Original subtitles

Algeria is a unique country.

The largest country in Africa,

it reaches across the Sahara Desert to border Mali and Niger.

Yet for more than 100 years, Algeria was officially French.

Not merely a French colony, but part of France herself.

This is its story.

The story of Algiers, a changing capital...

of the country's thousands of years of history...

of its diversity, from the mountains,

to the snowfields,

to the Mediterranean beaches.

The rural landscapes.

The gentle plains of the Mitidja

and the rolling hills of Oran province.

The city of Oran.

The rocks of Constantine.

The Aures Mountains.

The vastness of the Sahara, with its mirages...

The desert miracle of Ghardaia.

The Grand Erg, the Hoggar highlands

and the Tassili n'Ajjer.

And the city of Sefar, with its 15,000 cave paintings.

So we begin our journey across Algeria... seen from above.

We leave the Oran plain and head for Kabylia,

Algeria's mountains and Tizi Ouzou.

After that we will head south to Constantine,

the Aures Mountains and... the desert.

Kabylia, and we enter the Djurdjura hills.

After the open plains, it looks like a natural fortress.

MEN SING IN ARABIC

In 1956, two years into the Algerian War of Independence,

the nationalists held the Soummam Conference in this region

under the very noses of the French.

Among the olive and fig trees of the Soummam Valley,

they declared there would be no ceasefire short of full independence,

a condition they stuck to through thick and thin.

The villages are usually set on the heights,

to guard against any threat from outsiders.

Each rocky spur is inhabited.

The houses don't have many windows.

The winter can be cold.

WIND HOWLS

Arabic is spoken here, but the local language is Kabyle.

It's a Berber language, similar to Tamasheq,

spoken by the Tuaregs of the desert.

MAN SINGS

To the west, on the high plateau,

we come to an incredible Roman site...

Cuicul modern Djemila.

This silent city reflects how important it was to the Romans

to control the mountains.

The Kabyles were then the Numidians.

The Romans called them barbarians, and the name stuck, as Berbers.

Cuicul dates from the time of the Emperor Nerva, in the first century.

It's a true mountain city,

built on an outcrop 900 metres high at the intersection of two valleys.

It was probably a wealthy city.

Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The abandoned city is a reminder

that the Romans never truly conquered the Berbers.

The Romans left, the Berbers stayed.

To the south are the remains of another Roman city, Timgad,

founded by Trajan in the year 100

to house veterans of the Third Augustan Legion.

Every building evokes the power of Rome -

the triumphal arch, the eastern gate, and the western gate,

restored by Marcus Aurelius.

The streets were paved with large slabs of rectangular limestone,

and the floors of houses with magnificent mosaics.

Timgad was destroyed by raiders from the Aures Mountains

at the end of the 5th century.

Its stone was used for building throughout the region.

But even in ruins, this site in the heart of Algeria is unique.

It's an open-air lesson in urban design.

Timgad exemplifies the grid pattern

on which many modern cities are based.

The city of Constantine embodies this Roman legacy.

Originally the Numidian capital of Seerta, it became a Roman fortress,

only to be destroyed during a Roman civil war.

In 313 AD, under the Emperor Constantine,

the stronghold was rebuilt as a Roman city

and renamed in his honour.

Today, Constantine stands high on its rock,

with a viaduct and many bridges linking it to the land below.

It's known as the City of Bridges, or the City of the Ancient Rock.

From 1838 to 1962,

Constantine was the capital of the French Departement of the same name.

It remains the third-biggest city in Algeria.

A city of culture, Constantine is truly a jewel in Algeria's crown.

On the right is the former French cathedral.

The dome is modelled on Brunelleschi's in Florence.

Constantine is also a city of ulamas

Muslim theologians who study the Koran and prophetic tradition.

The Emir Abd El-Kader mosque hosts an Islamic university.

Not far from Constantine is the resort town of Hammam Maskhoutine.

It's a spa town with very hot waters

laden with carbonate that form petrified waterfalls.

Known as the 'bath of the damned',

these waters have treated skin diseases and respiratory ailments

for centuries.

Further south, the Aures region begins.

