Tourism in Mauritania

In part this was attributable to the Western Sahara War in which Mauritania was briefly engaged, but the driving distance from Europe was also a factor when compared to Algeria whose profile similarly benefitted from the rise of the original Paris-Dakar rally in the early 1980s.

Around the same time in France, a TV show by desert doyen Théodore Monod (who'd travelled widely in Mauritania with camels from the 1930s), also helped raise the country's profile.

Once in Mauritania one drove across the sands to Nouadhibou where local guides were needed to travel the desert and beach piste to the capital, Nouakchott.

Some intrepid travelers hitched a ride (or loaded their cars) eastwards on the Mauritania Railway which brought iron ore to Nouadhibou from the mines inland at Zouerat.

From Choum this provided access to Atar, at the foot of the Adrar plateau, scenically and culturally the gateway to Mauritania’s touristic heartland.

A shocking set back, especially among French visitors, was the murder of the Tollet family[5] and their guide near Aleg on Christmas Eve, 2007 which led to the cancellation of the Dakar Rally (and its eventual relocation to South America).

In fact, tourist traffic from Moroccan Western Sahara never stopped, despite over-cautious travel advice issued by the European government foreign ministries.

The old cities of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Oualata, Tichitt, Ksar el Barka, Aoudaghost and Koumbi Saleh are all vestiges of a rich past during the apogee of the trans-Saharan trade from Black Africa.

Some old buildings, including the 13th-century mosque with its rectangular minaret still survive in the old city, The libraries or 'document repositories' of Chinguetti contain hundreds of invaluable and well-preserved medieval manuscripts, detailing commercial transactions, aspects of Koranic law and scientific observations.