22 Oct Mauritania: the Tanouchert oasis

This time I was going to show you the route we have designed for Mauritania but I have to confess that I can't wait for someone to ask me to really escape to the desert, with no direction, no rush, no goals... and the map of Mauritania will never exhaust my desire to explore, I want to go through every place that appears on it, without abusing the straight lines, slowly, from the oasis of Lagueila to that lost road that through the white valley led to Tidjikja and that we couldn't take...

Not far from there, 50 years ago, in a dusty cafe in the city of Atar, Bruce Chatwin wrote in his moleskine "This can be solved by walking" just before getting lost among the Ametlich dunes. And that is what we propose, to start walking to solve that doubt that always assails us when we think about what will be behind the next dune.

And of course, that's what we did, getting lost in a sea of dunes for 90km, which is more or less the distance between the cities of Chinguetti and Ouadanne. There was a parallel track, how easy, which brings the distance between the two cities closer, but it is far from the spirit of Desertando... Besides, if you take it, you will miss dunes, wadis, oasis, villages and that feeling of adventure, which after all, is what drives me, in those days when I refuse to be an adult, to leave everything behind and travel.

That sea of dunes marks the beginning of the largest desert in the world, the Desert of the Great Crossing, the Majabat Al Koubra, whose name directly evokes great adventures, which of course I would like to surpass, especially that of Michael Asher, who managed to persuade his fiancée how romantic it would be to spend their honeymoon travelling the Sahara from West to East on a camel, (a champion, although I think he is still paying for it...).

And in the middle of this sea of dunes we find this mirage, which is exactly where our steps have reached, not one step more, not one less...

...because confused with the mirage, the dunes, the heat, the ham intoxication from the Lidl and the fact that I suspect Pedro wasn't wearing his trout tails..., we almost crashed into the tree, and although we managed to avoid it by a miracle, we ended up half buried in the dunes.

By the way, both the acacia and the adventure remind me of the famous Ténéré tree, the loneliest tree on the planet, the only one in a radius of more than 400km of desert, and which would still be there if it hadn't been for a Libyan lorry driver, totally oiled up, who drove crestfallen through the dunes, crashed into it, pulling it up...

But as what happens, happens, our car got stuck near the Tanouchert oasis, where a Berber family opened the doors of their home and shared with us tea, food, water and a very special afternoon while we waited for the sun to go down so we could try to get the car out of the dunes.

Or for Justi to pull out his superpowers and lift the car by himself.

The truth is that they were so hospitable and we spent such a good day with them that the Tanouchert oasis has become for Desertando an obligatory stop on our routes through the dunes of Ametlich, Ouaranne or Maghteir, the gateways to the infinite Sahara.

The Tanouchert oasis is a very special place, hidden among high dunes that protect it from the winds of the Harmattan, where the shade of the palm trees is pleasant, the water cool, the dates exquisite and the women very beautiful. Be careful, it's a real eye-catcher.

Now I was going to describe the route we have selected, but je suis fatigueé and I would like to dedicate a whole post to tell you about it. Suffice it to say that I'm only thinking about going back there, and I'm not going to miss anything, because not only does it pass through the places I like the most, but we also try to combine it with good accommodation and better food, because adventure, glamour and haute cuisine (fuet and cheese together is fusion cuisine) are the adjectives that best define our way of travelling (especially if Pedro, Justi or Rafa go, because I get more confused with the adventure part).

I leave you with some of the places that await you, although we will talk about them later.

And now one of Terjit's Oasis. If you look closely, the one that looks like the youngest of them all, and that the light of the flash has made a bit clearer than the others, looks a bit like me.