Tozeur, Tunisia  - Two beeps issue from the backpack in the pebbly Tunisian desert. A text message says that the cell phone is tuned to an Algerian network. How marvellous to have cell-phone reception even in the middle of nowhere!

But wait... Algeria is nearby? A slight sense of unease arises. Did not the travel advisory on the website of the foreign ministry back home warn of dangers in Tunisian regions close to the Algerian border?

Tozeur, Nefta, Douz, and the mountain oases of Chebika, Tamerza and Mides are all on the edge of the Sahara Desert. In terms of tourism, this is not always a plus when many people nowadays associate desert tours with kidnappings.

Foreign tourists were taken hostage in southern Egypt in September. And the travel advisory for Tunisia explicitly noted that "the risk of abductions continues to exist" in the southern border region near Algeria. People travelling alone were advised to avoid the region.

There was no explanation of where the "southern border region" begins, though. That, said Naceur Mani, director of the German branch of the Tunisian National Tourism Office, was precisely the problem. Mani said that some parts of southern Tunisia were indeed off limits for safety reasons.

"But people make a muddle of everything and steer clear of safe places, too," he remarked.

The region is characterized by palm oases, extensive sand dunes and mountain trails. When you travel by road from Tozeur to Nefta, you do not feel as though you are in a security zone. Police are present, but they behave less martially than their counterparts in Egypt.

The biggest danger seems to be the camels that cross the road in the desert between Tozeur and Nefta. In any event, blue-and-white signs warn motorists that camels cross.

Nefta and Tozeur live on date palms. Of the 1.4 million palms growing in southern Tunisia, some 400,000 are in Nefta, says tour guide Habib as he leads a group of tourists through the historic city centre. The houses stand on the edge of the palm grove, which receives water from three wells and is also full of pomegranates and other fruit.

On Nefta's narrow streets, you can sometimes glimpse inner courtyards through slightly-open doors. Suddenly a moped rattles around the corner. In Central Europe, the vehicle's appearance alone would have had it banned from the streets long ago. The driver, a teenager, is chatting merrily on his cell phone.

The local muezzin calls to prayer over a loudspeaker. The inhabitants of Nefta have 24 mosques to choose from, Habib says. There are also about 100 marabouts - shrines built over the graves of holy men.

The sounds at the Place de la Liberation, Nefta's central square, are quite different. While an Arabic version of the hit Spanish song, Macarena, pours out of a cafe's loudspeakers, men sit at an open window playing cards and smoking.

Travelling north by car from Tozeur, you quickly become acquainted with two Saharan landscapes other than sandy desert: first the Chott el-Gharsa salt flat, then the eastern foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Most of the salt flat is dry for the greater part of the year, and on days with a little rain it resembles a mud flat at ebb tide. Crossing it is no longer dangerous because an asphalt road that runs through it provides traction.

The road leads to Chebika, one of the three mountain oases. Its mud brick houses were abandoned in the 1960s after a severe storm, and the village was rebuilt nearby. Today, tourism, along with date palms, is a source of income for the village. Tourists are bussed through a narrow gorge to a warm spring, whose temperature is about 20 degrees centigrade even in autumn. Little frogs swim in it.

Chebika is both the starting point and terminus for day tours through the desert. No one should set out for Tamerza without a guide familiar with the area, however, as the trail is practically unmarked. Mohammed, a local guide, knows exactly which route to take. He used to walk the 10 kilometres, though a sun-beaten terrain that ascends about 500 metres, on his way to school.

After the first, rather steep climb, the bustle around the spring at Chebika is soon forgotten. There is hardly any vegetation, only fossilized shells, remnants of a primordial sea that existed here millions of years ago.

If you stay a few dozen metres behind the other hikers, you can hear only the wind and see only the light-coloured stones on the dry earth. A feeling of solitude and vastness rises in you, and you feel you have arrived in the middle of the world's biggest desert - until the cell phone in the backpack beeps, reminding you that Algeria is near.

Internet: www. tourismtunisia. com (dpa)