Caravansérail Ghardaïa — Hotel in Bordj El Bahri

The Caravansérail offers austere accommodation, it’s true, but its captivating setting and the extraordinary warmth and attentiveness of its personnel make it a wonderful home for the visitor to the M’zab valley towns. It is its own oasis within an oasis—the palm grove that sits near the M’zab town of Beni Isguen—and it is brilliantly conceived and laid out (built around a centuries-old traditional house) in the whitewashed stonework of a medieval Saharan trading empôt.||||My room had two single beds that were extraordinarily narrow, the shower had no curtain to contain its spray, and I had to ask for a towel since none was provided. As best as I could tell, no one made up the rooms either; perhaps they only do that after the 4th day. Oddly, there were also a TV and a mini-refrigerator (neither of which I use), but no table or chair. And, alhamdulillah (praise God), the Caravansérail offers Wi-Fi as part of its basic package.||||It also offers an ample Continental breakfast (take advantage of that pain au chocolat) as part of the 3500 dinar room rate, and serves dinner family style for 1800 dinars. I was the lone non-Muslim there in mid-November, at a time when the Caravansérail was serving as the “conference hotel” for participants from a half-dozen Arab countries in a colloquium on the work of a Ghardaïa-born Islamic scholar. So I shared dinner with the Ghardaïa University faculty and students, and their foreign guests, which meant sharing the salads and the couscous with chicken that were placed on each of the low tables. (No chairs here, you sit on a cushion; and you remove your shoes before entering the dining room.) ||||I did ask for lunch one day, and the staff prepared an excellent veal on the grill, with the usual rice and fried potatoes and cooked broccoli as well as a salad of beets, shredded carrots, and lettuce. This would eventually be billed at 1500 dinars.||||The Caravansérail also arranged for transportation to the several M’zab towns in the area, and for transport to and from the airport (1500 dinars each way). Know, however, that the Caravansérail is located at a bit of a distance from the village of Beni Isguen. Because of recent concerns about security in the region (there’s been a bubbling up of antagonism between “Arabs” and indigenous “Berber” M’zabites, strikes and demonstrations by police, etc.), the Algerian authorities have forbidden foreign visitors from walking about on their own, and require a guide or other local person for any exploration off-premises.||||In short, I found the Caravansérail to be a wonderful home for a visitor to the M’zab valley. Insha’allah, I will...

My Korean friends and I stayed here in August 2002. It was already 20 years ago, so I found this place with difficulty using Google satellite maps and a few pictures. The pool wasn't as pretty as it is now because the pool had just been built back then, but I still remember jumping into it happily.

There was no air conditioning back then, and brave flies kept clinging to my skin and even surrounding the duvet.

The memories of staying in an exotic space are special. So I miss this place. At that time, I brought some red sand from the yard into a small empty shampoo bottle, and I still keep...

Très deçu par l'attitude désagréable du gérant Nabil mal éduqué qui a voulu nous forcer a prendre un diner qui n'était pas au programme.||||La première fois avant le diner en prétextant qu'il avait été déjà préparé (?!)||||La deuxième fois a la veille du départ, en exigeant d'être payé même si le diner n'a pas été consommé.||||Accusant d'abord la personne qui lui a parlé au téléphone d'avoir menti, il n'a pas trouvé quoi dire une fois cette dernière en face de lui. Ne trouvant pas comment justifier son erreur de n'avoir pas mentionné le diner, il a brusquement mis fin a la discussion en se levant impoliment alors que mon ami n'avait pas fini de parler, tout cela en présence du propriétaire qui n'as pas dis un...