I am trying to make my bed for the evening in Western Sahara. The awning and canvas arrangement that I am wrestling with is rigged like a well-slung sail and every few minutes the roof takes off and lands with a scrape that penetrates the inner tranquillity that I am trying so hard to cultivate.

I accept defeat and venture upstairs to the roof tent where Will and Lynn are already tucked up. If they were asleep they are definitely awake by the time I have unzipped and zipped the tent, wrestled with my sleeping bag and assumed the middle lane in the swimming pool arrangement that is our roof tent.

Sleeping in the middle lane means competing with the various night time strokes of your bed fellows whilst trying to resist your body’s own urges to splash about. The wind outside blows relentlessly and the roof tent sounds like it is in a wind tunnel built to test aerodynamics. Now and then we are buffeted so hard that the whole car dips on its suspension.

After a frustrated hour I take drastic action and wriggle out, muttering “I may be seem some time”. I cast to the wind any concerns about the coolness of the desert by night, unravel a canvas safari bed and plod off in search of alternative accommodation. I must look like a novice surfer walking down to the sea as the wind forces me to perform a series of clumsy pirouettes with my bed.

I locate the laundry area, the site of a team wash earlier in the day, where our washing has been unceremoniously dumped on the floor by the wind. I put down my bed amid our sandy clothes and hop into my duvet cover. A ferocious vortex swirls among the washing lines and within seconds my duvet cover is transformed into a windsock. I try lying the other way round but feel like a vacuum-packed man making a pathetic attempt at sleep. Occasionally a pair of pants lands in my face. Somewhat colder I take to my feet again.

This time I alight on a balcony out of the wind and under the stars. It is almost romantic. I am on the point of dozing off when I am brought abruptly to my senses by a thwack thwack noise. I dismiss it and roll over.

Thwack thwack.

The next time I am waiting for it, straining my ears. Thwack thwack, it’s definitely a two-syllabled sound, coming through the wall that I am lying next to. It fills the void of the night and my mind obsesses over it. Then it hits me, thwack thwack. It is the sound of somebody stamping documents with the type of inky wooden stamp used by zealous officials the world over.

They love stamping things in Western Sahara, we have spent hours waiting for things to have thick juicy red badges stamped onto them – receipts, visas, import documents, export documents – everything hangs in the balance until you have a stamp on you piece on lonely-looking paper.

Sleep? Denied, denied, denied, denied – another salvo of blows rains down on me.

It is now three o’clock in the morning and I have run out sleeping options. I decide to stick it out. How long can this persist afterall?

All night, it appears.

When you are trying to get to sleep outside the office of the man responsible for stamping Western Sahara’s complete stash of bureaucratic documentation you have time to give the process more consideration than it would perhaps usually merit.

I consider the type of stamp – one of those plastic revolving ones where the embossed part is concealed for maximum ink retention – this accounts for the double syllable noise. The process – the documents come in pairs – there are only ever even numbers of thwacks. The driving force enabling this automaton to be stamping away with such joyous abandon throughout the night – it is Ramadan and I imagine my tormentor has forsaken day for night, generally considered to be the best way to survive the fasting period.

I begin to find something therapeutic in the regularity of bureaucratic boxing match occurring through the wall. It is rather like counting sheep.

Eventually I drift off and awake in the morning to the muezzin’s call to prayer. Ramadan is over, and the festivity of Eid has commenced. Definitely cause for celebration.

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Name: Faye (Sierra Leone) Chin up - got a couple of spare beds awaiting you guys in Salone!!! Looking forward to seeing you out here Name: Sal Goldsmith (England) Let us know if you have have a worse night's sleep during the rest of the trip - I look forward to pithy description!