The track to Assa via Labouirat is clear and easy to follow. Half of it is sealed. It is another old Paris-Dakar route and the next morning we met several 4×4 cars heading the other way. We politely stepped off the track and waved them past. They were part of the Budapest-Bamako, which advertises itself as the world’s largest amateur multi day off-road rally.
Some 45 km north of Chott Mezwat is a crossroads. We turned left. This took us onto a different, longer and more technical route via Msied. It also meant we would not need to spend the rest of the day dodging oncoming rally cars. The first section was straightforward. Wide open, a few oueds to cross, a few camels, quiet and peaceful.
Rally car with a roof box 
A day later, just before Msied, literally within sight of tarmac, we turned east along an oued. This riverbed led us to a pass through the jebel (ridge of hills) and then up a winding valley. We had to cross the first of several berms. These are defensive sand walls with trenches and gun emplacements. A relic of the offensive with the Polisario in the 1980s.
Several hours of slow going got us several kilometres along a rocky track. We had to pick our way quite carefully. The crux turned out to be negotiating two boulders that had fallen onto the route. Some very careful manoeuvring and a bit of squeezing was needed. All the time being very cautious about the vulnerable tyre sidewalls. The route finally began to open up as evening fell so we could stop, relax and enjoy the view. Across the valley, some nomads were herding a few camels and goats. We waved at them and settled down to cook dinner.
Careful down the washed out track
In the morning, one of the nomads, a man, turned up with a dead snake on a stick. I was not quite sure what to make of this and wondered if he was trying to sell it to me or something. Lacking much by way of a common language made discussion difficult but I did manage to understand that his dog had killed the snake. It looked like a smaller version of the Egyptian Cobra I’d see a few days earlier in which case the dog had a lucky escape. We both looked at the snake for a while, like schoolboys with a dead mouse, and then he wandered off with it.
The route got easier but there were numerous oueds to cross. These were sometimes a bit time consuming. We were following the path of the Draa Valley along a meandering track along its northern edge. To our left was the Jebel Ouarkaziz, a 300km ridge of rock that made a natural barrier during the conflict with the Polisario. To our right was the wide shallow valley that occasionally confined water flowing west to the Atlantic. This area had been considered free of land mines for the last couple of decades until somebody discovered a few AVMs in 2017. We took precautions just to be on the safe side.
We had moved away from the scattered nomad camps and spent a very quiet night perched on a rocky outcrop. Here and there were small groups of camels. Many of them with their cute young calves. In the morning, a whole herd of camels came past driven by a nomad on a donkey and his friend on a moped. We pressed on and by mid-afternoon arrived at a pass going through the jebel to Assa. Here were the remains of a substantial military encampment complete with berm, derelict buildings, gun emplacements and a well. We bought a few supplies in Assa and refilled with diesel then headed back to the Oued Draa.
The Dakar rally typically follows the Draa down from Lake Iriqui. However, this route is quite close to the Algerian border so when we tried to follow it to the east we were soon being herded back to the main road by the military. As usual, they were very polite and took a long time to take all our details. Eventually we realised that we were not going to manage this route. Nomads can wander the area freely, there are no signs to indicate the area is closed, the soldiers only ever suggest a better way. Nevertheless, the overall result is impenetrable and we felt compelled to capitulate. We were happy though. 10 days and 1,000 km of desert with less than 15 km of tarmac felt like a good way to come back from Western Sahara.
Diane storms the berm 
Tata 
Back across the Atlas 
Last night in the desert