The best way to discover the dramatic landscape and awe-inspiring beauty of Sahara and the Hoggar. They run unsophisticated trips, you will sleep rough but enjoy the eerie silence of the desert so much that you will be under its spell for the rest of your life. They are French and have put little effort into an English version, but do check them, they also happen to be the cheapest in the street. It's worth the effort.
We used a company based in Algiers to do a tour of the gardens - yes, gardens! - of the Sahara. It was very tiring but brilliant fun. We had the idea when we were flying from Algiers to El Oued (in the Sahara) and we saw these great green circles in the desert when looking
out of the airplane window. They weren't crop circles but circular "fields" of potatoes! We then visited an English garden in a palace in El Oued before touring plantations and gardens in the furthest parts of the south - Tam and Djanet - before ending back in the beautiful private gardens of the Hotel St George in Algiers and the nearby botanic gardens. What a great time - and it gives a great theme to a desert holiday.
www.expertalgeria.com/saharagardens.html
or try Hullo Tours
Google map: bit.ly/hTqhcS
We had already been to the Algerian Sahara, to Tamanrasset and Djanet, but this time we took our office staff with us - partly as a reward for all their hard work but also because I am interested in how groups function under pressure and as a team. So we went on a five day circuit, by camel and on foot, with a professional group consultant who helped us make sense of our fears - and joys - about being in such an exceptional landscape. We learned a lot about independence and mutual dependency, about sharing, about "the circle of support" - great fun, too!
We've just done our second trip to Algeria with Expert Algeria and this time went down into the south. It's not complicated to organise - and they're about the only agency that ever bothers to reply to emails. The Algerian Sahara in this region is very similar to the Akakus in Libya, just more vast and more remote.
It's an Algerian travel agency that runs tours to the Roman Algerian sites and the Algerian Sahara. It's the only agency that we found that speaks English as their first language.