Saharan Mauritania

Essential Destinations

Atar

Photo: Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Atar is a town of 25,000 people in Saharan Mauritania. It is a great base for exploring the Adrar region, and tends to be slightly cheaper overall than Chinguetti. The Atar Mosque, one of the oldest mosques in the country, dates from 1674.

Chinguetti

Photo: Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Chinguetti is a city in Saharan Mauritania. It contains a noted Islamic scholarly centre sometimes called the library in the desert and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Choum

Photo: Fischersfritzchen, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Choum is a tiny railway stop in the Adrar Region of Northern Mauritania 5 km from the straight-line demarcated border with the Western Sahara that runs due west-east at this point before turning south-north 12 km to the east.

Destinations to Discover

Azougi

Photo: Clemens Schmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Azougui was a town in north-western Mauritania, lying on the Adrar Plateau, north-west of Atar. In the eleventh century it was the first capital of the Almoravid dynasty, who conquered a territory stretching from the Ghana Empire to Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula.

Terjit

Photo: Ammar Hassan, CC BY 2.0.

Terjit is an oasis, 45km by road south of Atar and popular with tourists in Mauritania. It nestles in a gorge on the western edge of the Adrar plateau with the palm grove stretching a few hundred meters alongside a stream which emerges from a spring.

Saharan Mauritania

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