Word: tuaregs
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...another forbidden land is opening up. The thaw in relations with Libya includes a lifting of travel restrictions, and this North African nation is becoming a hot spot for American travelers. The accommodations aren't exactly five star (yet), but the rewards can be great. The country contains ancient Tuareg settlements and some of the best Roman ruins outside Italy. Obtaining a visa can be tough, so for now it's best to go with a tour operator, like Mountain Travel Sobek, which led the first U.S. tour group into Libya, in April, and plans several more excursions this year...
...Even in the '60s, Tuareg society was struggling. Drought and government decree were relegating traditions?nomadism, historic hierarchies, the methodology for naming children?to the social scrap heap. The pace of change has only quickened. Tamanrasset, once a sleepy Sahara town, is now a real city, full of "big trucks, smaller trucks, jalopies, pickups of every conceivable make and era, cars, mopeds and bicycles; but no camels." Many Tuareg who have shunned city life make camp with government-issue tents instead of animal skins and wooden poles. Tagella, an unleavened flatbread, is still a staple. But these days...
...Such Tuareg arcana emerge in dribs and drabs, interspersed with the travels mentioned in the subtitle. But Travelling with the Tuareg isn't about traveling with the Tuareg at all. Instead, the Tuareg are traveling with Keenan, on a single-minded (i.e., Keenan's) mission: to find rock...
...Cave paintings, all pre-Tuareg, don't interest the tribesmen. But Keenan says they should. After all, what wealthy Westerner wouldn't pay to view ancient paintings in a gallery carved by the elements? So he and his entourage roam, from the black-and-white chessboard flats of Amadror?"I had no idea Nature could be so kitsch"?to the stone steeples of the Tin Ghergoh range, searching for fading ocher smears of mountain goats and jellyfish. Much of the art has been damaged, some by Islamic fundamentalists on a Taliban-like crusade to chisel the world into compliance with...
...impromptu gazelle hunts, terrifying sandstorms and quiet nights under the Sahara sky, he somehow does. Pity then that he subjects his work to treatment strangely similar to the desecration he decries. For in his book, there is beauty beneath, a vivid portrait of his embattled Sahara Man, the Tuareg. But to see it, you have to look past the marks of an outsider, the signature of one who likes to say, all too often, "Jeremy Keenan was here...