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Coverage / Mauritania

Mauritania

Western Africa

A vast, thinly populated Saharan republic on the Atlantic edge of West Africa, most of it open desert. Its draws are the Adrar plateau with the medieval caravan towns of Chinguetti and Ouadane and their ancient manuscript libraries, the great dunes of the Erg Ouarane, the bird-rich Banc d'Arguin coast, and the legendary iron-ore train. Travel is under standing security advisories and best done with established local operators.

4 activities · 4 pairings · 5 verified providers

What you can do in Mauritania

Museums & Galleries

ChinguettiJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecChinguetti holds one of the most remarkable things you can see in the Sahara: living libraries of medieval manuscripts, kept by the same families for centuries. In its heyday the town was a centre of Islamic scholarship on the pilgrimage road, nicknamed the Sorbonne of the Sahara, and its families amassed thousands of hand-copied books on Koranic law, astronomy, mathematics, medicine and poetry. Several of those private libraries survive in the old ksar, plain rooms where a librarian carefully opens brittle, illuminated volumes on a low table in front of you, some of them close to a thousand years old. To read about the trans-Saharan trade is one thing, to stand in a mud-walled house while a descendant of the copyists turns the pages is another. The collections are under real threat from heat, insects and the encroaching sand, which gives a visit an added weight. Walk the sand-drowned lanes and the old mosque with its square minaret, then sit with the books. There is nothing else quite like it.

Overlanding / Expedition Driving

Adrar PlateauJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecThe Adrar is Saharan Mauritania at its most complete, and the classic way to take it in is a 4x4 expedition out of the town of Atar. Over several days you cross a landscape that changes hour by hour: black rock plateaus, palm-filled canyons like the oasis of Terjit, and the towering orange dunes of the Erg Ouarane sand sea. You reach the two great caravan cities, Chinguetti and Ouadane, ksour of dry-stone houses that were once staging posts on the trans-Saharan trade and pilgrimage routes and are now UNESCO sites. From here you can detour to the Richat Structure, the enormous bullseye of eroded rock in the desert known as the Eye of the Sahara, and time the trip to ride the iron-ore train, the kilometres-long freight that crosses the desert to the coast. It is expedition travel: remote, self-contained and reliant on a good local crew, and that is exactly the appeal. Almost no one else is out here.

Trekking / Hiking

ChinguettiJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecChinguetti is the classic starting point for a camel caravan trek into the Erg Ouarane, one of the great sand seas of the Sahara. The town itself is extraordinary, a thousand-year-old ksar of stone and mud on the desert's edge, but the reason to walk from here is the emptiness beyond it. On a multi-day mehariste trek you follow old caravan routes with a local guide and camels carrying the camp, walking through the cool of the morning and evening across dune fields, gravel plains and the occasional palm grove, and sleeping out under some of the darkest skies anywhere. There are no roads, no crowds and no noise, just the rhythm of the caravan and the shift of the light on the sand. It is a slow, physical way to travel that connects you to how the desert was always crossed, and it ends back among the libraries and lanes of Chinguetti. For a traveller after real remoteness and a taste of nomad life, this is the Sahara at its purest.

Wildlife Safaris

Banc d'Arguin National ParkJan Feb Mar Nov DecBanc d'Arguin is one of the greatest bird spectacles in the world, and almost nobody sees it. Where the desert runs straight into the Atlantic, a huge area of shallow water, mudflat and sandbank becomes the single most important wintering site for wading birds migrating down the East Atlantic flyway from the Arctic, with millions of birds gathered on the exposed banks at low tide. Add year-round breeding colonies of greater flamingo, white pelican, spoonbill, cormorant and several tern species on the low islands and the numbers become staggering. You explore it the traditional way, sailing out from the Imraguen fishing village of Iwik in a lanche, a wooden sailing boat, to drift near the colonies with a local guide, the same boats the Imraguen still use to fish. It is a quiet, low-impact way to reach the birds and it puts money into the fishing community that co-manages the park. For a birder or anyone who loves a wild coast, this is a world-class site with no crowds.

Best months at a glance

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Museums
Overlanding
Trekking
Wildlife Safaris