The desert removes everything superfluous — color, moisture, noise, distraction — until what remains is the essential: rock, sky, light, and the quality of your own company. The mystics of the Abrahamic traditions fled to the desert not because it was comfortable but because it was honest, and honesty was exactly what they were after. Nasreddin would have found the desert useful: a place too spare for pretense and too large for the ego to claim.
Each step builds on the last.