Two days in the Sahara from Tunisia that are actually worth it

The Sahara in Tunisia starts around Tozeur and Douz, five hours' drive from Sousse and Hammamet. That route is sold as a one-day excursion and that is how most people buy it, and that is the mistake. Ten hours in a minibus for one hour on sand. The same money spent over two days for Tozeur and Douz buys something else entirely. (From Djerba it is different, since the road to Matmata and Chenini is half as long, and a single day there makes sense.)

GuideTozeur itself — the oasis, the town, how to get there?Tozeur →

GuideDjerba as a base for Matmata and Chenini:Djerba →

What is actually out there

• Chott el Jerid is a salt lake of more than five thousand square kilometres, crossed on a straight road through white crust.
• The mountain oases of Chebika, Tamerza and Midès bring canyons and waterfalls in rock, nothing like the dunes.
• The film sets Mos Espa near Nefta and Ong Jemel are from Star Wars, and drifting sand is slowly burying them.
• Douz is where the dunes begin, and with them the camels and the camp overnights.
• The Tozeur palmery holds four hundred thousand palms and a 13th-century irrigation system.

Getting there

All of that stays out of reach in a single day because Tozeur itself is far: the airport has a domestic flight from Tunis, about an hour, and that is the only way to skip the drive entirely. By road it is five to six hours from the capital, four from Djerba; the train does not go. With a hire car the road is paved all the way and easy — with one straight stretch across the salt lake that is the best part of the journey.

When to go

That two-day schedule also depends on the month: it works best October to April. In summer Tozeur regularly passes forty degrees and the desert is not visited but endured; in December and January it is a pleasant twenty by day and can drop to zero at night, so a jacket goes to the camp. March and November are the best months — warm by day, bearable at night.

Camel, quad or four-wheel drive

For day two, once the dunes are on the plan, the choice left is transport. The camel is slow and that is the point: an hour's walk into the sunset, silence, and sand that changes colour. The quad is loud and leaves tracks across the dunes that stay for days. The four-wheel drive is the only way to reach the distant sets and the dunes nobody has trampled — and for most people it is the right measure, because one driver covers everything in two days.

Day tripsWhat fits from Sousse without a full day of driving:Day trips from Sousse →