It didn’t take that long to get to Tighmert, surprisingly, yet it felt like another planet. Here were ochre-coloured mud-walls, sinuous, dusty tracks, palm-trees, dromedaries, a mosque, and a mix of Saharawi people sprinkled with Amazigh (Berbers). Even a few Europeans have taken root there, such is its tranquillity and healthy climate. This oasis nudges the edge of the desolate Western Sahara in southern Morocco – a big change from the hustle-bustle of Marrakech or Fez much further to the north.
Head for Guelmim
From Agadir, the nearest international airport, it’s roughly a three-hour drive to reach Guelmim, the last urban outpost before Tighmert. This seemingly nondescript town has an illustrious history of trans-Saharan trade going back centuries. Today’s offerings include dozens of cafés, an arcaded souk area, modern buildings and – above all – its Saturday livestock market held in a walled enclosure on its outskirts.
Souk Amhairich, Morocco’s largest camel market, presents an enthralling spectacle of bleating goats and sheep, placid cows and grunting dromedaries. Snapped up by herders, they are heaved into rusty pick-ups then trucked away. Today most of these noble beasts end up in tagines, as lean steaks or are pumped for their milk rather than for desert transport.
Buyers and sellers are mainly Saharawis, in long robes and turbans, traditionally semi-nomadic though many have now settled in southern Morocco. It’s thrilling to watch and not to be missed. Get there early for maximum action (only Saturdays, from 7am to noon). And up some steps you’ll find a cornucopian array of local fruit and veg for sale. More pics and info about the market are in my post here, as well as about Sidi Ifni, a stunning though overlooked coastal town with Spanish heritage.
Finally – the oasis of Tighmert
Barely 15 minutes’ drive further south across a wide desert plain edged by hills, you come to the other-worldly oasis of Tighmert. There is no clear entrance as such, just an endless straggle of palm trees and clay walls with the occasional ‘street’ leading inside. This sprawl extends about 15 km – though that’s imprecise.
About 2,500 inhabitants live in the labyrinth (it’s virtually impossible to find your way round), barely visible behind their mud-walls which sometimes crumble to nothingness. Some locals appear on foot, others on bicycles or donkey-carts, and you might catch a few at the three (tiny) shops or the mosque.
Guest-houses offer insight into the shape of traditional houses, where rooms surround a courtyard and, often, luxuriant gardens of splashy bougainvillea, cacti and other succulents. Beyond the houses are irrigated fields where locals cultivate potatoes, carrots, onions, wheat and fassa (animal feed) while goats and sheep munch there too.
It’s time-travel at its best as well as a glimpse into ancient traditions – whether irrigation (the channels use the same system that I wrote about many years ago in Ghadames, Libya – i.e. the water flow is timed for each plot), building materials or agriculture. There’s even a museum of nomadic culture packed with rusty tools and utensils. A recent innovation is a weekly farmers’ market that included a butcher and his meat. When we saw it, organisation seemed lacking and customers were scarce, so you wonder if it will last.
Oasis accommodation
A handful of guesthouses range from the basic and colourful to quite high end, in the latter two cases owned by foreigners. This Tighmert website by a Dutch resident gives a helpful overview with links to each one. We chose French-owned Villa Boujouf, built in kasbah style with a towering entrance and spacious en-suite rooms around a soaring living-dining area.
It was perfect, and Mohamed, the manager, even took us to the roof terrace one night to look through a professional telescope at the myriad stars. He also served a camel steak one evening as a treat and, throughout the day, along would come his assistant, Rashid, with mint tea and assorted bowls of nibbles from walnuts to dates.
Unfortunately although my French (the lingua franca here after Hassaniya, Tashalheet and Arabic) is fluent, Rashid’s was non-existent, so communication was limited. It was fascinating to learn that the several languages spoken in Tighmert meant many people don’t understand each other.
A day-trip into the Western Sahara
Then came a little adventure – a day-trip into the Western Sahara accompanied by Abderamane (Whatsapp: +212 666 563240 – French only), a genial Saharawi guide who turned up punctually in an ageing Spanish 4×4 with driver. Off we bumped into the arid scrub, stopping to see rock engravings of animals, jackal prints in the sand, a simple Amazigh cemetery and underground storehouses as well as an unexpected hot spring in which a few other visitors wallowed.
Before that came a revelation – polytunnels in the desert growing beans and bananas. More telling of the region’s economic potential were the shards of precious minerals that Abderahmane spotted as we walked over the rocky terrain. In fact the seabed off the coast is rich in tellurium, a crucial mineral used for solar panels and electronics, as well as cobalt and nickel. Not surprisingly, Trump is eyeing this, along with Spain, the former colonial power, and Morocco.
Although Morocco has recently taken political control of this northern section of the Western Sahara after decades of political wrangling, it remains controversial and sparsely populated (second in the world after Greenland). Over the border in Algeria is the hub of the Saharawi independence movement, the Polisario Front.
Time for a desert lunch
On we trundled before stopping for lunch in the shade of an acacia as a minor sandstorm blew around us. Out came marinated chicken kebabs with hot flat-breads – delicious and a miracle in that context! Further on we communicated with a young Amazigh herder whose camels roamed on the horizon. His only company in this deserted land was his mobile phone – charged by solar. Of course Moroccan hospitality meant we were served glasses of sweet mint tea, even there.
Finally it was back to our cossetting oasis guest-house to dream of camels (again) and of the distant wastes of the disputed desert.
