5 Days in Djanet

Start with context. The Tassili Museum sits on the main road at the edge of Adjahil, the oldest of Djanet's villages, and tourist listings describe it as showing artefacts and rock art from the Tassili region. It is the quickest way to understand what you are about to walk to, because the paintings on the plateau are hard to read when you meet them cold.

No opening hours are published anywhere we could find, even by the park authority, so ask your agency or hotel the evening before whether it is open. If it is closed, nothing is lost; your guide will do a better job at the real shelters. Map listings call the place Tassili Museum and Registration, so your guide may stop here for park paperwork either way.

Djanet was founded by the Kel Ajjer Tuareg in the Middle Ages, and the town you see grew from three stone villages built in the 16th century on either side of the Oued Idjeriou: Azelouaz, El Mihan and Adjahil, the oldest. New streets were later built to connect them. In the early 1900s the area passed between Ottoman, French and local forces; the French renamed the place Fort Charlet and reoccupied it for good in 1920.

Walk the lanes with your guide rather than alone. The buildings are mud brick, the lanes narrow and winding. Azelouaz and El Mihan are also the two rival sides of the Sebiba festival (see more time). Don't photograph people without asking, and be extra careful with women.

The Oued Idjeriou is dry most of the year, but its bed feeds a belt of about 40,000 date palms along the wadi, with vegetables and fruit in the shade below. After the bare stone of the ksour it feels like another country, and it is the reason the town exists at all.

Go on foot, early, before the heat arrives, and stay on the paths your guide chooses because the gardens are private. It is the best place in town to see why a settlement was possible here, and a good moment to try fresh dates if someone offers them.

Lunch in Djanet is the right moment to meet taguella, the sand-baked flatbread that is the staple food of the Tuareg. The dough is kneaded for about twenty minutes, set in a hollow in hot sand, covered with embers and ash, turned halfway and dusted off. It is broken up by hand and dipped in a meat sauce, tomato sauce or soup.

Finish with the tea, strong green tea with mint and sugar, poured from a height into small glasses until it foams. The usual rounds are three glasses, from strong to sweet. Whether your agency serves it in a house in the village or at the hotel, say in advance you want the real thing.

A short 4x4 run south of town, roughly 20 km by one operator's count, brings you to Tegharghart and its famous engraving, la vache qui pleure, the crying cow. Cattle carved into the rock are a reminder that this land was savanna, not desert, when the engravings were made.

It is rock art close to town, no climbing needed, and a good test of your eye before the plateau. Engravings (carved) are different from paintings (applied in color), and you will see both over the next days. Don't touch the surface, and keep out of the carved area when the guide asks.

The Erg Admer is a sand sea about 100 km long and 20 km wide that begins near Essendilene and runs south toward Niger. Its first dunes are close to Djanet, which is why guides bring first-time visitors here for the last light. Climb a crest, take your shoes off and watch the color go from ochre to red as the sun drops.

The sand is soft, the climb is steeper than it looks, and sunsets are quick. Take a fleece for the walk down; temperatures fall fast once the sun is gone. Ask your guide whether tea on the dunes is part of the plan.

The Tassili is walled off by escarpments the Tuareg call akba. Two of the passes are so steep that only people and donkeys can use them; loaded camels cannot manage the climb. Your guide chooses the pass, the donkey handlers go ahead with the gear, and you follow at the speed of the slowest walker. Plan on a few hours of steep, rocky climbing with stops for breath and photographs.

The effort pays off quickly. Below you the plain flattens into a haze, and above you the plateau opens into sandstone towers and sandy basins. Wear shoes with grip and bring a daypack with water, snacks, warm layers and a camera.

Around Tamrit, about a hundred old Saharan cypresses (Cupressus dupreziana, called tarout) survive in the rock. The trees are endemic and endangered, and they are counted among the longest-lived organisms after the bristlecone pines. They are what is left of a forest from the wetter Sahara, which is exactly the story the paintings tell.

The first green you see in the rock is genuinely moving. Stay on the paths, don't break branches, and don't light fires near the trees. It is also a good spot for a long, slow break while the donkeys catch up.