It's the land of the Chaoui people. The Chaoui are Berbers.

Like the Kabyles, the Chaoui are people of character.

In 1954, the uprising against the French

began in these deep gorges with an ambush on a bus.

The Roufi canyon makes an ideal maze for guerrilla warfare.

The Romans and the Arabs in their time,

also came up against the Chaoui.

To defend themselves against invaders,

they built homes deep within the rocky crevasses.

Since then, time seems to have stood still.

The Chaoui became stone cutters and polishers -

a craft as hard and unforgiving as the arid land.

WOMAN SINGS

The nomadic Berbers and the scorched earth

are reminders that the Sahara is not far away.

The desert seems to advance inexorably.

But here is an incredible experiment...

a barrier against the desert.

Hassi Babah... a green belt planted in the 1970s.

A monumental achievement, or an act of folly?

No one yet knows.

But millions of trees were planted... a whole forest of Aleppo pines,

resinous trees that thrive in arid soil.

The green belt was intended to encircle the Sahara.

But the dream is threatened by the pine processionary caterpillar,

which devours the pines.

So what is the encroaching desert really like?

We enter the desert at Biskra.

It's literally an opening in a rampart...

The wall of the Mzab Mountains.

Beyond Biskra, the landscape changes.

It's a vast field of sheep.

This desert steppe, renowned for its flocks,

stretches over 200 kilometres west to Djelfa.

People come from all over Algeria to buy a sheep

for the Feast of the Sacrifice, Eid al-Adha.

The most highly-prized breed is named after a village on the plain,

Ouled Djellal.

More than four million sheep are sold for sacrifice every year.

For a ten-year-old boy, his first sheep is a milestone.

This region was once covered in halfa grass,

but over-grazing has depleted the land.

The summer is very hot. From this point on,

the traveller has to watch his water and fuel very carefully.

In front of us stretches the largest hot desert in the world,

bigger than the whole of Australia.

On the road ahead lie El Oued, Ghardaia, El Menia,

Timimoun, Tamanrasset, Djanet...

1600 kilometres through the desert.

The Trans-Sahara Highway is your lifeline.

If you leave the road, you're lost.

The desert here is not really sand, but rocks.

An endless expanse of rocks, stretching as far as the horizon.

As the sun rises, the temperature climbs too.

The horizon blurs, and the landscape becomes hazy.

It's 35 degrees in the shade.

The heat deforms the light, creating strange forms.

Mirages!

They are deadly traps for any wayward traveller.

As we come into the El Oued oasis, our first stop in the desert,

there are signs of a dream project...

the dream of making the desert arable.

Potatoes are planted here.

All that's needed is water.

The Sahara has vast stores of water deep in the ground,

the legacy of a distant past.

It's fossil water, which the rare desert rains attempt to replenish.

The battle against the sands is unwinnable.

Agriculture at El Oued is a modern-day mirage.

As the water is pumped up, it becomes too salty

and so the fields have to be moved constantly.

Originally, El Oued survived with date palms and subsistence farming.

But a million trees have already died, asphyxiated.

Even worse, in some places the water has been polluted by human waste.

El Oued is a large town.

The 'city of a thousand domes' is home to over 100,000 people.

Tourism attracts even more.

With the installation of running water in homes,

the deep-seated water reserves show signs of depletion.

The new town of El Oued

confronts the realities of the deep desert south.

You can see rain in the desert.

The dunes glow with strange colours.

The raindrops slide into the sand.

And so there is some water here.

Even further south, we reach one of the desert's most beautiful cities.

Ghardaia.

An 11th-century citadel on the edge of the Grand Erg, or Sand Sea.

Ghardaia is the centre of a group of five walled towns

known as the Mzab Pentapolis.

According to legend, it owes its name to Daia,

a beautiful young girl who was abandoned in a cave.

Ghardaia means 'Daia's cave'.

The perfection of the city is fascinating.

The Mozabites were originally merchants

who adhered to strict Muslim codes.

Children didn't begin school until the age of six.

They were educated within the community.

But public schooling is now obligatory for everyone,

even in the middle of the desert.

