Mauritania

Nouakchott — the capital of Mauritania (a country of 1.03 million km² — 90% Sahara, population 4.5 million, one of the last countries to abolish slavery (1981, with criminal penalties not enacted until 2007 — and an estimated 90,000 people still living in conditions of slavery today according to Walk Free Foundation)) — a city that did not exist before 1957, built from scratch as the capital of the future independent country, with the Port de Pêche (the most dramatic artisanal fish landing in West Africa, 5,000+ pirogues on the beach each morning).

💡 Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981 (one of the last countries in the world to do so legally) and criminalised it in 2007. The Walk Free Foundation estimates that approximately 90,000 people (2% of the population) still live in conditions of hereditary slavery in Mauritania — the highest rate in the world by percentage of population. The practice is concentrated in the Haratin community (descendants of sub-Saharan Africans enslaved by Arab-Berber Moors) and is addressed by the NGO SOS Esclaves, which operates openly in Nouakchott.

Chinguetti (UNESCO World Heritage — the ancient caravan city on the edge of the Sahara at the foot of the Adrar Plateau, one of the seven holy cities of Islam in the Maliki tradition, the departure point of the West African Hajj for 700 years — with the 13th-century minaret (one of the oldest surviving Islamic monuments in sub-Saharan Africa), the private libraries containing 10,000+ ancient Arabic manuscripts and the spectacular dunes of the Adrar Erg surrounding the town on three sides).

💡 Chinguetti manuscripts (approximately 10,000 Arabic texts preserved in private family libraries — covering Islamic theology, astronomy, mathematics and history from the 9th to 19th century — are the most significant body of pre-modern Islamic scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa after the Timbuktu manuscripts. The manuscripts are being digitised by the Mauritanian National Library and international partners; deterioration from heat and dust is a constant threat.

The Adrar Plateau (a sandstone massif rising from the Sahara at 450–800m, with spectacular eroded canyon landscapes, the ancient oasis gardens of Terjit (a lush palm grove at the foot of a sandstone cliff, fed by an underground spring — the most dramatic desert oasis in West Africa), and the Richat Structure (the “Eye of Africa” — a 40km-diameter circular geological formation visible from space, interpreted by some conspiracy theorists as the lost continent of Atlantis, in reality a deeply eroded dome of ancient Precambrian rock).

💡 The Richat Structure (Eye of the Sahara — a 40km diameter circular formation of concentric rings of quartzite ridges in the Adrar desert of Mauritania, visible on satellite imagery as a bullseye in the desert — was formed by the erosion of a dome of ancient igneous and metamorphic rock over 100 million years. It is not a meteorite crater (the rocks show no impact shock features) and is not Atlantis — though Plato’s description of Atlantis as circular with concentric water and land rings has inspired this comparison.

Ouadane (UNESCO World Heritage — the ancient caravan city of the Adrar, founded 1147 as a trading post on the gold and salt routes between the Sahara and sub-Saharan Africa — abandoned progressively from the 16th century as trade routes shifted, now a spectral city of ruined mosques and tower houses in the desert, inhabited only by a small community in the surviving lower town, with the ancient manuscripts and the extraordinary desert landscape).

💡 The ancient cities of the Adrar (Chinguetti, Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata — all UNESCO World Heritage — were the commercial and intellectual centres of a trans-Saharan trade network that moved gold, salt, slaves and Islamic scholarship across the desert for 800 years. The decline of this network (from the 16th century onwards as European maritime trade routes bypassed the Sahara) left these cities gradually abandoned, preserved by the extreme dryness of the Saharan air in a state of arrested decay.

Banc d’Arguin National Park (UNESCO World Heritage — a coastal ecosystem of mudflats, mangroves and shallow lagoons covering 12,000km² off the Mauritanian Atlantic coast — the most important waterbird wintering site in Africa, hosting 2 million+ migratory shorebirds each year (November–March), the largest breeding colony of grey herons in Africa, nesting flamingos and the traditional fishing communities of the Imraguen people who fish cooperatively with Atlantic dolphins).

💡 The Imraguen fishermen of Banc d’Arguin (a Mauritanian coastal people who have fished the shallow waters of the park for centuries using traditional sailing pirogues — with no motors, no industrial equipment — develop a cooperative fishing relationship with Atlantic humpback dolphins (Sousa teuszii) who drive mullet schools into the shallows where the fishermen wait with nets, one of the few documented cooperative human-dolphin fishing relationships in the world).

Atar (the main town of the Adrar region — the gateway for desert camping in the Adrar, with the traditional camel market (camels are the primary livestock of Mauritania, with 1.5 million animals providing transport, meat, milk and economic status), the weekly market with Saharan traders and the best Mauritanian tea ceremony — and an overnight desert camp in the Adrar dunes for the most spectacular night sky in Africa, the Milky Way fully visible without light pollution for 300km in every direction).

💡 The Mauritanian tea ceremony (ataya — the three-glass green tea ceremony of Mauritanian hospitality, each glass progressively stronger and sweeter, prepared slowly over an hour of conversation, the most important social ritual in Mauritanian culture — “the first glass is as bitter as life, the second as sweet as love, the third as gentle as death” — is the defining cultural experience of the Saharan hospitality tradition.

A final day in Nouakchott: the Iron Ore Train (the longest train in the world — a freight train up to 3km in length transporting iron ore from Zouerate in the Sahara to Nouadhibou port, taking passengers free of charge in the iron ore wagons, a famous traveller experience — the full journey takes 12–20 hours through the Sahara and is one of the world’s great iron road experiences) and the Nouakchott craft market (silver jewellery, leather goods and camel-bone carvings) before flying from Nouakchott (NKC).

💡 The Mauritanian Iron Ore Train (La Route du Fer — the 704km freight railway from the Zouerate iron ore mines to Nouadhibou port, operating 24 hours a day with up to 250 wagons per train, the third-longest train in the world by wagon count — allows passengers to ride free in the ore wagons (equipped with improvised seats) or in a single passenger car. The 12–20 hour Saharan crossing through the Adrar is one of the world’s great railway journeys.