Two weeks later, with only my backpack and boarding pass in hand, I arrived in the capital city of Tunis and sauntered into an 18th century palace that also happened to be my Airbnb. Not far from the Lake of Tunis, its castle-like entrance lay hidden in a maze of narrow, labyrinthine alleyways characteristic of the Arab world.

The doors to my alleyway palace!

If only there was a backpacker edition of MTV Cribs

Sunset over Lake Tunis

I spent the following days exploring the surrounding villages near Tunis and the evenings getting lost in those alleyways trying to find my way back to my palace (seriously, every night felt like a sequel to Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey).

Sidi Bou Said (sid-ee boo say-d) — on the coast just beyond Tunis — is a village where the buildings are all uniformly painted white and blue. I remember wandering through there because the distinct coloring makes you feel like you’re taking a stroll in the clouds and in pictures, the village seems to melt into the sky above and the Mediterranean Sea below.

Past Sidi Bou Said, I found the famous village of Carthage where the ancient city of the same name once stood. Although the Carthaginian ruins were more or less just a bunch of half-destroyed rocks, visiting the archeological site was a humbling reminder that this tiny village on the Mediterranean Sea had once been the center of a grand empire that rivaled that of the Romans.

Many rocks. Such wow.

As I began to make my way overland to the south of Tunisia, the calm waves of the Mediterranean Sea gave way to the soft ripples of sand in the Saharan desert. A 7-hour bus ride from Tunis to Tozeur had taken me to a new landscape, a beautiful oasis in the largest desert in the world.

Yesterday, we went to Mides Canyon near the Algerian border, passing through a few tiny, scattered villages along the way. The scenery was incredible, which is probably why so many movies—including the Raiders of the Lost Ark and English Patient—have been filmed there.

An abandoned village that was flooded in 1969

The valley in the Saharan mountain oasis

Later in the day, we went offroading into the desert to find the Star Wars set that was quite literally built from nothing in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it’s identifiable only by its latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, i.e. don’t come here without a GPS (unless you want your sequel to be Homeward Bound: The Unending Journey).

Driving across the arid desert terrain in our 4x4

After about an hour of driving over a roller coaster of sand dunes, we stumbled upon what was once Mos Espa, the hometown of Anakin and Shmi Skywalker—my namesake! George Lucas derived Shmi’s name from the Hindu Goddess, Lakshmi, which also happens to be my name. I doubt this is a coincidence.

Shmi in Shmi-land!

The funny thing is, the boy in the picture dressed like Qui-Gon had never actually seen Star Wars before and didn’t seem to know much about it. So in his mind, people from countries all over the world were traveling out to the middle of the Sahara to see a bunch of old sand huts and a few grey pointy towers with antennas.

The Saharan sunset over the Star Wars set

If you need a reminder, this is what the town in Tatooine looked like on the big screen:

Scene from the Phantom Menace

I didn’t find R2D2 in the real life Mos Espa, but I did make a friend there—a fennec fox! I’m pretty sure this little guy can understand more Arabic than I ever will. Womp womp.

ITS SO SOFT

When night began to fall, we drove away from Mos Espa. The horizon was so mesmerizing that I felt like a zombie staring aimlessly into the distance.