Table of contents
Culture and History / Travel to Tichit, visa requirements / Get around / Tichit attractions and sightseeing / City tours / Shopping, Tichit souvenirs / Good restaurants and cheap meals / Tichit nightlife, bars, clubs and pubs. / Hotels, youth hostels, lodging / Get outTichit is a town in Mauritania.
Culture and History
Tichit is a town for explorers and romantics. Built on the high plains of eastern Mauritania, the town is a major trading centre of salt, and it is this commodity that has been drawing traders across the desert with camel caravans for almost a thousand years. Tichit was also the site of the former Koranic school, and although this has declined, the town has been left with a heritage of ornate mosques that spectacularly punctuate the otherwise barren and sand coloured landscape.
Travel to Tichit - Visa Requirements
Public transportation to Tichit does not exist. The only way for visitors to get to it is by renting a 4x4. Tracks lead out to the city from Tidjikja, and the trip is about 200 km. The tracks are well-marked, but it is a good idea to bring a guide/translator, as most people in Tichit only speak Hassaniya and the road to Tichit is barren. You will need enough fuel to get to Tichit and back to Tidjikja, since there is none available in Tichit itself.
Tours and Getting around Tichit
Tichit tourist attractions and sightseeing
Tichit is home to a unique style of architectural design not found anywhere else in Mauritania. The surrounding area provides six unique colours of stones that are used in construction of houses and other buildings. Like most of the North of Mauritania, these stones are stacked to build houses and walls, but unlike most of the rest of the country, in Tichit they are shaped to a certain degree, and the different colours of stones are used to make designs in the walls.
The mosque, build entirely out of the blue-grey stacked stones, is one of the more famous mosques in Mauritania.
The cemetery looks like most of the other cemetaries in Northern Mauritania, but with the unique green stones found in the area.
The date harvest is an especially exciting time in the area. Arriving around this time, you should be able to see the harvested dates being piled into large mounds and covered with palm fronds and then sand to preserve them.
Finally, as you drive into the city, you can't miss the endless white sand dunes receding off into the distance.
Tichit city tours
Tichit souvenirs and shopping
It is possible to buy very old beads and grinding implements, but finding them for sale will take a little bit of work.
Tichit Restaurants: cheap, moderate and expensive
Tichit nightlife, bars, clubs and pubs
Tichit cheap and luxurious hotels, youth hostels and lodging
Get out
This page was last edited by Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel. Based on work by Wikitravel user(s) Morph, Mbritton and WindHorse. - Content on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license
