The Sahara is a huge hot desert across North Africa. It is the largest hot desert on Earth — though actually, if you count very cold dry places as deserts too, Antarctica is bigger. The Sahara stretches across many countries, from the Atlantic in the west toward Egypt in the east. Most of it is stone, sand, and sky; days can be fiercely hot, and nights can turn cold. In English we usually say the Sahara or the Sahara Desert, with the. People sometimes borrow the name for any place that feels empty and dry, but the real name belongs to this one desert. School books may say the Sahara is slowly getting bigger. The southern edge does move into the Sahel in dry years — though it can also pull back when rain returns — so the tidy picture of a desert that only grows is tidier than the weather.