The Road to Aïn Sefra

dedicated to the memory of Dr. Cheikh Achrati, this post is part 5 of a series covering travels in Algeria

In 2019 I went on a pilgrimage of sorts from El Bayadh to visit Aïn Sefra in western Algeria. The day trip was arranged to offer detours through the Ksour Mountains, rock art carvings, and while in Aïn Sefra, visit the grave site of Isabelle Eberhardt. Eberhardt was a Swiss explorer and writer who moved to Algeria as a twenty year old in 1897. From Wikipedia: “She dressed as a man and converted to Islam, eventually adopting the name Si Mahmoud Saadi.” She survived an assassination attempt and exile, only to be felled by a flash flood in Aïn Sefra in 1904. She is buried in a man’s grave (two parallel stones at the head and foot; women’s graves have a perpendicular foot stone) indicating ‘Sidi Mahmoud’ in Arabic script and ‘Isabelle Eberhardt’ in Latin characters. For further reading, see Reinventing Isabelle Eberhardt by Verna Foster.

The trip to Aïn Sefra took a few hours and included a tour of Boussemghoun and a scenic detour through Aïn Oukra (whose photos are to be the subject of a subsequent post). Just north of Chellala we stopped to admire a painted rock formation called ‘Anaconda’ (see below), and after a short lunch in Tiout we saw rock art carvings on a cliff overlooking the town.