In 1906 Hanns Vischer travelled by camel from Tripoli, Libya to Kukawa, Nigeria. His journey was followed almost 100 years later by John Hare, as part of a campaign to raise awareness for the plight of the critically endangered wild Bactrian camel in China and Mongolia. A gifted amateur artist, Vischer illustrated a number of the localities visited during his journey. By coincidence, during his re-creation of the return journey, John Hare produced a comparable photographic record. This short note introduces Vischer's watercolours as a source for the comparative assessment of the landscape today and 100 years ago, and provides a supplement to ‘The Vischer family archives’, published in Libyan Studies 34: 175–182.