From Algiers, we headed to Ghardaïa! We flew down in the evening and spent our first night in a very nice hotel that had hallways that reminded me of The Shining. The next morning, we did some exploring.
Ghardaïa is culturally unique. They practice a specific form of Islam, separate from Sunni or Shi’a, with a different architectural design of their mosques and different beliefs. There’s also some interesting community aspects built into their culture. If you look up Ghardaïa on a map, you’ll see that it looks like it’s in the top fourth of the country. In the relative scheme of Algeria, it looks pretty far north.
In fact, looking at it, you think, “oh, it’s not that far from Algiers,” especially when you think about how big the country is. Fun fact, Algeria is the largest country in Africa by land, which I did not know before I started planning for my trip. I have lived my whole life thinking that honor fell to the DRC. But it is actually 7 and a half hours drive from Algiers to Ghardaïa. It’s quite a bit outside the populous coastal band near the Mediterranean, and while it isn’t deep into the Sahara, there is this sense that they have to band together as a strong community to survive.
One of the other traditions that is unique to Ghardaïa is the one-eyed women. The M’Zab women wear these white abayas, and once they’re married, they only show one eye to the world. They’re very sensitive to photographs – the one below was not taken by me, as we were asked not to take photos of them on our tour.
Because they didn’t want us to take pictures of people in almost any of the areas where we were, most of my photos of Ghardaïa feel a bit like a movie set. There’s something sort of haunting about the amount of photos I took trying to set motorcycles against the buildings to give my pictures some kind of focal point or interest.
Thankfully, we did get to go somewhere livelier – the local market! I loved the market. As Algeria is ambivalent (at best) to tourists, it is not catered to foreigners at all. No stalls are trying to solicit your business, which is so pleasant as a tourist there. Instead, we just got to go through and buy nuts and vegetables and get a better sense of what day-to-day life looks like there.
This butcher stall was a real trip, I was so startled to see that cow’s head hanging from the top.
While I’m on the subject of food, it’s so funny to see which parts of French culture ended up sticking once Algeria kicked the French out. One of the main ones I noticed was French bread. Bread was served at almost every meal and it was good bread. This is one of my favorite photos I took in Ghardaïa:
Ghardaïa also had some great viewpoints from the tops of the hills. The architecture was so interesting. Technically, it’s only one town in a collection of five, although the whole area often gets called Ghardaïa from a tourism perspective (not unlike Amalfi or Cappadocia), so the buildings sprawl over the nearby hills and create a very cool skyline.
As far as visiting Ghardaïa as a tourist, I do have mixed feelings. On one hand, it is one of the more interesting and unique cultures I’ve had the chance to learn about. The market was great and the landscape and architecture were beautiful. On the other, with the strict restrictions around photos and some of the comments from our guide, it didn’t feel like that was really a place that wanted us to visit.
I touched on this a bit with the visa process, but Algeria is not particularly interested in tourists on the whole. Still, in most places, even if structurally it didn’t seem like they wanted foreigners there, most individual people were friendly. Ghardaïa seemed to be the exception, where even on an individual level, the locals weren’t thrilled that we were there. Which is fine, not everywhere has to welcome in foreigners, but it did come as a surprise compared to the other places where we went in Algeria.
And with that, it’s off to a place much farther south!