Tanzania’s Shifting Sands are
two crescent-shaped, bizarrely magnetic dunes in the midst of a long
stretch of dusty desert. The sands blow slowly forth, around and back again as
though pushed by tides, always holding their shape, never explaining
themselves.
The air around them crackles with a strange energy, the vista is
seemingly endless, and while there’s nothing else really here per se, there’s a strange pull that
wants you (and the sands themselves) to stay.
Meandering up from Tanzania’s Olduvai
Gorge along a dusty, bumpy, forlorn and empty road, we suddenly arrived at the
start of the Shifting Sands. A
collection of small plaques, placed in decade increments, shows that these
mysterious drifts migrate just about 17 meters a year, always within the same
small area.
