Chott el Djerid

Chott el Djerid is the largest salt pan of the Sahara: a flat, glaring plain of salt and mud stretching some 250 kilometres across southern Tunisia between the oasis towns of Tozeur and Nefta to the north-west and Kebili and Douz to the south-east. Its area is given as anything from 5,000 to over 7,000 square kilometres, and that uncertainty says something about the place — it has no fixed shoreline, only a margin where the desert turns white. Most of the year it is almost completely dry, with rain averaging well under 100 millimetres, and in summer the air above it can pass 50 °C.

What makes it extraordinary is colour and light. The crust is not simply white: depending on minerals, algae and water, patches turn pale green and purple, and after rare rain a thin film of water turns stretches of the plain into a mirror. The heat haze over the flats produces mirages — floating islands and false lakes — and fata morganas are a regular sight. At the edges salt is collected in crusted mounds.

For all its emptiness the chott is protected as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, listed in 2007. It is also famous as a film location: the set of the Lars homestead, Luke Skywalker's home in Star Wars, was built on its flats.

The best way to see it is the long, raised road that crosses the chott between Tozeur and Kebili: about 70 kilometres of dead-straight tarmac with nothing but salt to the horizon on either side. Stop anywhere and walk a few steps off the embankment, ideally at sunrise or sunset, when the low light plays across the crust.

Getting there

The chott lies between Tozeur and Kebili; the causeway road runs from Tozeur across the salt to the Kebili side, a drive of about an hour without stops. Tozeur–Nefta International Airport (TOE) is the nearest airport, close to Tozeur.