Right on the border with Tunisia, about 50 km from Ghadames, there is a salt flat calledSabkhat Mujazzam, where Ain Eddban is located. This area, considered a depression, was most likely a salt lake which has now dried up, revealing two small lakes, one fresh water and one salt water.
An extremely mysterious place and to date not well documented.

COORDINATES     30°15’19.1″ N 9°49’55.0″ E

Ain Eddban Salt Lakes

The Arabic name Ain Eddban (Arabic: عين الذبابة) translates to “Eyes of the Fly”, describing its distinctive shape resembling the eyes of a fly when viewed from above.
In Libyan and Maghrebi Arabic, the word Ain (عين) carries a beautiful poetic double meaning: it translates to both ‘Eye’ and ‘Water Spring’. Therefore, Ain Eddban can be read simultaneously as ‘The Eyes of the Fly’, capturing its geometric appearance from a drone, and ‘The Spring of the Fly’, acknowledging its nature as a vital water source emerging from the desert floor.

The two basins of water both from the ground and from the sky take on different colors due to their depth.

While the bigger lake is shallow, the smaller lake reaches 35 meters in depth. A cone-shaped morphological characteristic of the deepest lake is reported with its maximum surface diameter of approximately 50 meters. The diameter decreases to 4 meters when at 10 meters depth, then to 3 meters when reached the bottom of the lake.

From a depth of 0 to 10 meters, there are dense underwater algae.

Between a depth of 10 to 35 meters the surrounding walls are made of black volcanic rocks.

Geologically, this deep, cone-shaped basin is a collapse sinkhole (or dolina). The dramatic narrowing of its diameter, from 50 meters at the surface to just 3 meters at the bottom, indicates a vertical collapse driven by deep water pressure dissolving the subterranean strata. The dark volcanic rock walls exposed along the deeper section reveal the presence of ancient, buried basaltic intrusions typical of the broader structural anomalies found beneath the sedimentary layers of the Ghadames Basin.

As you descend from the surface to the bottom, the water’s salinity decreases, while the temperature remains relatively stable at 18 degrees Celsius, as recorded in October.

This decrease in salinity at greater depths reveals an extraordinary hydrological phenomenon. In typical desert lakes, heavy salt water sinks to the bottom due to intense surface evaporation. At Ain Eddban, the reverse occurs because a deep artesian spring of fresh water actively feeds the sinkhole from its very bottom, pumping fresh water upward from the massive Saharan aquifer system, while the surface water remains highly saline due to the surrounding salt flat environment.

Swimming in the lakes is possible but requires utmost caution.

Ain Eddban, despite its remote and delicate location, occasionally attracts curious visitors and those seeking unique camping spots to find tranquility.