“Something about the vastness and beauty of nature makes the self feel small and insignificant, and anything that shrinks the self creates an opportunity for spiritual experience.” Anonymous
I often feel this way when visiting parts of the world ripe with vastness, such as national parks and monuments in the United States, especially in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. It’s always a good reminder how small we are in the face of nature, and a good reminder for life as we travel the world. What surprised me was that I felt this way in Tunisia. But that’s why we travel, isn’t it? To experience new ways of being in unexpected places and to be all the richer for it.
I took the Overseas Adventure Travel trip Tunisia: From the Mediterranean to the Sahara, and we spent one night in a desert camp in the Sahara. I’d previously spent two nights in the Sahara on the OAT Morocco trip, so I knew what a marvelous experience it would be to enjoy sunrises and sunsets among the dunes, and feel that I was in the middle of nowhere and the spiritual center of everything all at once.
Once our tour reached Douz, it was time to prepare for the bumpy 4×4 drive through the dunes, and from there, all roads end at the Southern edge of Great Eastern Erg where our Sahara camp was located. I loved the authenticity of our driver wearing a turban in the hot sun.
The Great Eastern Erg, or Grand Erg Oriental (also known as the Great Eastern Sand Sea), is a fields of sand dunes northeast of Algeria. In the Morocco camping experience with OAT, we were all very near the Algerian border, a destination that sounded more appealing than the camel ride we had scheduled next when we camped on the Morocco trip. Algeria is a pre-trip for the Tunisia , but my busy travel schedule didn’t permit me to sign up for the pre-trip.
The Sahara (or Great Eastern Erg) is primarily sand dunes which were long in place before any of the occasional plants the traveler sees on the bumpy 45-minute drive through its vastness to get to the camp. It’s a wonder the drivers even know the way, because one big sandstorm would wipe out the path we drove along. However, white paper occasionally wrapped around a plant must have been placed there so the drivers at least had a landmark. There are no landmarks in the Tunisian dunes as far as I could see. There is a beauty and elegance in its vastness, a great reminder as we go through both travel and life that our world has more innate beauty than we could possibly imagine, and it’s all there for us to explore.
The wonder and the vastness of the dunes – enough to make any traveler feel small in this big world – truly represents Tunisia. It’s a unique country, has a culture and history different from other parts of the Muslim world, yet similar enough such that if you’re already familiar with some of North Africa, this will be a comfortable place to land. The food is spicy if you wish, the weather hot yet manageable even at the end of summer, the people warm and friendly, and you get to practice your French if you so choose. The sites, sounds and tastes of Tunisia are all there for the exploration in the Sahara, along with the experience of watching bread being cooked on an open fire in the dunes (which we consumed at dinner, along with lamb which had been baked underground). And of course, sleeping in the sounds of silence in the vastness, the stars twinkling in a night sky not disquieted with city lights, and my own personal sense of well-being simply because I was traveling, added to the moment – a quiet moment which lasted a whole night.
We all have a singular place or experience that warms us as travelers and makes us feel at home when we are on the road. Perhaps its because this was my fifth trip to North Africa and I found the Tunisians so warm and welcoming, and the sunsets among the dunes so special, that I realized these North African sunsets were as much a souvenir as the Tunisian mosaics I brought home with me. The Tunisian treasures that I have on my walls are as dear to me as their sunsets in the vastness of the Sahara, which I can only keep as a memory in my heart.
All Photos Jann Segal
Travel the World with Passion 