"Without tourism, we have forgotten our culture and traditions for a long time!"
Mokhtar Zounga straightens his Tuareg turban. Behind the rocks in the form of a triumphal arch is under the round orange sun, the sand dunes glow in all shades of beige.
at this reservoir in the middle of the Tassili Hoggar, about 275 kilometers south of Tamanrasset, Paris, the guests spend a night under the stars.
Mokhtar Zounga opened in 1972, the first travel agency in Tamanrasset in the Algerian Sahara desert. Today, nearly a hundred companies are waiting for tourists. Since 1 November is flying the flag carrier Air Algérie Tamanrasset to weekly direct: four-hour flight to another world.
Abdelkrim
Benamed
and
Mokhtar Zounga
with a friend
Mokhtar Zounga came in a Tuareg tent to the world, he does not know the exact date. His father had the largest herd of camels in the region, and from the age of ten long months Mokhtar traveled with his father through the desert:
"camels, caravans, lack of water. Always the same. "
Not even by the Algerian revolution, he was in the Hoggar with much of the war against the French colonialists ended 1962nd
"The independence has changed our lives completely," recalls ,
to the Targi (the name of the singular of Tuareg):
. "There was electricity, we had schools, and I went to the military"
In the barracks he saw with 18 for the first time a coffee machine! Mokhtar Zounga later became a policeman, he was even a bodyguard to President Ben Bella. Then he worked as many of his compatriots from the south in the petroleum industry:
. I thought, money makes you happy "
Tamanrasset was 1905, when the French missionary Charles de Foucauld here in a hermitage settled out "three fires". A hundred years later Tamanrasset is a modern city with 100 000 inhabitants, University, barracks and Internet cafes, the largest wilaya (department) of Algeria, a major transportation hub in the desert, 2000 km from the capital Algiers removed.
the north of Tamanrasset is Assekrem, here are the highest peaks of the Hoggar of over 2500 meters. The Tassili to the south, sand dunes and bizarre rock in the form of elephants, turtles, ships.
rock paintings are evidence of human presence for thousands of years. Between rocks and sand grow yellow-green tufts of grass.
in time for sunset abide by the Tuareg, make tea in the shade of the jeep.
"needs for the tea there was a fire, time and friends,"
Solal Mohamed taught the guests.
From the green turban look out only his brown eyes and mustaches. Tuareg drinking three glasses of tea, so it is by custom.
"The first is strong as death, sweet as love the second, the third beautiful as life. And if you have children, you drink a fourth glass, usually sufficient to take three. "
Mohamed sipping his second glass, offers cookies, baked his wife Aisha. He has been working since 1987 with tourists
"Tourism is not just about making money. You must try to plant the love of the desert to your customers. "
" The Tuareg have a real culture, fairy tales, stories, literature and music, and they know the desert exceptionally well. "
The Frenchman Nicolas Loisillon is a pioneer in desert Travel
"After Algeria is one not to be photographed on a dune with his turban on a camel and then by jeep back to the luxury hotel to go back. Here it is authentic. "
in the footsteps of monks and adventurers like Charles de Foucauld or Isabelle Eberhardt from the 1970s, tourists traveling in Algeria south, but in the 90s, tourism was due to the civil war in the north to Standstill. The Tuareg survived thanks to their herds. From the turn of the millennium, it went back up, French and Swiss airlines fly to Tamanrasset. Although the kidnapping of Europeans in 2003 caused a setback: It not afraid to foreigners in the Sahara. Many are not. Mohamed wants Solal 2000-3000 tourists a month, "an" alternative, gentle, intelligent and sustainable tourism "
.
The 2008/2009 season was gradually narrowing. Tourists from Europe make no difference: the Paris-Dakar Rally is canceled by Mauritania, cancel desert Fans The journey to Algeria Tamanrasset. Each attack in the north worsens the image of Algeria.
"If in the north of the country is something wrong, we feel it here in the South,"
regrets Guide Aissa Khasmi.
"It's as if you have a headache and your feet can not go. . Although the feet are healthy "
For the safety of tourists, the Algerian law strictly applied: No officer may not in the desert. Agencies and authorities know exactly where a tourist is staying.
"Everyone has Today, satellite phone, "said Mohamed
Solal.
"If something happens there, immediately contact to Tamanrasset."
Algeria waiting for tourists.
Since 2003 the number rose by just over one million to 1.7 million last year, but most of them are Algerians living abroad and their families, only about half a million Europeans ventured into the land which 1200 km Mediterranean coast, Roman ruins, to offer mountain and desert landscapes has. Even if the direct flight to Tamanrasset is not immediately profitable: the State Air Algeria supports the policy of the government, which wants to receive eleven million tourists by 2025. The Director of Air Algérie France, Abdelkrim Benahmed counted in the desert flights with an occupancy of 55 to 60 percent:
"Since we are not yet profitable, but it works."
"The daily direct flights will boost tourism,"
hopes Bey Malek Ben, like all Tuareg, in Tamanrasset tour operators.
"This will work for camel drivers, Cooks, drivers, guides. They did not attend large schools, but they need work and know everything about the desert "
