Tunisia Matmata and Tataouine Route

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Gabes

   Gabès is a port town on the south-eastern coast of Tunisia, and it has a trick up its sleeve: a palm oasis that runs right down to the sea. People say it is the only coastal oasis in the Mediterranean, and when you stand under the date palms with pomegranates and bananas growing beneath and the sound of irrigation water in the channels, you can believe it. The oasis is also the source of henna, which has been grown and sold here for a very long time, and the stalls of the souq are packed with the dried leaves, powdered and bagged.

   Read the complete Gabès write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Gabes is where the day begins. Next is Matmata.

2. 2. Matmata

   Matmata is a village you have to look down into. The houses of this Berber settlement in southern Tunisia are dug into the earth, around deep circular pits with rooms cut into the walls around them, so that from the road you see only a scatter of craters in the stony ground and a few chimneys. The people built them like this to escape the extreme heat and cold, and the clay and limestone keep temperatures steady through the year. Walking into one, down a ramp or tunnel, you pass from glaring sunlight into a cool, whitewashed courtyard where goats and chickens wander.

   Read the complete Matmata write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Matmata comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ksar Ghilane.

3. 3. Ksar Ghilane

   Ksar Ghilane is where southern Tunisia stops pretending to be a country and becomes the Sahara. It lies on the edge of the Grand Erg Oriental, the great sea of sand dunes that rolls across the border toward Algeria and Libya, and the oasis is a small patch of date palms around a warm spring that bubbles up in the sand. The spring water is hot enough to be a pleasure on a cool evening, and travellers have swum there for generations, climbing out to watch the stars come out over the dunes.

   Read the complete Ksar Ghilane write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 150 km into the recorded legs you reach Ksar Ghilane. Next is Chenini.

4. 4. Chenini

   Chenini clings to a ridge in the Ksour hills south of Tataouine, a Berber village of stone and plaster whose houses seem to grow out of the hillside. Rooms are carved into the rock, some of them below ground, with whitewashed walls and vaulted ceilings, and above them stands a small mosque with a white dome. From a distance, the village is the same colour as the hill and almost vanishes in the afternoon haze, and only a few pale domes give it away.

   Read the complete Chenini write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Chenini, late in the day. Next is Tataouine.

5. 5. Tataouine

   Tataouine is where the Sahara starts to feel close. The town of some sixty thousand people sits on a dry plain south of the Dahar hills, in the middle of the southern Tunisian steppe, and beyond it to the south and west the dunes of the Grand Erg Oriental stretch toward Algeria and Libya. Its name will already be familiar to anyone who has watched Star Wars, since George Lucas borrowed it, with a small spelling change, for Luke Skywalker's desert home. The film crews shot around here, and the fans have kept coming.

   Read the complete Tataouine write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Tataouine. That is the ride.