Meals on the plateau come from the donkeys: pack animals and herders carry the luggage, food and water, and the cook works in the shade of a rock.

Expect simple food that suits a morning of climbing. Leave no scraps; stone-walled rubbish areas exist at some camps, and nothing should be buried in the sand. If you are vegetarian or have allergies, tell the agency before the trek, not on the day.

Tamrit is a common first stop on a plateau walk. The rock art of the Tassili is old: surveys give an archaic phase of hunter-gatherer engraving, the Round Head painters, then herders with cattle, followed by horse and chariot scenes and finally camels. The most recent traditions belong to the caravan age.

Your guide picks which shelters to enter and tells the stories; the paintings are fragile and low in the walls. Don't touch or wet them, and no flash. Expect cattle, people, and the occasional giraffe or antelope.

The plateau is sandstone stained dark by desert varnish, and the erosion has left what looks like a stone forest of towers, arches and corridors. There are nearly 300 natural arches in the south-east of the park. At sunset the walls go from orange to red, and the shadows make the shapes look like ruined cities.

Walk to the closest high point with your guide, sit still and let the light do the work. The weather turns cold quickly in winter, so put on layers before the sun is gone rather than after.

Camp is usually a few mats and sleeping bags laid out in a hollow, sometimes behind stone windbreaks built by earlier walkers. Your cook prepares dinner and tea. After that there is nothing but stars.

Nights are cold in winter, and water in basins can freeze. A sleeping bag rated to around -5°C (23°F) and thermal layers are worth bringing, even if your agency provides bedding. Shake out your shoes in the morning; scorpions and horned vipers live here, though they are rare and want nothing to do with you.

Sefar is a landscape more than a site, a natural stone city of towers, alleys and shelters in the heart of the plateau. Most multi-day treks make it the center of the walk, and walking days here run six to eight hours over rocky ground. In a two-day taster, at best you see its edge, and some agencies will not take a taster group this far at all; the edge is impressive if they do.

Keep your daypack light and your pace steady; mobile coverage in the south can be patchy or absent.

Sefar and Jabbaren are named as the richest sites on the Tassili plateau, with art from the earliest tradition through the cattle, horse and camel periods. The engravings at Sefar are dated to roughly 9,000-10,000 years ago. Expect round heads, herders with cattle and scenes from daily life, each with a story from your guide.

The plateau art was first reported in 1910, and the French explorer Henri Lhote led expeditions here in 1956-1957. His methods are now criticized: his team was accused of faking some images and of damaging paintings by brightening them, which permanently reduced the original colors. That is why the rules today are so strict.

Tin Tazarift is another locality on the Sefar side of the plateau, known in the research literature for a famous controversy. In 1989 Giorgio Samorini proposed that some paintings show mushroom-like figures and psychedelic use, an idea Terence McKenna took up in 1992. Others dispute that the images are mushrooms at all.

The strongest support for the idea is a figure called Matalem-Amazar, covered in mushrooms. Whether or not you buy the theory, it is a good reminder that prehistoric paintings are open to interpretation. Ask your guide what they make of it, and stay out of any shelter they mark as off limits.

Keep the last lunch on the plateau quick, because the walk down takes time. Bread, dates and tea keep you going, and if the group is ahead of schedule you can ask your guide to make tea.

Drink plenty of water and watch the sun. Shade is scarce on the ridges, and the descent is better done in cooler light than in the middle of the day.

The way down uses one of the foot-and-donkey passes, steep and loose in places. Walk slowly, use your hands where needed and let the donkeys lead on the worst stretches. The descent is harder on knees than the climb was on lungs, so poles help if you have them.

If the group is behind schedule, the agency may decide to camp low on the escarpment and drive in the morning, and a pass like this is not one to walk in the dark.

After two days of sand and rock, a hot shower and a table feel like luxury. Ask the hotel kitchen for soup (chorba) and a main of meat with vegetables or couscous, and finish with tea. Ask your agency to book a room for tonight; you will want it.