With an extraordinary unity,

the town overlooks a centuries-old palm grove

that provides fruit and vegetables,

and shade during hot weather.

It's an island of life in the great Saharan sand sea.

Ghardaia's secret is water.

It's over 1000 years old.

And extraordinary irrigation techniques were developed here.

Each oasis has a network of channels fed by wells or underground tunnels,

called foggaras.

Each channel pours water into a basin.

The flow rate is carefully measured

before the water is redistributed among the various gardens.

People here don't share the land.

They share water.

A law imagined by these men of the desert.

Life here is a challenge for both man and beast.

Both have adapted to the environment.

Many species wait for nightfall to venture out,

to avoid the heat or to go unseen by predators.

Those without a choice must have extraordinary gifts to survive.

After Ghardaia, we head into the Great Sand Sea,

a region of sand dunes a third the size of France.

The Grand Erg moves constantly as the wind moves the sand.

It's a hard barrier to cross for the men of the desert.

Caravans have to make their way from one rare water-hole to the next.

After Ghardaia, it's vital that we reach El Menia and Timimoun.

We know we're approaching El Menia when we see its fortress,

known as a 'ksar'.

El Menia... an oasis with 100,000 palm trees.

The ksar is typically Berber.

It protected the population from raiders.

The agriculture is specifically Saharan, on three levels.

Cereals and vegetables grow on the ground.

Above are fruit trees, particularly orange trees,

and these are shaded from the sun by date palms.

El Menia is a beautiful oasis.

But its most incredible secret is on the edge of town...

A lake!

In the midst of the desert,

we find ourselves facing a vast expanse of water.

The water is not drinkable.

It's too salty even for bathing.

But it attracts birds migrating from Europe to Africa.

Since time immemorial,

pink flamingos and storks have stopped off in this humid zone

in the middle of the desert.

Somehow, they know where it is.

Their very lives depend on it.

Further south, we come to a ksar in the Draa valley.

MAN SINGS

There was, no doubt, a palm grove here at one time.

The walls are of stone and have stood up to the desert winds.

This ksar is a mystery.

It's said to be the last of the Jewish caravanserais.

It was over 1000 years ago

when Jewish nomads last travelled through the desert.

Since then, the ksar has gradually fallen into oblivion.

WOMAN SINGS

Everything is here, in this desert, buried in the sand.

On the road to Timimoun, in the middle of nowhere,

we're sure the desert is sterile.

But when you know where to look, you can even find truffles!

These desert mushrooms are a gift provided by the meagre autumn rains.

Timimoun is an oasis of red clay, owing to the iron oxide in the soil.

The architecture here inspired Timbuktu and Djenne,

across the border in Mali.

Timimoun has recently begun to attract Algerian tourists.

The Algiers middle classes even build holiday homes here.

We enter by the Sudan Gate - black Africa is not far away.

Timimoun is at a crossroads and is therefore a market town.

It's said that the Sahara's finest draperies were woven here.

But with globalisation, the material tends to come from China.

Like the sand in the Grand Erg, time erases history.

After Timimoun, the road crosses a 'reg',

a desert pavement of rock fragments.

Geologists' trucks have left their mark here, in pursuit of oil.

But these tracks lead to nowhere in particular.

Instead, we take the road to Tamanrasset, or Tam,

Algeria's southernmost town.

Tam begins with a mirage...

a mirage of football on artificial grass.

The town now has a university

with 2000 students from throughout the region.

The town is betting on the future.

Tamanrasset is changing,

but it will always be at a high altitude,

with cold winters and burning summers.

It is a crossroads town for the Tuaregs.

It takes several days for them to reach it from any direction.

Kel Ajjer Tuaregs come from Tassili n'Ajjer,

Kel Attram from Gao, and Kel Air from Agadez and Timia.

Convoys enter and leave constantly.

People come to Tam for supplies.

They speak Tamasheq.

They listen to the news, and gossip.

We leave Tamanrasset bound for the Hoggar and Tassili n'Ajjer,

looking for the lost city of Sefar.

The regional Tuaregs are the Kel Ahaggar,

which means 'the people of the Hoggar'.

