After nearly 3 years the time has come again to leave Ween behind and go off and admire some dust somewhere. This time it's Western Sahara to look at desert cave paintings and get traumatised in camel markets. Ween has come home from swimming far too many times to find me sobbing in front of the tv as walruses hurl themselves off cliffs or lemurs with broken legs are left behind to die. I'm hoping a camel will spit at me and make it less harrowing.

The main thing giving me sleepless nights isn't stepping on a landmine at 03.00am midstream with my knickers round my ankles, but how the hell I am going to wrestle my sleeping bag and the other liner that the lovely Emma gave me back into their bags. I've had practice runs with Ween, all of which have ended with him snatching it off me shouting oh for f***S sake. It takes up half of my bag as I have now taken it out of the holder and have just stuffed it in and my fishy pillow another third. This has annoyed me as Ween made me take them rather than damson vodka.

Another issue, slightly less worrying but still good to gnaw at when you know you have only 2 hours left to try and sleep is the matter of whether the smattering of Arabic you know is actually going to be any use when you're trying to negotiate getting to your hotel after a flight landing at 23.55. As usual I left it far too late to relearn all I did for Libya and can only remember odd words for curtains (seetaara) and man (razhool).