telling you what kind of place it is: you listen to locals, and you drive where others have driven.