Many families have abandoned nomadism

and settled on the outskirts of Tamanrasset.

The Tuaregs are nomadic animal-farmers,

and sometimes merchants.

They own nothing, or very little.

Some land, goats, dromedaries...

It's a matriarchal society.

The women own the tents and the few pieces of furniture.

Every bit of wood is carefully saved to use in cooking on the desert sand.

The Hoggar begins here.

A huge plateau over 2000 metres high,

eroded and studded with craters.

The whole history of the earth is here.

Hundreds of volcanoes, like Atakor,

have raised 4 billion-year-old granite to the surface.

The bedrock has been pulverised into cliffs, outcrops and crags.

There isn't a sound.

No noise comes to disturb this place.

From here, the eye turns towards Assekrem,

the legendary plateau that was home to a French hermit,

the Blessed Father Charles de Foucauld.

He was a soldier, an explorer and then a priest

who defended secularism, women, the role of Islam,

universal education and the abolition of slavery.

He lived with the Berbers

and devoted most of his work to Tuareg culture,

compiling the first Tamasheq dictionary.

Charles Eugene de Foucauld de Pontbriand

was martyred in these mountains in 1916.

Up until the end, he was fascinated by what he saw from his hermitage.

The Sahara gave him a glimpse of Creation.

Crossing this desert is a strange experience.

You walk by yourself, but you're not alone.

Every step is a dialogue.

You experience the surprising nature of the sand,

the texture of the rocks,

you follow the curving trail,

become part of the wadis, the shadows of the acacia trees...

The desert is a secret world

which speaks only to those who pass through it.

The tagelmust is the only defence

against the biting desert winds and sun.

Draping this turban-cum-veil is an art.

The colour is a code.

White is a sign of respect

respect for those who offer their hospitality.

The custom is to drink three green teas

and talk over the latest news from your route.

The first tea will be as bitter as death,

the second, mild like life,

and the third, as sweet as love.

These are the certitudes for the 'free men'

who place one foot before the other.

Our own steps lead us to the Tassili n'Ajjer,

a sandstone plateau over 1000 metres high,

eroded and sculpted over time.

For millions of years, the ground was furrowed by water.

Now there is desert, the wind wears down and polishes the rock.

Daytime heat and nocturnal cold split the stone.

Alone in this vast expanse, we see the earth transform.

We drink from pools in the wadis,

being careful not to drink at the same time as the goats.

We are so far from Algiers,

in a land that seems as big as a continent.

We also see mouflons -

wild sheep better adapted to the terrain than goats.

They seek water and plants to graze on at dawn and dusk.

They're at greatest risk from man when close to the gueltas,

the natural pools in the rock.

The species is endangered, and these regions provide a refuge.

The only humans you encounter are dead...

in tombs that date back to Neolithic times.

The oldest go back around 6000 years.

Only men were buried here,

lying on their side, their heads towards the east.

We enter the biggest open-air museum of the Neolithic age.

You have to come here to believe it.

Sefar is the biggest cave-dwelling site in the world.

A city of stone.

The wind has created avenues, squares and streets...

Sefar has been on the World Heritage list since 1982.

Not for the extraordinary creation of the winds,

but for what it conceals.

15,000 paintings and engravings

decorate the walls of this natural city.

It is one of the biggest collections of prehistoric cave-art

in the world.

You discover visual accounts of wars, conquests and lost civilisations.

And you find that this desert was not always so dry.

It was once a savanna,

a land of giraffes, buffalo and rhinoceri.

15,000 art works recounting 6000 years of climate change,

animal migration, and the evolution of human life

in the remote Sahara,

like a great book of the desert.

A tale with its share of mystery,

starting with these strange beings that appear in certain drawings,

with a form neither animal nor quite human.

Few travellers venture beyond Sefar.

Hardly anyone comes this far.

In the far south of Algeria, we glimpse the red desert.

We behold the infinite beauty of this world,

never to be forgotten.

And we remember all the people who have welcomed us.

We take with us a memory of all their faces,

at the end of our journey

through Algeria from above.

Captions (c) SBS Australia 2019