War-torn Mali  is a far cry from the Dorset village home of author Sarah Challis but, as she tells Rachel Stratton, it has a special place in her heart.

When Dorset author Sarah Challis took the trip of a lifetime more than ten years ago, she did not expect to see the stark beauty of the Malian desert become a bloody battleground.

After the holiday in 2001, which was ‘never intended to be a research trip’, Sarah based two novels in the African country featuring the Tuareg tribe who were companions on a desert trek.

But the ‘noble and peaceful’ tribesmen she travelled with are now embroiled in a fight for independence, and she fears for the lives of the friends she based her characters on.

Sarah, who lives in Stourton Caundle, said: “I kept a diary, day by day, out of habit, and I often got one of the Tuareg to add a drawing, or piece of writing in their own script.

“There came a time when I had had eight books published, and I wanted to write something different.

“I think my books were all of a certain genre, a little predictable, and so I decided to set one in Mali, and to do something unexpected.”

Doing something unexpected was not something Sarah’s family – a husband and four sons – were entirely unfamiliar with.

“I was a teacher before I became an author. My youngest had just left school and I realised if I stayed in teaching I would be doing it until I retired.

“Around the same time I went on a trip with the Bedouin tribe in the Sinai desert. It was quite unusual then for a tour company to be environmentally and ecologically minded, and the point was to encourage the tribe to preserve their traditional way of life.”

Contacts made on that trip led her to a similar undertaking in Mali.

With just one female companion, she spent two weeks in the Malian part of the Sahara Desert, riding camels and experiencing the Tuareg way of life.

She said: “It was quite an unusual thing for a woman to do, but age really is a wonderful thing.

“Had we been younger we might have had more problems, but we were treated with the utmost respect and deference.”

The group roamed the desert, visiting rock formations and village wells, but the trip wasn’t just about sightseeing.

Sarah said: “The tribesmen killed a goat, and presented us with its stomach, as we were honoured guests. It’s a real treat for them, but the best we could do was to politely nibble.”

She added: “We all got to know each other very well and we were treated with the utmost deference and respect.

“It was a wonderful atmosphere, and they were real gentlemen.

“The Tuareg actually reminded me of people who are born and bred in Dorset, particularly those who live off the land, because they have that quality about them of just quietly getting on with things.

“And of course, like Mali, you cannot live in a county like Dorset without finding the immediate environment very inspirational.”

But as Sarah sat writing The Lonely Desert, her second novel to be set in Mali, events overtook her.

She said: “I was writing, and had the radio on in the background, and I heard what was happening there.

“What I was writing about had become topical.”

The novel was published in October 2012, but weeks later, Sarah found out that the real life inspiration for her heroine Clemmie’s husband, Ibrahim ag Bahanga, had been killed in the conflict.

Sarah added: “I do worry about the people I travelled with. Going out there again is obviously out of the question but I have no way of getting in contact and finding out if they are still alive.”

The author said she will not write any more books set in Mali while the conflict continues.

She said: “It’s strange that it has all become real.

“It’s very sad.”