Algeria Desert Expedition (Tadrart Rouge)

After making your own way to Algiers, you will meet the rest of the group and your tour leader at the airport before boarding the flight south to Djanet. The landscape below shifts from city to desert long before you land - your first hint of what lies ahead. Arriving in the evening, you are met by your local Tuareg team and transferred to your hotel for the night. local hotel in Djanet

This is the day the desert opens up. Driving south from Djanet into the Tadrart - the red sandstone massif that forms one of the Sahara's most dramatic landscapes - you make your first stops at ancient rock engravings etched into the stone by peoples who lived here thousands of years before the desert came. By afternoon you reach El Berdj, a place of extraordinary stillness and beauty. Camp is set as the sun drops behind the rocks, casting long shadows across the sand. Your first walk here, in the golden hour before dusk, is something you will not easily forget. wild camping in the desert breakfast, lunch, dinner

The gorge of El Berdj leads you into a different world - one of towering dunes, their colours shifting from deep red to soft pink depending on where the light falls. Today is one of the journey's most visually rich days, moving between vast sandscapes and galleries of rock art left by the people of the Neolithic era. At Wan Iska, beautifully preserved engravings line the rock faces. Further on, paintings of cattle - the famous Neolithic Ox - glow in deep ochre against pale stone, a 6,000-year-old record of a time when this land was green and alive. Camp tonight is at Moul Naga, surrounded by dunes that seem to belong to another planet entirely. wild camping in the desert breakfast, lunch, dinner

The erg Tin Merzouga is one of the Sahara's great spectacles. Dunes rise here to 600 metres - among the highest in Algeria - and the colours move through a full spectrum of red, pink, and amber as the day progresses. You cross the wadi of Indjaren, pausing at more rock paintings and engravings that have survived here in the dry air for millennia. By afternoon, you arrive at Adjlati, a camp set among black sand dunes - a geological curiosity and a striking contrast to the fiery reds of the morning. The evenings here have a particular quality: cooler air, a fire, tea, and a sky dense with stars. wild camping in the desert breakfast, lunch, dinner

The route back toward Djanet passes through landscapes that feel like they belong to a geological fairy tale. A stop at Tini for lunch breaks the morning's drive, and nearby, the engravings of the Crying Cow - one of the Tadrart's most celebrated and moving rock art sites, dating to around 6000 BC - reward anyone who makes the short walk to find them. Camp tonight is in Adaik, the so-called Stone Forest: an otherworldly terrain of wind-eroded sandstone columns and arches rising from the desert floor, their shadows lengthening as the sun goes down. It is the kind of place that makes you feel very small, in the best possible way. wild camping in the desert breakfast, lunch, dinner

Today brings one of the journey's most unexpected pleasures. Deep in the canyon of Essendilène, a hidden wadi shelters oleanders, tamarisks, and palm trees - a pocket of green life in the heart of the Sahara, fed by secret gueltas (natural rock pools) that persist long after the rains have gone. This is also where you may encounter a Tuareg nomad family who still live here, as their ancestors have for generations, moving with the seasons and the water. Camp is made in the Erg Admer, a sea of classic Saharan dunes where sunset and sunrise are among the finest you will see on the entire journey. The light here has been painted by photographers and described by travellers for a century - and still, nothing quite prepares you for it. wild camping in the desert breakfast, lunch, dinner

The final day in the desert saves some of its best for last. Tikobawin is one of the Tadrart's great natural arches - a monumental rock formation that frames the sky like a doorway into another world. Nearby, Neolithic tombs and rock paintings add a layer of human history to the drama of the landscape, and the mountains of Tilalin provide a majestic backdrop for a last lunch in the wilderness at Timghas. By late afternoon you are back in Djanet, showering off the sand and dust of six days in the desert. The evening brings a visit to the Tuareg market - one of the most authentic in the region - followed by dinner at the hotel. A fitting close to a journey that rarely slows down long enough to feel ordinary. local hotel in Djanet breakfast, lunch, dinner

Transfer to Djanet airport for your departure flight to Algiers. The tour ends upon arrival in Algiers.