In December 2025, our family spent two weeks roadtripping around Tunisia. It was truly a fabulous experience! When I started writing a blog about our trip, I realized it’d be easier to create different posts for the cities we visited instead of putting all the information in one long post. If you want to read more about logistics and our overall experience in Tunisia, click here. To read about the other cities we visited, you can go to our Tunisia page.
Before Douz, our family spent 2 nights at a permaculture farm in Tatooine, where we explored Ksars and ancient Amazigh villages. We thought Tatooine would be in the desert, but it was really on the mountains. Heading to Douz really marked the start of the desert part of our trip in Tunisia!
Day 9: Douz
On the morning of day 9, we drove to almost 3 hours from Tatooine to Douz, which is known as the gateway to the Sahara. On the way we stopped at Hotel Sidi Idris in MatMata to see the troglodyte house which was used as the interior of the Lars homestead in Star Wars.
We also drove through many mountain towns selling goods on the side of the road. We stopped to buy honey from one of the vendors. It was some of the best honey we’ve had!
Our stay in Douz also coincided with the 57th International Sahara Festival of Douz, so we had to check it out. After checking into our apartment, our host lead us to the festival grounds on his motorcycle (we followed on our car). We got there when the races were beginning. We saw horse races, camel races and dog races. Because we aren’t big fans of any of those events, we left the track to go walk around the festival stalls.
Even I we didn’t love watching the races, I did love the energy of the festival. When we were ready, we went back to our accommodation to prepare our overnight bag for the desert. Afterwards, we headed out to town for dinner. Once again we followed a recommendation from our guidebook and ate at Restaurant La Porte da Sahara. Town was so lively because of the festival, so it was exciting to be out exploring!
Day 10: Overnight in the Sahara
On day 10 we went back to the festival grounds to meet with our guide and start our trip into the Sahara desert. We met our camel handler, our camels, and started the 2-hour ride to our desert camp. Let me tell you that being on a camel for 2 hours is not easy on your body. At least not on my mid-40s body! I was so happy to get off the camel when we reached camp!
The ride through the Sahara desert was interesting. Apparently, many of the festival attendees had just opted for setting up camp in the desert, which sounds like fun. Unfortunately, people were also using the sand dunes as their trash pits. We saw a lot of trash during the first hour of our ride and it was quite sad. Our guide was also upset to see that, and he complained about people’s lack of care for the environment. Fortunately, as we rode farther and farther from the festival ground, the dunes cleared and we only saw desert dunes in front of us!
Once we arrived at the camp, we spent the rest of the daylight hours playing in the dunes. We took a quick break for lunch, and then headed back out for hours, until sunset. Sunset in the Sahara desert is just magical. The dunes turn golden and everything feels so quiet.
While wondering around dunes, we saw Fennec Fox tracks on the sand! It was so fun to follow them for a while, but not for long as we didn’t want to get lost in the vastness of the dessert!
We were back at camp at sundown and in time for the evening activities, which included traditional bread making, a bonfire, and a traditional drum show. It was a lot of fun!
If you are planning an overnight in the Sahara desert in December, my main advice is to bring warm clothes like thermal layers and fleeces. We had warm clothes, but the temperature dropped close to 0 centigrades at night! We had to get extra blankets to stay barely warm! That night in the Sahara desert definitely became a core memory!
For our overnight Sahara excursion we used Saharan Sky, which was highly reviewed. We didn’t love the way it was ran, or the staff onsite, but it got us to the desert, fed us, and got us back to Douz, so I guess it was okay. I just wouldn’t recommend them from our experience, but I’m sharing who we used so you can take a look in case anyone is interested.
Day 11: Ride back to Douz and drive to Tozeur
We were up early in the morning to eat breakfast and get back on the saddle… I mean camel, to take us back to Douz. I was dreading the ride, but honestly it wasn’t that bad! We had the same handler guide us through the desert. He chose a different route back, so we really skipped most of the areas where people were camping.
Back in Douz we got on our car and started the 2 hour drive to Tozeur. On the way, we made a stop at the salt flats on Chott el Djerid. The ground there was a mix of salt and super fine sand. We played on the salt flats for a bit before continuing onto Tozeur.
To read more about other places to visit in Tunisia, visit this page. For all of our other travels, go here.
