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Akba Tafilalet, 12km due east of Djanet is the usual starting point of the treks. The travel agencies will drive You out to the bottom of the pass at dawn, where the pack animals will be waiting. By sunrise the animals are loaded, and the trek begins. The initial ascent up a fairly steep slope between two mesas, first among giant granite boulders, takes about an hour. At the top the track enters a broad valley, and turns right into a narrow gorge, following its bottom for a couple of kilometres.
At one point the track splits, with the pack animals taking a zigzagging path up to the top of the plateau to the right (requiring a long detour on the plateau top), while the footpath turns steeply up the valley slope to the left. A half hours climb takes one up to yet another gorge, from which a steep path leads up to the edge of the plateau.
Just before reaching the top, You pass by a small rock basin, which will be full of water if there were rains since the last summer. The whole climb from the bottom through the three ascents till the high plateau will take between three to four hours, and even though it looks formidable, can be tackled by anyone in reasonable physical condition. (Plenty of tourists in their sixties and seventies have made it !) The walk through the successive canyons with only the cliff tops illuminated by the rising sun is one of the most spectacular panoramas in the Tassili.
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