Boast­ing near­ly 1,000 years of his­to­ry and steeped in tales of Sahe­lian camel car­a­vans, the Ottomans, and the old Song­hai impe­ri­al­ists. The town is found smack bang in the heart of the coun­try as a whole, sur­round­ed by the sun-scorched dunes of the Sahara Desert and the end­less yel­low of the sand sea. It’s formed from a grid of nar­row streets and adobe, mud-brick homes.