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AUTHORS’ JOURNEYS
But the journey is not just the train. Along the route, the track
intertwines with some of the country’s most powerful places: the
circular formations of the Guelb er Richat crater—known as “the
Eye of the Sahara”—the oases of Terjit or Mhairett, where water
springs from the rocks, and cities like Atar, a key point on the
routes to Chinguetti or Ouadane.
The Desert Train isn’t built for comfort. But it offers something
conventional tourism can’t: a raw, unfiltered experience, where
landscape, industrial history, and extreme geography blend into
a single blow. It’s dust, noise, exhaustion. And it’s also a brutally
honest way to cross the country.
Inside one of the train’s wagons
With every rattle of the
train, the memory of the
old caravans echoes.
Today, on rails, the de-
sert continues to tell its
story without words
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