Sleep as long as you can. Tomorrow is a long day in the vehicle, and the Tadrart camps will be basic again. Repack for dunes rather than rocks and leave anything you don't need with the hotel.

Your 4x4 leaves town in the morning, and expect checkpoints where your guide hands over the paperwork. The authorities put considerable resources into protecting foreign visitors and the security presence is visible, sometimes intrusive. Your passport and the printed visa authorization may be checked, so keep them within reach.

Mobile coverage disappears quickly, so tell anyone at home you will be offline.

Midway, the driver stops for a meal prepared by the agency's cook; circuits typically include guide, vehicle, driver and meals. Eat light and stay in the shade.

Sand gets everywhere, so keep bottles capped and cameras bagged. This is also a good time to ask how many hours remain and whether the dune stop comes before the camp.

The Tadrart Rouge is a sandstone massif, about 150 km from north to south, cut by west to east wadis that run into dune fields. In the rock shelters and on the wadi walls is Saharan rock art from the Neolithic to recent times, a record of the climate drying from savanna about 10,000 years ago to desert about 5,000 years ago.

Early images show elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes and antelopes; later ones show cattle, goats, sheep, horses and camels. Your guide will take you to shelters near the route. The figures are small and often faint, so walk slowly and look low as well as high.

The dunes of Tin Merzouga are the big attraction of the Tadrart: a French guide puts them at about 250 m, standing above both the Algerian and the Libyan Tadrart, and the sand is a deep orange-red. The name, in Tamasheq, is said to mean the well of Merzouga.

Climb to the summit for a 360-degree view. The dunes are especially striking at sunset, and the walk up takes a while, so don't leave it for the last minute.

The large dunes of the Tin Merzouga area give the best last-light photographs of the trip. Stand on the ridge as the shadow line moves across the face.

It is also the best moment to notice how quiet the desert is. Keep your headlamp ready; the walk back across the sand is easy to misjudge in the dark.

If your guides bake taguella in camp, this is where you see it done properly: a hollow in the sand, the dough, hot embers and sand on top, then a loaf that is dusted off and broken up. Ask them on the drive whether it is on the menu tonight.

Eat with your right hand and take as long as the group does. Camps sit at the foot of the dunes and equipment is generally provided by the organizer. It will be colder than you expect.

Wake before sunrise, climb a low dune and wait. The first light on the red sand is the best color of the entire trip.

Pack the vehicles after breakfast, shake out your bedding and leave no trash. Keep sand out of the cameras by changing lenses inside the vehicle.

Erosion has carved many natural arches in the Tadrart Rouge, and the best known is the cathédrale de Tamezguida, which multi-day itineraries usually schedule between Tin Merzouga and Moul N'Aga. It is the stop that makes the 4x4 ride worth it.

Walk around it with your guide and don't climb on the rock. For more arches, see Tikobaouine in the more time section.

Moul N'Aga means the owner of the camel in Tamasheq, after a wind-carved rock that looks like a camel lying down. Around it are high dunes, canyons, rock pillars and natural arches, in colors that move from yellow and ochre to red through the day. The area is one of the most photographed and most visited points in the Tadrart Rouge.

Operators typically camp here, and itineraries include a light trek through wadis and canyons with ancient rock art on the way, along the Oued In Djaren. Climb a dune for the view, and take time near the stone camel.

The last meal in the Tadrart is lunch before the long drive. Refill your water bottles before you leave, because the track back has no shops.

Take a few minutes after the meal to thank the cook and driver. Ask your agency what is usual for tips; carry the cash in dinars.

The way back to Djanet is about 170 km of track and takes roughly six hours of driving. Sleep if you can. Roads and tracks in the south can have sand drifts, and a driver who knows them matters more than any detail of the car.

Near Djanet you should expect a checkpoint, and your guide hands over the paperwork again. If the trip runs late, ask your agency in advance what the plan is.

Back in town, a last glass of tea with your guide closes the trip. Settle any tip, and ask what they would show you with more time.

Shower, repack and sleep. Check your flight time and confirm the airport transfer with your agency. Keep your printed visa authorization until you leave the country.