09-Oct-2010 -- It was Friday, 8 October 2010 when we started our visit to al-Harūj al-Aswad - the Black mountains - in central Libya. We are amateur mineral collectors and were interested in examining the rocks in this volcanic region. We always travel with a rock hammer and magnifying hand lens. Our guide and driver, Alagui `Ali Alagui `Ali, picked us up from Sabhā. We were accompanied by a support vehicle driven by Sulayman `Abdallah Tkakam Muḥammad with our cook `Īsā Muḥammad Akhayad `Umar. We drove eastwards to Tmassa on good roads and then on into the desert. We camped for the night between orange sandstone hills with interesting calcite geodes.

From here the going was harder as we travelled due east, over the natural desert of sand, gravel, and small rocks. This gave way to difficult terrain of broken slabs of lava paving. We struggled on until we reached a rocky, black hill which could have been Khašm al-Jubayl. We scrambled up for an extensive view before driving back onto sandy gravel where we had lunch. In the afternoon we turned to the Northwest and it became less desolate with more vegetation and even camels grazing. We arrived at confluence 27N 16E in the late afternoon. Sue took the photographs looking North, East, South, and West just before sundown. We camped for the night in a nearby wādiy.

Continued at 28N 16E.