Grand Erg Occidental

The Grand Erg Occidental (also known as the Western Sand Sea) is the second largest erg in northern Algeria, behind the Grand Erg Oriental. This true desert region receives less than 25 cm (10 in) of rainfall per year. It contains no human villages and there are no roads through it.

Algeria, on Africa's Mediterranean coast, possesses some of the starkest but most beautiful landscapes on earth. Dominated in the north and south by mountain ranges and plateaux, and crossed by the Sahara Desert, it also has several of the largest inland sand dune systems in the world, including the Grand Erg Occidental and Grand Erg Oriental, the Great Western and Eastern sand seas.


In lowland basins, they are thought to be the remnants of ancient shallow seas or lakes. Unlike most of the Sahara, whose ground is a mixture of stones and pebbles, the ergs are the epitome of everyone's romantic image of deserts, with seemingly endless ranks of golden, knife-edged dunes marching into the distance .

There are no oases, so no-one can settle here and there are no roads or villages. A road skirts around the southern side of the erg, affording magnificent, if distant, views of the dunes and it is possible to travel a short way into the area from the beautiful oasis towns around its edge, like El Golea, Beni Abbes and Tarhit. Even a brief walk into this surreal landscape leaves visitors in awe of the scale of these giant natural sculptures and with a readjusted sense of their own importance.