Ancient Ksour

I had expected these Ancient Ksour to be really remote, but Ouadane and Chinguetti in 2025 are easily reached. The 82km road from Atar to Chinguetti has recently been turned into an asphalt road via a project sponsored by the Islamic Development Bank. And Ouadane, another 120km eastwards, is accessible via a ‘piste’ (unpaved but smoothened and maintained), where driving 90 km/h is easily possible and no 4WD is needed.

Coming from the Northwest (Atar), we first spent a day and a night in Ouadane. Already on the approach you feel that you’re arriving somewhere special. The old city was built against a hill overlooking date palm plantations, with a maze of streets like a dense beehive. It is much larger than I expected it and also has preserved its outer wall and gates. It is now fully abandoned. We did a walking tour here with a local guide. It's remarkable how high the walls bordering the streets are (upper photo). Entrance to the buildings is via low wooden doors; we visited the house of one of the three founders of the city, El Hadj Yacoub. It had spaces for books and for teaching, and a balcony overlooking the city. The town’s Old Mosque looks brittle but has been restored.

The approach to Chinguetti was very different – we took the sand dunes shortcut route from Ouadane via the oasis of Tenewchert, and you’ll end up seeing the minaret of the Old (First) Mosque appearing from the sand. …

I visited Mauritania in October 2019. I flew into Nouakchott (very easy to obtain visa on arrival), where I visited the camel market and Port de Peche, the city's fishing port, which houses the largest fleet of traditional wooden fishing boats on the West African coast. It took us eight hours to drive northeast from Nouakchott, on the Atlantic coast of Mauritania, to Chinguetti in the Sahara, where we arrived just in time to watch the sunset from atop nearby sand dunes over the ancient Berber town. The next day we drove as far as the road goes in eastern Mauritania to Ouadane’s old town, built in the Middle Ages and now largely in ruins. I made my arrangements with Hademine at Time for Mauritania.

Looking at a map of Africa/Mauritania and, bearing in mind the lack of any review on this site so far, you might conclude that the Ksour of Mauritania do not receive many tourist visits! In fact 3 very cheap charter flights each week (October –April) between France and the northern town of Attar bring relatively large numbers of (mainly French?) tourists to Chinguetti and Ouadane. The other 2 inscribed towns are further east and south – more appropriate perhaps for those travelling on to Mali (Oualata is the next “town” to Timbuctoo – only a week or so’s camel journey away!).

If you read the ICOMOS review on the UNESCO web site you will see that ICOMOS had to have its arms twisted to make a positive recommendation – largely because of the towns’ lack of preservation. “Old Chinguetti” consists of a few lanes of stone built structures – many empty or falling down but reasonably faithfully preserving the 12h century layout together with some of the decorative features. The Mosque itself (Photo – top) is well preserved and its attractive tower looks to have been largely reconstructed (Non Muslims are not allowed to enter but you can see/hear the religious activity from its doors). We received the usual statement about it being the “7th most holy city of (Sunni) Islam”. On enquiring about the 4th to 6 th (after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem of course) we were given a long list of candidates including Cairo, Kairouan, …