Desert beauty
Historic Berber villages and the colourful Ksour Festival are highlights of a trip in the remote Tunisian Sahara, writes Neil Geraghty
The spectacular Ksour Festival in Tunisia’s Sahara
I’m sitting in the front row of a grandstand at the opening ceremony of the International Ksour Festival in the Tunisian Sahara and I’m feeling a tad nervous. A platoon of Berber soldiers brandishing rifles is charging towards us and the air is filled with their ululating shrieks.
I take a deep breath and then blink in surprise when they stop a few metres in front of us and launch into a beautifully choreographed dance routine worthy of a Strictly Come Dancing final. When you’re a Berber soldier, synchronised leg kicking doesn’t exactly enhance your warrior credentials and to remedy this, every few minutes they stop dancing, point their rifles skyward and let rip with deafening salvos of syncopated gunfire.
The Ksour Festival is held each winter in Tataouine, an oasis town deep in the south of Tunisia, and is one of many Berber festivals that brighten up the winter months throughout the Sahara. The festivals attract wandering musicians, dancers and acrobats from all over north Africa and offer fascinating glimpses into Berber culture. The Tataouine festival is especially popular amongst city dwelling Tunisians of Berber descent who come for winter breaks to explore their ancestral homelands and enjoy the mellow Saharan winter sunshine.
Several desert resorts have been built in Tataouine to accommodate the seasonal influx of tourists and upon arrival I head to the edge of town where sand dunes blowing in from the Sahara lap up against the walls of the Sangho Privilege hotel. This comfortable resort is built in the style of a Berber village where rustic style stone bungalows are set amidst exotic gardens planted with date palms, bougainvillea and prickly pear cacti. The afternoon temperature is a balmy 21C when I arrive and after check in I wander over to the outdoor pool for a dip.
By the side of the pool some local men huddled up in overcoats are sitting in the sunshine sipping mint tea and they look at me as if I’m mad swimming in such chilly weather. After I’ve finished they beckon me over and ask me to join them for some tea. They order a plate of delicious cornes de gazelles, crescent-shaped semolina biscuits flavoured with orange blossom water and stuffed with almond paste. The men are keen to hear my entire life story and what brings me to this remote corner of the desert.
As we sit chatting, I’m bowled over by their disarming friendliness and hospitality and when I get up to go they insist that I join them for a birthday party that they’re going to in the hotel the following evening.
In the morning, after an early breakfast, I set out to explore some of the historic Berber villages that lie within close reach of Tataouine. The most striking features of these villages are the ksars, fortified granaries which in the Middle Ages were used by local communities to protect their food supplies from marauding brigands. One of the most impressive examples is Ksar Ouled Soltane a few miles to the south of Tataouine. The entire structure is built from honey-coloured adobe bricks and consists of dozens of beehive-shaped towers built around a sandy courtyard. The facades of the towers are covered in zig-zag flights of stairs that lead up to the storage chambers. Many of the enormous
By the time the tower reaches seven amphorae it begins to sway alarmingly
clay urns that once stored the grain decorate the courtyard and add a touch of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves to the beautiful ancient structure.
Ksar Ouled Soltane lies close to a range of limestone mountains which are home to a string of ruined Berber villages. One of the of the most scenic is Chenini where a whitewashed medieval mosque and steep streets of crumbling stone houses lie wedged into a craggy ravine. A few of the houses are still occupied by the older generation and as I walk through the village I pass some elderly ladies wearing graceful red checked traditional Berber gowns.
Outside the mosque I pause at a souvenir stall where my eyes are drawn to a basket of stone roses that are sparkling in the sunshine. They look so perfect I assume they’ve been hand carved, but I’m surprised to learn that they are naturally occurring rock formations. They’re known in Tunisia as desert roses and form when gypsum slowly crystallises in the salt pans that are a common feature throughout the Tunisian Sahara.
When I return to Tataouine in the afternoon the festivities are in full swing and the atmosphere is a cross between an American rodeo and a medieval fair. As I arrive at the main arena, I catch the end of a camel race and the Berber jockeys dressed in flowing white robes and turbans look resplendent as they thunder along in the sand. Their prowess at riding however pales into insignificance when a couple of teenage boys gallop into the arena on horses and begin to dazzle the audience with a thrilling display of saddle top somersaults and handstands.
Away from the main arena the air is filled with the sounds of frenzied drumbeats and the hypnotic refrains of traditional Berber music. I’m intrigued by a troupe of performers who are setting up a rickety-looking step ladder and I walk over to see what’s going on. One of the troupe climbs to the top and sits down while a boy places some white amphorae close by in the sand. A line of drummers strikes up a slow paced beat and one of the troupe picks up an amphora, places it on his head and dances around in a circle gyrating his hips as he goes. When he reaches the stepladder, the boy passes an amphora up to the man sitting on top, who then deftly lays it on top of the first one as the dancer passes underneath. The drummers then increase the tempo and with each circle completed, the tower grows and the beat accelerates.
By the time the tower reaches seven amphorae it begins to sway alarmingly back and forth and the audience nervously moves backwards every time the dancer approaches. It’s a nail-biting performance but in the end the dancer manages an imposing tower of 10 before the laws of gravity make any more additions impossible.
After sunset I drive over to the sports stadium where a well known Libyan singer, Walid Tellawi, has the entire stadium dancing and singing along to his catchy pop hits. By the time I get back to the hotel I’m exhausted after the long day but as I’m walking back to my cabin, I hear someone calling out my name.
It’s one of the men from the day before who greets me like an old friend, grabs me by the arm and ushers me over to the birthday gathering. Long into the night we sit chatting by a crackling fire while in the distance fireworks and gunfire from the festival echo over the stillness of the Sahara.