Fotos

Hiking thru rocky lunar land we stumble on a dried wadi and, for the first time, on a large water basin. Water ! A natural rain water reservoir. Summer showers filled it and men and animals will get their water from it for monthes. This gelta (that's how they call such a reservoir here) is particularly large and accessible. Those that we'll see afterward will often be much smaller and secluded at the bottom of very deep canyons. One needs to go climbing to re-fill his water tanks.
Our local guide watched us closely while we were admiring the marvel. He was probably afraid we could do as a previous group of hikers : take a bath in the basin leaving troubled soapy water behind us.
There are lots of tales about water here and I hope this is one of them. We tried to learn about the Tamachek words around water and discovered they had no word for 'spring'. A legend tells how much the idea of an ever flowing water is foreign to their mind: Mountain guides of Chamonix in France invited some Tuaregs for a visit under a glacier (the sea of ice) and showed them a water fall under the glacier. Although the night was falling the Tuaregs insisted to wait for the water stream to stop flowing before leaving. The story stops there and maybe one will find frozen Tuaregs there someday.