The beauty of Libya

With all the terrorist activity going on at the moment in so many countries, it reminded me of the fact that it is still very unsafe to return to Libya, the beautiful country where Daniella and I traveled for two months during our big Sahara expedition. The so called Arabic Spring turned out to be exactly what we feared it would – a nightmare. Soon after the revolution started, our crew had to flee their villages, and one even fled to Algeria. It was all very sad. We spoke to our guide a few months ago, and luckily our entire crew is still alive and safe. We can only hope that things will eventually calm down again, and when it does, we will be on the first plane to Tripoli.

The small figure in this image is our guide, walking down these massive dunes for me, just before sunset. I had scouted this place two days earlier and decided to return with more wind, to get the effect you see at the dune tops.

This image is part of a series of four that won me the overall title International Nature Photographer Of The Year at the International Photography Awards two years ago, and it is still one of my favorite landscape pictures.