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All right, let’s take a second to dig into the Sahara. [Man digging into the sahara desert]

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Well, with all that sand it might take longer than a second. Hope you've brought a sturdy shovel..

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You probably already know the Sahara is hot.

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But did you know its temperatures regularly top 130°F? [Thermometer rising and people looking scared]

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That’s so hot you could start a restaurant that only cooked stuff on the hood of your

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car. [A chef cooking on the hood of a car]

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As tasty as Sahara hood-food sounds, it might not be the best idea because of all the dust.

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The Sahara gets less than three inches of rain per year, making it the world’s largest [Man playing in a sandpit]

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sandbox.

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While that would be fun for a giant baby, it makes for a pretty harsh environment for

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everybody else.

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Especially since all that sand gets continually whipped around by the Sahara’s winds. [Sand whizzing around the Sahara in the wind]

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It’s so intense that there are actually names for three distinctive kinds of Saharan [Three Saharan types of wind dressed as people]

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wind.

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Haboob is the Arabic word for a "wild, sand-laden wind."

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Fun.

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Khamsin, or "50 days," is a wind that begins in March and blows across the desert until [Khamsin waving]

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May.

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Harmattan's name means "to tear your breath apart."

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Wow, that one might even top "Haboob."

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There's another wind for what congress says about all this but that's a different kind of wind.

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While most nations are only interested in the Sahara when they’ve got a hankering

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for fossil fuels…

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There are a few people who aren’t afraid to call the desert home. [Man fixing a home sweet home sign]

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The best known of all of them are the Tuareg, people so tough Volkswagen named a car after

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them.

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These are the desert nomads who still have the know-how to travel hundreds of miles across [Tuareg tribe on camels travelling across the Sahara]

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the desert in camel caravans.

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All this while wearing layers and veils—well, the men wear the veils anyway.

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The Tuareg also have a thing for jewelry, which they traditionally believe can have [Tuareg man wearing lots of jewelry]

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the power to protect them from evil.

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Pendants like the four pointed cross and the hand of Fatima are handed down through the

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generations.

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Don’t go thinking that even though the Tuareg live in one of the harshest environments on [Women fanning a Tuareg man while he lays in bed]

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Earth, that they don’t have a few comforts.

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The main one of these is tea, which they drink five to seven times a day. [Tuareg man drinking tea on the Sahara]

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They even know how to brew tea without stopping the camels.

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Camel fires are avoided by the use of smoking braziers.

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This is a good thing.

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Nobody likes a camel fire. [A camel stood above a campfire]

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Especially the camels.

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So take it from the Tuareg…

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If you want to survive in one of the most extreme environments on Earth, step one is

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to stay caffeinated. [Tuareg man on a camel drinking tea]

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