Mauritania

Mauritania is where the Sahara meets the Atlantic, and that collision produces a landscape of genuine strangeness: ancient cities buried in sand dunes, a train carrying iron ore that runs 700 kilometres into the desert and which you can ride for the price of a conversation with the right person. Chinguetti was once the seventh holiest city in Islam, a staging point for West African pilgrims crossing to Mecca. Its libraries still hold manuscripts a thousand years old, slowly being consumed by the desert that surrounds them.

Travel advisory Some areas carry security advisories. Check current conditions before planning travel.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: the iron ore train route, Chinguetti's manuscript libraries, Atlantic fishing towns and the desert camps where the silence is not metaphorical.