The City of Libraries.
Hello! Sorry for the silence, I have been at Glastonbury :)
How about this for a good return story...
The sands of the Sahara have all but swallowed Chinguetti, a near ghost town found at the end of a harsh desert road in Mauritania, West Africa. Its majority of abandoned houses are open to the elements, lost to the dunes of a desert aggressively expanding southward at a rate of 30 miles per year. While predictions suggest this isolated town will be buried without a trace within generations, Chinguetti is probably the last place on Earth you would look for a library of rare books.
Today all that remains of the scholarly and holy city is a collection of deserted streets and mud houses left behind by the Moorish Empire with a few signs scrawled above doorways.
But against all odds, behind these walls sleep 6,000 books, some kept (for the most part) intact since the 9th century in the dry desert air.
Well worth a read! Lots of incredible photographs too
How about this for a good return story...
The sands of the Sahara have all but swallowed Chinguetti, a near ghost town found at the end of a harsh desert road in Mauritania, West Africa. Its majority of abandoned houses are open to the elements, lost to the dunes of a desert aggressively expanding southward at a rate of 30 miles per year. While predictions suggest this isolated town will be buried without a trace within generations, Chinguetti is probably the last place on Earth you would look for a library of rare books.
Today all that remains of the scholarly and holy city is a collection of deserted streets and mud houses left behind by the Moorish Empire with a few signs scrawled above doorways.
But against all odds, behind these walls sleep 6,000 books, some kept (for the most part) intact since the 9th century in the dry desert air.
Well worth a read! Lots of incredible photographs too