Hammam Bourguiba Kébili

Hammam Bourguiba Kébili, in the desert oasis town of Kébili in the Nefzaoua region of southern Tunisia at the edge of the Grand Erg Oriental Sahara, draws on sulfate thermal waters in one of the world's most dramatically desert-contrasted hot spring settings — an oasis where date palm groves and hot springs sustain human life at the very edge of the Sahara, in a region where sand dunes begin just kilometres from the town. The naturally warm sulfate waters, heated by the geothermal activity beneath the Saharan shield and traditionally used in the Tunisian hammam bathing tradition, provide therapeutic and ritual bathing in a community whose Berber and Arab cultural heritage goes back millennia in this gateway region to the trans-Saharan caravan routes. Kébili's surroundings — the vast Chott el-Jerid salt lake (North Africa's largest), the Star Wars filming locations of Tatooine in the nearby desert, and the extraordinary desert ksour (fortified granary villages) of the Matmata troglodyte landscape — make Hammam Bourguiba one of North Africa's most dramatically situated thermal destinations.