IN THIS FEATURE Keeping a seven-year promise Scavenging for lightning Tackling the dunes Navigating the desert Babbling brooks All for four perfect minutes

The next day is billed as a rest day and a visit to Bilma, a real-life oasis. It's the stuff of films - the kind of place you want to stumble across when you've run out of water and hope, with its babbling brooks and fields of bright green grass.

We had been promised the best 'shower' of the trip at Bilma, but the bathing pond is too full, so instead I give a 'Safe Eclipse Viewing' lesson to some local kids. Best of all, the air is still as stone, with not a whisper of breeze to stir things up. There is hope for tomorrow's 11am appointment.

Sun gazing

The focus of our entire trip, eclipse day, finally arrives... and it turns out too hazy to make the planned group hike to the top of the escarpment from where I had hoped to catch the shadow of the moon racing across the surface of the earth. However the sun is perfectly visible and, undeterred, we settle ourselves on the side of a slope, sunglasses to hand.

At 9.36am it starts, although it takes several minutes to really see any visible change and this initial stage lasts an hour and a half. Enough time to view other phenomena such as the crescent shapes projected by the pinhole effect through the leaves of trees and definitely time enough for the heartbeat to really gather pace.