Terjit, the oasis in a desert canyon

By the time we turned off for Terjit it was past seven in the evening and I was doing fuel sums in my head - every station on the way out of Nouakchott had given the same answer that day: nothing to sell. We kept going anyway, and the drive kept paying for itself, flat desert slowly giving way to the mountains of the Adrar.

Terjit is an oasis folded into a desert canyon south of Atar: a line of palms wedged between bare rock walls, green in a landscape that had shown us nothing green all day. After hours of sand and stone in every direction, it reads like a trick of the eyes.

We arrived with a local guide, negotiated the entrance fee, and walked in as the light went soft. The contrast is the whole event - one moment you are in open desert, the next in a corridor of palm shade between cliffs. We spent about an hour there: walking the canyon floor, then a short hike to the top of the hill above it, looking back down over the palms.

An hour was enough, and that is not a complaint. We were passing through anyway, headed deeper into the Adrar towards the Eye of the Sahara, and Terjit is the kind of stop that route hands you. It is not a place you cross Mauritania for; it is the reward at the end of a driving day that earns it - and a standing reminder, in a country where the pumps can all be empty at once, to fill the tank whenever one actually has fuel.