IN THIS FEATURE Arriving in Timbuktu The British are coming Number one with a bullet Land Rover gets it wrong Another kind of Land Rover adventure

That is a dangerous place to be driving anything. The uncharted sand seas on the border of Mali, Mauritania, the western Sahara and Algeria are trading routes for arms dealers and drug smugglers. The Polisario Front, who claim the Western Sahara for themselves, use Land Rovers with heavy machine guns mounted on the back.

In fact, Land Rovers' ability to penetrate the depths of desert and jungle have made them the vehicle of choice for armies. They last saw duty in the Gulf War with British forces. And on a (much) more primitive scale, the Masai even use old Land Rover bolts to add some ferocity to the ends of their rungu war clubs.

Jeremy's close encounter with a black rhino

"I've seen Land Rovers carrying everything from guns to dried fish and even towing a dugout canoe full of fish along a lake," says Holgate. "But their biggest use now is as rural taxis. On the Kenya-Somali border I saw one old Land Rover shimmering on the horizon. Aboard were 16 people.

"It was 54 degrees and the fuel was evaporating. So the driver, who had a hole in his front tooth, sucked fuel into his mouth and was squirting it straight into the carburettor."