Shimmering salt lakes and luxuriant palm tree oases combine with tantalising mirages and seductive sunsets to create an unforgettable experience.

For the more adventurous it is possible to visit the film locations of Star Wars and The English Patient, ride a camel into the desert or for those who prefer some speed, you can go-kart or quad-bike through the sand dunes.

Nefta
A short drive from Tozeur, Nefta’s 450,000 date palms lie hidden in a huge basin, hemmed in by cliffs and nourished by more than 150 natural springs. The basin, or La Corbeille as it is known, also contains a hot spring, which offers bathing pools for men and women alike.

Kebili & El Hamma
Until the 19th Century, these sister towns were renowned trading centres for slaves from the south. Today, Kebili is better-known for its hot springs and annual date festival.

Douz
The oasis town known as the “Gateway to the Sahara”, where each Thursday, which is market day, nomads gather for the customary trading and barter of camels, horses, crafts, blankets and typical Berber trinkets.

Matmata
Famous for its troglodyte underground houses which date from the fourth century BC and were used in the Star Wars films. The troglodyte houses form a circular crater and you can actually stand on the edge of them and look down on them.

Tamerza & Chebika
These mountain oasis villages are an hour’s drive from Tozeur. The Tamerza Palace hotel offers magnificent views over the remains of the old village that was washed away by freak floods in the 1960s and now lies abandoned. You can wander round the eery, empty dwellings or admire them from a distance when they are floodlit at night. Chebika is built around a steep gorge fringed by a small palmery.

Tunisia provides an extra thrill for fans of the internationally-acclaimed series of Star Wars films as the oasis town of Tozeur was used as the location for Mos Espa on Tatooine, the Skywalkers’ home planet.

The original Star Wars trilogy, Episode One: The Phantom Menace, and Episode Two: Attack of the Clones attracted thousands of additional visitors to the Tunisia’s spectacular desert region. The sets famously survived a tropical storm during filming in 1997 and the structures are still intact.

By a strange quirk of fate, the Tatooine location is literally a hop, skip and a jump away from one of the principal desert locations featured in another Oscar-winning film, The English Patient.

Many leading tour operators offer four-wheel drive safaris from popular beach resorts such as Hammamet or Monastir to the location sites of both Star Wars and The English Patient.

Most excursions also include a stop-off at the troglodyte village of Matmata, whose mountainous lunar landscape was seen in the very first Star Wars film – Episode IV: A New Hope – as Luke Skywalker’s home.

For those wishing to stay longer, Tozeur itself makes an ideal base for exploring the shimmering Chott El Jerid salt lake and the remote mountain oases of southern Tunisia. A trip on the Red Lizard train, a restored beylical train that runs between Metlaoui and Redeyef, offers breathtaking views of the Seldja Gorge which is well worth a trip.

For the ultimate experience, why not take a hot air balloon trip over this breathtaking landscape.