Although I was a fighter pilot and then a bush pilot in Alaska, I had never flown in a hot air balloon before I crossed the Sahara in two balloons.

One was piloted by Don Cameron, who invented the sport hot air balloon in the 1970s, and the other by Julian Nott, who set an altitude record of nearly 20,000 feet in the central Sahara, and later another record of nearly 46,000 feet in central India, on which expedition I was also the photographer.

The Sahara, one of the most beautiful abstract landscapes on the planet, is also an incredible environment in which to fly such an absurd craft as a hot air balloon.

The wind decides which way you float, the heat of the burner how high, and your judgement how far to travel, before a mountain range or a sea of impassable sand prevent your ground crew from recovering your fragile device, which could be torn to bits and disappear from the known world.

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None of these threats deterred the unflappable Brits from putting their lives, and mine, into the uncaring hands of the Saharan winds, and letting the adventure take us all into the void. We flew gloriously high in light morning airs, while I clicked sights so startling I could hardly believe I had been given the privilege of this experience, until later, during the same flight the winds increased, and we fled downward to skim the sand and rocks and finally tip over in a heap of gear and jumbled bodies. It was wonderful, and we celebrated with yet more whisky.

It was that sort of trip. Why cross the Sahara by hot air balloon? Why not? I’ve climbed many mountains, including some that hadn’t been climbed before, just because I thought it would be ‘fun’. A lot of the time the climbing was terrifying and no fun at all. A balloon floating almost out of control over the greatest desert in the world, is an experience along that thin line between joy and disaster, which is what makes life worth living, and the reason people like to play in places like the mountains and the air.

Yes, we did cross the great void, amazing the locals just like the real explorers before us, and at the end we packed our flying machines into two bundles and drove home, leaving the Saharan skies to the winds and the big blue. By the time we arrived in England we had already planned how to tempt the sky gods again. This time in India.

View more pictures on Jon Hart Gardey's website

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