Libya - Travelling Through Allah's Garden (53/151)

Libya - Travelling Through Allah's Garden (53/151)

Libya - in the age of the great historian Herodotus this was still the name for the well-known Africa west of Egypt. A thoroughly mythical land. The present-day "Socialist Arab People's Republic of Libya" is a clearly defined national unit: 1,7 million square kilometres with only three million inhabitants. Not least due to the country's isolation, an element of mystery still clings to the name "Libya". Libya is the Orient, adventure, desert, fairy-tale land. Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans settled in the northern coastal regions. They founded the three cities Leptis Magna, Oea (now Tripolis) and Sabratha. These three cities gave the region, where our journey begins, its name: Tripolitania. From Tripolitania we travel southwards over the mountain Djebel Nafusah to Ghadames, the old junction of the caravan roads and gateway to the Sahara. From Murzuq in the southern part of the country our journey continues in an all-terrain vehicle to Wadi Mathendous. Here ten-thousand-year-old rock engravings testify to the early history of humankind. In the dunes of the great desert north of Murzuq we finally come across the Mandara lakes. Water in the middle of the desert - an example of the stark contrasts and the beauty of nature in this ancient cultural landscape.