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Marcus Stevens Archive

The Overland Commute: Mauritania

Mauritania has an air of infinite sunburned monotony, the entire country a distant sandy horizon wallowing under a powder-blue sky. Maps of the country only highlight the emptiness, the few landmarks achingly lonely amongst the dunes. Of all the maps.me files I downloaded for the commute, the Mauritanian one measured only 12MB. In contrast, east…

Two people stand beside a dusty Toyota Land Cruiser with roof gear, parked on a rocky, sandy cliff above the ocean in Morocco. Waves crash against the coastline under a clear blue sky—a perfect scene for an overland commute adventure.

Overland Commute: Morocco

“You have Kalashnikov in there?” asked a weary Moroccan customs official in broken English. Two hours after rolling onto Moroccan tarmac we had filled in countless forms, seen them passed around by various policeman, douanes (customs officials), and gendarmes, then watched as the everyone else was sent one-by-one on their way. Eventually, our turn came…

A brown overland vehicle with a roof rack is parked at a harbor. Boats are docked nearby, and a large blue and white Inter Lines ferry is visible in the background on the water.

Overland Commute: UK to Mali

I’ve always regarded blogs as harbouring the sort of self-indulgent small talk which bores us all; inane, desultory, mini-updates neither telling a story nor addressing a point. An incoherent musing of one’s day-to-day life written by those who seem to have overlooked the stories that readers might actually want to hear. So, it came as…