Sahara's Tuareg capital — Hoggar Mountains, Père de Foucauld's hermitage, and the deepest south of Algeria
Tamanrasset (Tam) is the remote administrative capital of southern Algeria, set at 1,400m elevation between the Hoggar Mountains and the Ahaggar plateau — the heartland of the Kel Ahaggar Tuareg confederation. The city is the gateway to spectacular high desert scenery: the Hoggar's volcanic plugs and eroded basalt towers rise above 2,900m, a dramatic landscape of inselbergs and canyon labyrinths entirely unlike anything on the Mediterranean coast. The Tuareg silver-and-leather craft market in the old town is one of the finest in the Sahara.
The Kel Ahaggar Tuareg have inhabited the central Sahara for centuries, controlling the trans-Saharan routes between Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. The French established a post at Tamanrasset in 1905, a few years after the explorer-hermit Charles de Foucauld settled at the remote Assekrem plateau (3,000m) — his hermitage there remains one of the most extraordinary pilgrimage destinations in the Sahara. The discovery of uranium and oil in the 1960s transformed Algeria's relationship with its southern Tuareg territories, and a series of Tuareg rebellions through the 1990s — linked to Sah…