Tunisia has 1400 kilometres of Mediterranean coastline. The Tunisian Dorsale is the main mountain range, which tapes off to form the Cap Bon Peninsula. North of this spine lie bountiful plains and the Medjerda River valley, beyond which are the Kroumirie Mountains. South of the Dorsale, a barren plain meets endless salt flats, which give way to the rolling dunes of the Grand Erg Oriental.

Tunisia has hot, dry summers and mild winters, but the further south you go, the hotter and drier it gets. Though it is astonishingly diverse country, ever since the Romans started clearing woodland the environment has suffered, with forests shrinking form 30 percent of the country then to 2 percent today.

After fourteen centuries of intermarriage, the indigenous Berbers and more recently arrived Arabs are thoroughly entwined. Arab-Berber Muslims form 98 percent of the population, the other two percent being Jews and Christians.

South is the Sahara of your dreams, undulating southwest into Algeria: silent, shifting gold. North of the famous desert lie the great salt lakes, weirdly flat surfaces that refract mirages and blister in the heat, with drifts of salt that sparkle like snow. Around the coast, limpid Mediterranean waters lap at pearly sands.