The muezzin wakes us up at half past five, and from 6 a.m. the rattling scooters rattle through the city and past us. Being close to the city is not always a great idea.
I pull out my mobile phone and write a call for help to an acquaintance from a Tunisia travel group. How is your campsite? Is there still room there? Is it quiet there? (Free standing during the festival is almost impossible, therefore the camping option).
Minutes later, we pack and jet out of town before the first coffee, because the news comes promptly: "Yes, absolute silence, lots of space and you can still get to Douz by taxi for 1-2 euros".
When we arrive at the almost empty "Camp Cinderella", we are already expected and warmly welcomed! We look for a nice spot a bit off the beaten track, have breakfast and do exactly: nothing! Catching up on sleep and calming our nerves is the order of the day.
It's good that the festival lasts several days and that there is a similar programme every day. True to the motto "tomorrow is another day", we spend the time idling away. After all, we have Christmas holidays, both until 9 January. We haven't had such a long holiday since we started our journey about 850 days ago.
In front of our camp (we felt the great need not to be completely alone at Christmas, in case the great sentimentality spreads its tentacles over us) we get freshly baked bread with spicy filling from two Berber women. Yummi, sooo delicious! If we had thought about the hygiene regulations beforehand (which we never do anyway), we realise that not a single germ would stand a chance with this spiciness. So our intestines are also cleaned right away.
In the romantic evening sun we scramble the first dunes directly in front of our door and in the evening we enjoy a Berber dinner with new travel acquaintances.
Sometimes it's nice to be in one place with like-minded people. Here is the family that self-schools their children and has been "on the road" for over a year, there is the top speaker who takes a 4-week sabbatical twice a year. We take time for wonderful conversations with the couple who sold their company and are now on an open-ended journey.
I provide the young Hungarian couple who gave me potatoes with propolis, homeopathic remedies and high doses of vitamin C (and last but not least with our last honey), because they have been hit by the disease and they are not into orthodox medicine like we are.
We lend one of our winter-ready sleeping bags indefinitely to the motorcyclist who freezes bitterly on desert-cold nights. Finally, the sleeping bag finds a real task.
And yes, we also wonder about the dropouts who have been on the road for 9 years and have more "stuff" in their expedition mobile than we ever had in a house or in our flats.
We learn the best recipes with dates from an online cooking trainer and learn everything about using leftovers and healthy eating (which, however, fails a bit with us due to the implementation and our sweet tooth).
And the best thing is: everyone lives their life in a way that suits them. And us? Right in the middle and happy.
Merci for "travelling with us
We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.
Do you think our travel experiences might be of interest to others? Then you can share the Share post quietly. By e-mail or however you want to do it.
In addition, if you haven't already done so, you can use our Newsletter subscribe. Here you will receive all our experiences in your mailbox whenever we publish something new or once a week on Fridays: live-pur.ch/newsletter
We are also very happy to hear your views, your tips or your questions. Just comment on the post!
Enjoy your holiday 😉👍
We're on it! Got one more week! Yeah!