Our voyage began one early November morning. We cleaned the ice off the windshield and set off towards the distant city of Genoa where the ship that would take us to Tunisia waited. The long drive (around eight hours) passed relatively quickly, as I slept most of the way.
The ferry was large. I’ve seen larger still, but nevertheless it was quite impressive. We boarded, got cabins assigned, and settled down to wait for departure.
As the ship slowly pulled out of the Genoa bay, I looked with mixed feelings on the shores of Europe. On the one hand I was looking forward to the next two weeks, but on the other, I was already missing the comforts of home. Like a comfy chair.
The day on the ferry passed me by quickly, for I once again slept most of the way, and suddenly we were docking in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. We disembarked swiftly and without complications, and began driving towards the old tourist center of Monastir, nearly two hundred kilometers south of Tunis.
The hotel was called Crystal. The beds were comfortable, and made even more so by the fact that they were the last beds we would sleep in for the next two weeks.
The following morning we consumed our breakfast and resumed our journey south. Douz was our destination this time, the last city before the desert.
Six hundred kilometers later, we were in the small camp in Douz. We set up our sleeping bags and turned in for the night. Traveling is tiring. In the morning, we stocked up on water for six days - two cartons of six one-and-a-half liter bottles per person, and one carton per vehicle extra.
The first glance of sand - it was like seeing the sea for the first time. The smooth, tiny grains slipped almost, but not quite, like water through my hands. I was hooked. I still am.
The next week was… amazing. I’m not sure where we were headed, I’m not sure where we stopped during the nights, but… it was great. Amongst the dunes, the nights were as cold as Dante’s hell, but the stars that came out when the moon set were worth a thousand freezing years, and the sunsets and sunrises doubly so. The days weren’t too hot, surprisingly, but rather pleasantly warm. The food we ate came from the crates we brought with us from Europe, and we cooked it ourselves. Each morning fresh flatbread was baked on an open fire in a clay pot. But best of all, to me at least, was the absolute, stunning, all-enveloping silence of the high desert, noticeable only when the drivers turned off their engines and the people stopped talking. Nowhere in Europe will you get silence like that - there will always be a bird, or the sound of wind in leaves and grass, or crickets, or something that spoils it. But here… making noise just takes too much energy, so everything is silent. Marvelous.
Eventually we reached an oasis called Ain Huilat Richet, apparently seen live only by a handful of individuals because of the difficulty of the dunes surrounding it - cars have a hard time coming there. We spent a night near the water source - a torrent of water bursting out of the ground, at 35 degrees Celsius. The next morning we headed out again, towards Ksar Ghillane, a touristic oasis that recently got a asphalt road connection to the rest of the world. We reached it after another two days, and spent two more days there, “exploring” the nearby dunes.
Subsequently, we set out again, planning to cross the high desert again - but something broke on my brother’s car, and we had to take the road to Douz, which we reached that very evening. There my brother had his car roughly fixed, and we set out further north towards Tozeur, which was to be our home base for the next few days.
From Tozeur we went on a long cruise around several interesting tourist attractions, most notable of which were the Star Wars Canyon, The Rommel Road, and Mos Espa spaceport (another Star Wars location).
After that, all that remained was the long trip back home, which passed without incident.
D.W.R.
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