Wrapped in a superb, green-blue cotton takakat and a white tagelmust around his head, our Tuareg guide’s fiery coal eyes are riveted on the horizon. Agaoued Mechar leans on a stick, his chest bent by years of work on this inhospitable land. And what a land! “It’s beautiful. It’s good!” he says.
Agaoued encourages us to take photos, happy that foreign tourists are once again allowed to visit the Tassili n’Ajjer plateau in southeastern Algeria. From 2008 to 2019, Algeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended that tourists avoid the area because of a high risk of terrorist activity.
We are standing at the foot of the plateau. An ocean of rocks and sand, it seems to have fallen from the moon: dried valleys, gaping canyons, excavated cliffs and blocks of reddish sandstone burned, crumbled, eroded. At an altitude of 6,500 feet and covering
