Ride Report (original) (raw)

Note that police/gendarmerie escort is different from a guide. The route I took does not require a local guide or tour company. I do not know what the requirements are for the southeastern part of Algeria, but I believe that you need a guide.

Algeria has a policy to protect all tourists. It’s simply a policy and not necessarily related to the actual situation. People are employed as tourist police officers and gendarmes, and they will do their job.

I experienced the tourist police the first time at the hotel in Marsa Ben M’Hidi. They came to the hotel in the evening 3 times and wanted all my documents and itinerary. It freaked me out a bit – but that was completely unnecessary. They were just doing their job. Besides the visits, I didn’t see them, but I do suspect that they had people always keeping an eye on me. I went for several walks, runs and rides and didn’t spot them again before the day I left.

I was not escorted between Marsa Ben M’Hidi and Tlemcen. When I arrived in Tlemcen at my hotel I got a call on my Whatsapp from them. They had been waiting for me at the highway but since I didn’t arrive via the highway but smaller roads, they never saw me and they were concerned. I told them the address of my hotel, and they asked me to stay there and not leave before they arrived. From that point on, I wasn’t allowed to leave the hotel at any time without 3-4 tourist police officers by my side. Even when I booked a local guide to show me the highlights of Tlemcen, they still escorted us everywhere. Four officers joined me in a car for an early morning run. They came with me for dinner and came all the way into my hotel room. They even wrote messages late at night and early morning to check on me.

They were not happy with my choice of hotel (a small guesthouse) as according to them, it was in a “dodgy” part of town - but when I asked if I was not safe there, they insisted that I was completely safe in all of Tlemcen. I think they just preferred to keep tourists in the big commercial hotels and away from locals.

In my experience, the tourist police operate in the cities, and they are dressed in civil clothing. The gendarmes operate between the cities. So, when you leave a city, the tourist police will escort you to the next gendarme checkpoint, where they will hand you over.

At all checkpoints they want to see your papers.

This continued all the way to the border to Mauritania. I was lucky that the tourist police officer in Ain Séfra understood my need to walk around alone. He was an extremely nice guy and gave me the space I needed but he asked me to update him on my whereabouts. So, I made sure to honor his wishes via WA. I even invited him for dinner, which he accepted, but of course, Arabic style, he refused to let me pay for it!

In Taghit, a quite touristy town, I was able to move freely even without updating the local police. Here the owner of the hotel was responsible for me, and if I kept him updated, all was good.

From Taghit to the border, it is very militarized, and I don’t think you can avoid escorts in any way. Sometimes I was escorted by 3 gendarmes on motorcycles and 2 vehicles – 7 officers in total!

Make sure you tell them that you need to refuel at every opportunity. Also tell them if there’s places you want to stop for photos or breaks, coffee, etc. Some of them will get upset if you stop without agreeing with them beforehand. They take their job seriously.

A few times they paid for my lunch and coffee. One other place I was invited in for a delicious lunch at their checkpoint.

The distance between Taghit and Tindouf is 845 km and there’s no good place to stay in between. I did not discuss wild camping with them – but maybe that would have been an option. I ended up pitching my tent at the Gendarme station in Hassi Khebi. They did not want me to leave the station at any point.

In the cities I always got a Whatsapp number to contact the tourist police. In Tindouf I would ask the hotel reception to arrange escort at a time that fitted me.

The officers were generally very accommodating to my wishes and timeline. I never had to go convoy style with other travellers. In fact, I never saw any other travellers.

Only in Tindouf was I unhappy with the communication with the local tourist police. The officer whose phone number I was given was impolite and coming on to me at the same time. Unfortunately, the hotel staff were equally helpless, leaving me in limbo. The same officer was later offended when I didn’t respond to his late night flirty “compliments.”

Overall thoughts on the escort setup

You will not know beforehand whether you get police/gendarme escort. It seems to me that if you enter by land border from Tunisia or by ferry, it’s very likely that you will be escorted. If you arrive by air and rent a local car, you might go under the radar somehow. Especially if you speak French.

I did not enjoy this level of “safety” even if they were mostly polite and wanted me to have a good time. However, I realized that it was what it was and I couldn’t fight it. It was not going to change even if I got frustrated, so I tried to just go with it the best I could even when the not-so-subtle flirting entered the conversation.