Sahara near Morocco-Algeria border

The Erg Chebbi desert is very close to the border between Morocco and Algeria.

Touring it provides a great opportunity to see the nomadic tribes, like the Berbers as well as to see their ancient traditions, like gathering water from the desert.

To get to the Erg Chebbi desert needs driving all the way to the east of Morocco, which is anywhere from 10 to 15 hours of drive depending on how many stops you take.

Most hotels and kiosks around that area offer a 3 to 4 hour driving trip in a 4 x 4 to see the various sites.

The 4 x 4 driver I went with, seem to be a very good driver, and was very aggressive on the dunes. After a bit of driving, the vehicle just got stuck in the sand. The driver got out and tinkered around a bit, and we were off and running in minutes.

As he continued his fast driving on the dunes, where there were many 4 x 4 vehicle tracks, we came across a caravan of camels and their herders.

As if on cue, the vehicle got stuck again, and no matter what the driver did to get it dislodged from the dune, and as the air was rapidly filling up with the smell of burnt tire rubber, there was no getting out of the rut.

He appealed to the herders, they pushed and pulled, while the camels observed the operations, definitely not for the first time, and the 4 x 4 was ready to go again.

In about a half hour ride, we were close to a nomadic village with many Berber family huts.

The Berbers have a tradition of keeping the water cool overnight by putting it in this animal hide. It is hung at the front of each hut.

The guy pointed out the Berber flag.

In the distance, we could see the dunes that we came from.

As we kept driving in the desert, he mentioned that this part of the desert had dark sand. The huts of different families are visible in the background.

The old huts made by miners who mined minerals that were used in beauty products were seen in the next part of the drive.

The next area the driver took me to was a coal mine situated at a bit of an altitude.

The next area we saw had the associated workers' living quarters.

The overall geography of that area was visible from here, which was at a higher elevation.

There were vendors selling fossils, geodes and jewelry made out of these things.

The next place I visited was to see how the local tribes used water from the ground water supply and transported it over longer distance for farming. The picture below shows a place where people could fill their buckets with water.

They had dug many wells, and water was struck at a depth of 10 metres or so.

The wells were dug along a line, and they were all connected together with a channel.

The channel fed water all the way to the farmland. The channel itself was very shallow, about 1 foot deep. We could see fresh water traveling through it continuously, and without any impurities.

Different sections of the farmland had different produce being grown.

Controlling of irrigation to different sections of the farmland was achieved simply by turning off that section with a mound of clay.

The farm looked very lush especially since it was in the middle of a desert.

I was then driven to hear the music by Khamlia Gnawa. This North African Berber Music is played in a small village called Khamlia in the Moroccan Sahara Desert near Merzouga. There was a cafe serving freshly squeezed orange juice, tea or espresso and people could use the musical instruments and try them out. Every so often, the villagers did a delightful performance for the hundreds of assembled tourists.

The trip to the desert would have been incomplete without having a personal experience enjoying going fast on the dunes. I could rent a 4 x 4 ATV and with a guide on his separate ATV, we rode on all the dunes nearby for a one hour ride. We rode on the highest dunes and sped downhill to the lowest valleys and in all covered about 16 km in the hour. It was a great ending to the desert tour.