The Eye of the Sahara

INSPIRE / SHORT STORY

id: 2023_mauritania-sahara-eye

slug: mauritania-sahara-eye

title: The Eye of the Sahara

type: inspire

region: North & West Africa

country: mauritania

angle: Wow

guide_wave: Brand

links_to_guide: none

status: draft

target_query: eye of the sahara richat structure

meta_description: A 40 km ring in the Mauritanian desert, famous from

space and almost empty on the ground. Standing inside the Eye of

the Sahara.

source_file: 2023_mauritania-sahara-eye_source.docx

route_file: 2023_mauritania-sahara-eye_route.docx

longform_file: 2023_mauritania-sahara-eye_longform.docx

photos_file: 2023_mauritania-sahara-eye_photos.docx

resolved: []

last_reviewed:

The Eye of the Sahara

The Eye of the Sahara, the Richat Structure on a map, is one of those places that looks unreal from above and almost unknown on the ground. It is a set of concentric rings in the Mauritanian desert, roughly 40 kilometres across, big enough that astronauts have used it as a landmark from orbit. You have probably seen the satellite image. Very few people have stood inside it.

We almost didn't. Our own cars would never have made it; the ground out there is too rough and too sandy. By this point we had already spent a day folded into the back of a local Hilux, and we liked it enough to do it again, heading another long stretch away from anything you could call a town.

From the ground, the strange thing is that you cannot really see the shape at all. There is no rim to stand on, no viewpoint that frames it. The rings are so wide that, up close, they just read as more desert, low ridges of rock and sand running off in long curves. The whole point of the place, the reason it is famous, only exists from the air.

That is exactly what made standing in the middle of it feel earned. This is an image millions of people know from photos taken in space, and when we got there the local check-in count sat at around a hundred and seventy. You go not for the view, because there isn't really one, but to be in the centre of a thing the rest of the world only ever sees from above.

If you make it to northern Mauritania, get a driver and a real 4x4, and go.

Orbital image: NASA astronaut photograph, International Space Station, July 2020.