Africa

[Visited: September 2023]

After our visit of Sabratha, we are in for a long drive to Ghadames, more than 600 kilometres towards the southwest. Soon after leaving the urban area of the coastline behind, we are on empty roads. The landscape is rather monotonous, until mountains appear in front of us. To our delight, the road eventually turns towards them. Before we know it, the driver steers the car through curves up the mountain. It allows us views over the flat landscape we leave behind, and makes me wonder what lies ahead of us. To my surprise, when we have reached a higher level plain, he steers the car into a side street and parks. Ahead of us, we see a circular, adobe building without windows. We walk towards it, and are accompanied by several armed and uniformed guys.
One of them opens the old wooden door, and we walk through an arched gateway. Inside, we are surprised to find an open space, and a wall of four stories with more than a hundreds windows. Narrow stairs lead to upper floors. Our guide tells us that hundreds of years ago, this was the place where people living around this building used to store their food stuffs. Every family had their storage here, and they would put oils, grains, and other articles in these small storage rooms. These were not only relatively cooled in a harsh climate, but also protected by the easily defensible building. We see small doors made of palmtree wood which could be used to close the rooms and isolate the against the heat from the outside. It is end September and still hot - it is easy to imagine how hot it can get here during summer.
When are back at our car, the driver talks to some other guys, and to our surprise, we are given fuel from another car. This surely is a faster way to fuel the car - we have seen long lines before at petrol stations. We continue our drive towards Ghadames, and after a while. the driver again turns into a side street, and stops. We are on the edge of a canyon, and we walk up stairs past old walls. We have arrived at Kabao palace. At the top, we walk through another arched gateway, to find yet another fortified granary. While also circular and having four floors, it looks different. Wooden poles stick out of the adobe walls. The top floor is uneven. There is a small structure inside the open space, which might have been a mosque - even the guide is not sure about this. We have a look at the canyon before we get into the car again. We still have several hours to drive to reach our final destination of the day.

Around the World in 80 Clicks

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Castle granaries > Libya > Africa

[Visited: September 2023]

Around the World in 80 Clicks

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