Caravan travels, the rough way

Question

From time to time I dream about an epic trip on foot from Tangier to Mecca in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, where you ride a camel for hours while following a big caravan, dodging bandits and finally resting in a caravanserai for the night.
Right now I'm reading Richard Francis Burton's "A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah" and I'm totally amused by his crazy journey disguised as "Arab" to be able to reach Mecca.

After this lovely introduction here is my question: Is it still actually possible to travel independently from, let's say, Sirte to Alexandria following a caravan or nowadays even the locals don't use these means any more? Are there parts of the world where this would still be doable?

Answer 1

The last trade route regularly used by camel caravans in Sahara is the Darb-el-arbain, or the forty days road, from Sudan to Egypt. The traded goods are the camels themselves.

As recently as May 25, 2013, a TV documentary about this trade route has been broadcast by Arte, the German-French TV channel. This documentary is available during one week on the Arte web site, in French and in German. A detailed report of this documentary can be found in French on the Enjoy Louxor! blog.

(Picture from the TV documentary broadcast on Arte)

I don't know whether strangers can join a caravan.

Answer 2

I believe such tours were available 10 years ago but I doubt that anybody is offering journeys across the Sahara today, no matter the transport means.

I have some vague recollection of acquaintances doing this kind of thing a long time ago, before the Algerian civil war of the '90s but if you believe travel advisories from the different Foreign Affairs ministries publishing this kind of advice, pretty much the whole Sahara from the East of Mauritania to Libya through Mali, Niger, Sudan, Chad, the South part of Algeria and the border areas of Tunisia are basically no-go areas.

The Paris-Dakar moved to South America (far away from either Dakar or Paris) years ago.