FRIDAY:
We left Tunis early Friday morning for the city of Kairouan. Kairouan is the 4th most holy city in the Muslim world, acted as the North African capital of the Arab world for most of the five centuries of Muslim rule in the area, and has more than 100 mosques. We visited the Mosque of Sidi Oqba that was begun to be built around 680 AD. However, I think this early building was torn down a few times and the mosque I saw looks like the one that was built in the late 9th century. Sidi Oqba was a saint who arrived in Kairouan 40 years after the death of the prophet. He founded the city and began the mosque that bares his name. A picture of the prayer area of the Great Mosque is below:
Also in Kairouan, we visited the shrine of Sidi Sahib, a companion of the prophet (I think he was the prophet's barber). The inside of the building was covered with beautiful tiles and mosaics. Below is a picture of me in the shrine. The lower walls are covered in decorated tiles, the upper part of the wall is carved stone:
After the visit to the shrine, we stopped at a carpet sellers shop, ate lunch in a hotel and then went to Dougga. The Romans began occupying Dougga around the 2nd century BC. There was a theatre there (similarly to the last Roman site that we visited) and there were three temples to the gods in the former center of the city. The picture below is of the remains (I do believe they've been rebuilt a bit...)
Finally, after about 14 hours of traveling, we arrived at our hotel in the desert. I watched the stars in the sky for a while and then headed to bed.SATURDAY:
We woke up early on Saturday, ate breakfast, and jumped back on the bus for probably the most jam-packed day of my life. First we visited an oasis in the desert. To get around the oasis we rode in horse drawn carts (below is a picture of me and my horse):
We also walked around the oasis. In the oasis, they grow fruits and vegetables for local consumption and dates for export. Below is a picture of me and some friends climbing a date palm tree. I think the background also shows how very green the oasis is.
After we left the oasis, we headed back on the bus and began our trek across the desert. We stopped in the salt desert and played for a while (the picture is below). I guess the salt desert was a part of the Mediterranean that was cut off and now is a pretty thick layer of salt covering a lot of sand. What really surprised me about this place was its incredible flatness and lack of anything in sight. It was almost like walking into nothingness. It was an especially strong contrast to the other desert we had thus far seen - which looked a lot like Death Valley in the USA.
After this stop, we headed on farther, until we got to the part of the Sahara where it is just sand and sand dunes (and tourists). At this stop, we did my favorite activity- we rode camels into the Sahara. It was very hot and the camel was a little bumpy, but I had a wonderful time. Below is a picture of me and my camel. As you can tell, we didn't go too deep into the Sahara, because as the rest point, we could buy a coke.
After the camel ride, we had lunch (I can't believe we did all of that in one morning) and then headed out on the bus to ride through more of the Sahara. We stopped in Matmata, which is an old Berber town with two very cool things. The first is that the houses used to be all dug into the ground, which is impressive considering the hardness of the rock there and the coolness of the houses compared to the outside air. A picture of a house:
BUT this was no ordinary house, it was also the location where Star Wars Episode 4 was filmed. Remember Luke's childhood home? This was the location. When he ate with his aunt and uncle, he ate in a room here. Now its a bar (and the rest of the homestead a hotel of questionable quality). Here is the entrance to the bar:
However, I was a little disappointed with the bar, besides a few newspaper clippings and movie posters from the movie, there was really not much to see. I think I had been hoping for something with a really high kitch factor - like the bartender dressed as Chewbacca or a few droids wandering around. But, alas, Tunisia is not really Disney Land....After our pilgrimage to the Star Wars site, we continued our voyage across Tunisia to the Island of Jerba. We crossed the Roman Causeway (also rebuilt often, I am sure) and here we stayed the night in a very nice hotel. (By the way, the Island of Jerba was home to the Lotus Eaters where Ulysses and his men spent some time in the Odyssey, but I didn't see any lotuses.)
SUNDAY:
Sunday morning we had free, so I woke up early and had a nice run and swim in the hotels pool. Afterwards I split my time between the beach and the hotel. After lunch we again boarded our bus (I was a little sick of buses at that point), and went to see the sights of Jerba. We stopped in a little village that seemed to exist solely to sell pottery to tourists.
After our stop at the tourist pottery trap, we visited the synagogue on Jerba. It was quite beautiful, and a picture of its interior is below:
After the synagogue we headed to a museum that was interesting in so much as all it had was mannequins of everyday Tunisian things, and then went to the airport. After many hours of waiting in the airport, we boarded our plane and arrived back in Tunis in time to sleep before Monday morning classes.
ماشاللہ بلاگ اچھا ہے
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