Fifteen minutes of blue
Five nights in the dunes, chasing the brief moment after sunset when the whole desert turns the colour of ink.
Amara Osei
3 min read
There is a moment, about twenty minutes after sunset, when the desert turns blue. The sand, the rock, the sky, even your own hands: everything takes on the same cool, deep colour, as if the world has been dipped in ink. Photographers call it blue hour. In the desert it lasts about fifteen minutes, and it is worth every one of the hours it takes to get there.
Getting there
The dunes are a four-hour drive from the nearest city, the last forty minutes on a gravel road that my rental car was certainly not insured for. There is no phone signal, no water and no shade. I camped for five nights with a friend, a four-wheel-drive vehicle and far more water than we thought we would need. We used almost all of it.
