Adventure in the Sahara

Towards El Gour

El Gour, Ksar Ben El Khass, Medroufa (petroglyphs) and Megioued (dinosaur footprints)

Today promises to be an intense and interesting day, during which we will taste the desert, its natural sculptures and the culture of its inhabitants, present and past. In particular we will see petroglyphs, taking another step back in history compared with the Roman art we happened to see until a couple of days ago. Ghardaia and its oases immersed in the M'zab Valley, a normally dry river that nevertheless reaches a length of 500 km, remain a fine memory.

We meet at four in the morning in the hotel lobby without breakfast, ready to leave in five jeeps and managing to avoid the police escort, which would inevitably have slowed the pace. It is still deep night; nothing moves in Ghardaia or its outskirts. We take again the road from which we arrived yesterday from Ouargla. In the distance the sparkling flame of a chimney waves in a hydrocarbon extraction field. We turn right, west, pass some dilapidated villages and find ourselves in the full desert. Not only do we see no living soul around, but the houses seem uninhabited, without windows or signs of recent human presence; the impression is that someone is nevertheless inside, together with poverty. Our driver wears a blue turban, classic among the Tuareg, the only difference being that he drives a Land Rover instead of a dromedary. He is friendly, but dialogue with him is limited to a few basic French words.

We travel for two and a half hours seeing nothing but the road, in good condition, lit by the headlights, with sparse bushes at the sides like shadows lost in desert nothingness. From time to time the drivers stop to regroup the convoy, then we set off again: without the police escort we can travel more freely. At 6:30 dawn begins. The convoy stops, the drivers get out carrying their prayer mats, spread them facing Mecca and begin the first of the five daily prayers, the dawn prayer. To the east a horizontal line starts to appear, growing increasingly incandescent and thick. Our men whisper words of prayer and, as if guided by a higher entity, which in fact they are, kneel and stand several times as the rite requires. The mysticism of the moment cannot leave one indifferent; the outline of those human shadows swaying in devotion, barely lit by the first glimmer of light, is the inseparable connection between the nature around us and a supreme entity. The same everywhere, regardless of the name we give it and the rituals practised. It becomes even more intuitive to understand that what we call the cathedral of the world, here it would be appropriate to say the mosque of the world, is precisely the sky, here and now dotted with stars, vaster even than the immense Sahara.

Sunrise in the Sahara

In the hours leading to dawn it is cold, and on good asphalt we resume our journey in the jeeps. From time to time a slight hill interrupts the monotony of sand and stone. We continue west, behind us the horizon now drawing a blade that begins to spread a faint light, indicating that a new day is taking shape. The drivers slow their metal dromedaries, leave the strip of asphalt and stop 500 metres away to prepare breakfast; we had almost forgotten we were still fasting. They gather some shrubs and create a small fire on which to boil tea. Meanwhile the sun performs its daily action, as it has done for about 4.6 billion years, and while one of our drivers mixes the tea according to local tradition, pouring it from one container to another from above with style, the first rays bring light and with it soften the desert cold, increasingly setting the east aflame. As the stomach is satisfied with breakfast, the spirit is satisfied with the environment around us, of which the tea ceremony is an integral part.

El Gour and Ksar Ben El Khass

We set off again, and by mid-morning it feels as though we have reached Monument Valley, perhaps with Tuareg instead of Navajo. Not at all: what opens before us is a plateau that collapsed sharply in ancestral times, leaving a characteristic flat mesa about a hundred metres above the surface. We are at El Gour, in a setting of great interest. There is a climb, and ascending is good not only for health but also for widening the view, and for those sensitive to it, the mind as well. Exchanging a few words with a local visitor and his family once at the top, he tells us that in the past there were military camps up there, useful as observation and defence points; from here the view indeed stretches as far as the eye can see. One passes only at a single point, where time caused the rocks to collapse and opened a breach where bipeds have drawn a path; all the rest is sheer rock. Once above, a plain of varying width extends for about a kilometre. From the top one observes the green of cultivated fields. We are told they are a joint venture between American military personnel and local entrepreneurs who, using the dam upstream from Brezina, manage to obtain water to make crops germinate. The splendid sky over the horizontal sand and vertical rocks marks the only sad moment, when it is time to leave. We then visit Ksar El Khass. Set on the edge of a small oasis and surrounded by walls, the fortress still shows its structure clearly, though abandoned. On the sides stood the dwellings with characteristic chimneys, proof that at certain times the desert is not only synonymous with heat, and the central area held the common services. We then go into Brezina, the town where one of our drivers lives, and in whose house lunch has been prepared. It seems fairly usual to eat meals in homes that have a large hall and suitable kitchen organisation, dishes and so on. We might define them as restaurants for private use, also because in some areas acceptable restaurants do not exist at all. Today we have an excellent couscous and drink plenty of tea according to tradition.

Petroglyphs, footprints and Lake Brezina

We leave again, this time towards the petroglyphs of Medroufa, 50 km further north. In truth the site is nothing extraordinary; there are some animals engraved in stone that would probably move an expert more deeply. For our part, we can only try to imagine what the world must have been like and how these artists must have lived at least 10,000 years ago.

The area is interesting from a landscape point of view because of the valleys that open about thirty kilometres beyond Brezina, where the dam of the same name stands, an artificial dam forming the lake that sustains the whole region. Vegetable fields with sprinkler irrigation are visible, clear evidence that although we are in an arid environment, underground water is not lacking and emerges abundantly at the surface. Another curious detail appears when we return to town: olive trees are used as ornamental decoration along the avenues, though they make a little mess when the olives fall to the ground, leaving oily stains on the surface.

Before returning we detour onto a poor dirt track without signs, and find ourselves before another tribute history has brought here: this time not human traces, but animal footprints. At Megioued dinosaurs left their tracks on a surface that later solidified into stone, like a slab, who knows how many millions of years ago. Here too the interesting part lies in reliving the past even more than in seeing the markings themselves: bas-reliefs that speak to the mind before the eyes. We return when the reliefs lengthen their shadows, the rocks take on incandescent reddish tones and Lake Brezina appears even more like a shimmering blue mirage in the desert. Nature sometimes seems to present contradictions, but it is only our limited knowledge and the mental limits conditioned by what we see on the surface, or superficially, that make it hard to understand why. The arid desert does not prevent a sea of water from existing below it; it simply does not exist for us because we do not see it, at least until we do. There would be many examples like this. The Sahara reveals at least one of them and invites us to let the sand out of our mental patterns.

Dinner is again in the hall of the driver's house, with good cooking that could not be more home-style. We sleep in a guest house about fifteen minutes away, which we reach by coach.