18. Djanet — Gateway to the Stone Age
If Tassili n’Ajjer is the destination, Djanet is the door. This small Tuareg town in Algeria’s far southeast, near the borders of Libya and Niger, is where most Tassili expeditions begin and where, after days in the wilderness, you come back to eat a proper meal, sleep in a bed, and stare at the sky, which at this latitude and altitude is so crowded with stars it seems almost threatening.
Djanet itself is worth more than a transit night. The old ksar — a fortified Tuareg village of mud and palm-trunk construction — is a beautiful object, its organic forms almost indistinguishable from the rock escarpment behind it. The Tuareg market on Friday mornings is the real thing: indigo-turbaned men, silver jewellery, camel equipment, smoked meats, the desert’s compressed trading economy. The oasis palm gardens along the Oued Djanet river are a green shock after the stone desert. And the canyon landscape around Djanet — the Tadrart Rouge, a field of sculpted red sandstone arches and towers — is arguably even more photogenic than the Tassili plateau itself, a Martian geography of burnt orange and deep shadow that no photograph has yet managed to adequately convey.
