MICHAEL ASHER WAS BORN IN Stamford, Lincolnshire, in 1953. After leaving school, he served in the Parachute Regiment in Malaysia, northern Europe, and Northern Ireland. He later served in the Special Air Service Regiment. He attended the University of Leeds from 1974 to 1977 and took a degree in English. From there, he went on to train as a teacher at Carnegie College, Leeds, where he specialised in physical education with a particular interest in outdoor pursuits.
From 1979 to 1982, he worked as a teacher in the Sudan, and during this time became interested in the life of the nomads living on the fringe of the Libyan Desert. In his spare time and vacations, he travelled thousands of miles by camel with these peoples, learning their customs and language. These experiences form the basis of his first book, In Search of the Forty Days Road (Penguin). When the book was completed, he gave up teaching and went to live with one of these tribes, the Kababish. With them, he saw the devastating effects of the drought on their way of life. A Desert Dies, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for 1986-87, concerns his three years with this tribe. In 1985, he led the first UN ICEF camel expedition into the Red Sea Hills to bring aid to nomads cut off in remote regions.