Sahara

The Sahara (Arabic: الصحراء الكبرى, aṣ-ṣaḥrā' al-kubrá, 'the Greatest Desert') is a desert on the African continent. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.

Quotes

 * [T]he Sahara was a spectacle as alive as the sea. The tints of the dunes changed according to the time of day and the angle of the light: golden as apricots from far off, when we drove close to them they turned to freshly made butter; behind us they grew pink; from sand to rock, the materials of which the desert was made varied as much as its tints.
 * Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance (1965), p. 206.