So now because of the row we are changing the wheel in the bush! After a cold shower we get to bed and after Alain apologized. I hadn’t even seen Tombouctou! The next morning I have a bad throat and feel feverish. It must have been the shower. Alain & Rosemary leave ahead of us and as usual we arrange a meeting point. This time it’s 50kms towards Gao, through the desert. As we leave our night stop, Alan drives striaght into a hole, hardly visible on the surface. Both front wheels are in it. Once again I get my video camera and my digital camera. Alan, the winch. Hooking it up to a dead thorn bush didn’t prove successful, but after fighting with the thorns, found a much stronger plant and filling the ditch with sand using our military spade, we were once again on the move. The track now is very sandy with deep ruts and we slip and slide over the dunes. At the 50km mark we wait for Alain & Rosemary wondering why they wern’t already there since we had wasted so much time in the ditch. After a while we back tracked to a large village we passed a few kilometres before.
By now I am really feeling ill and the boiling sun over the boiling sand isn’t the best place to be with fever. We decide to go back to Tombouctou 50lms, away rather than attempting 350kms alone, having to bush camp for at least another two nights in the desert, in my condition. We know that many pistes lead off from one another getting quite confusing even for the GPS, and if you don’t know navigation by the stars as the Tuareg do, maybe we will end up in Algeria instead. There is a saying here though “All roads lead to Tombouctou”, but we’d rather take the old road (back) we know, than the new one.
The Azalei hotel back in Tombouctou is fantastic for me, with air conditioning, a bed with clean sheets (the first real bed since the hotel Sabo-Baden near Dakar in Senegal) and a hot shower. I sleep away the afternoon and feel a little better for it by night fall. The next day we at least see more of this strange city. It is built up on high dunes with no tarmac except from the ferry to the city gates. Stretching away into the distance over the sand. One can imagine what fascination it held when people managed to reach here, travelling over such harshness for sometimes weeks on end. Synonymous with “no where” only the myth remains.
Having contacted Alain & Rosemary by mobile phone, we are now back in Duentza, after the gruelling 220lms of corrugated military road, in the “Raids Expedition” campsite, cooking up a chicken soup. Ideal for when you have flu.
We’re up early, the next day, as usual. The sun comes up about 5:30 and sets at 18:00 so we’re normally back on the road by 08:00.
Its my birthday. The weather has been fabulous, since we’re inland the heat is dryer and getting hotter as the weeks go by. Today the journey to Gao is nice and easy, all the way by tarmac. A straight road through the the desert, parallel to the sandy piste we left two days ago, the Niger River running between the two.
We pass the famous rock called “La main de Fatma” in the Hombori region. It’s flat face and shape of a hand proves to be one of the hardest challenges for rock climbers, in Africa.
Gao is a large town with a lot of constrution work going on. It hopes to get back on it’s feet after wars and problems with the Tuaregs from neighbouring Algeria. It used to be a huge tourist attraction and the quickest route down from North Africa, called the Trans Saharan route, passed through it.
Quite close by to this town, Temeia and Bourem, is where Thierry Sabin was killed in a helicopter crash. He was the Frenchman who started the now famous Paris-Dakar race in 1971. The accident happened in the late eighties. He was well known in these parts and the Dakar Rally still comes this way.
Our campsite in Gao is quite extraordinary,. Built only in walls of mud, typical of Africa. It looks more like a family home. Chickens scratch around, pigeons fly in and out of their cots, made of mud too, children and parents everywhere so you never know who belongs to who or which family and to cap it all Baba Yourga is marrying his son off today and is having a party for the whole village, in the back yard 3 metres from our parked cars! We have been invited to the party! By 22:30 the load music, dancing and chit chat come to abrupt end. We are already in our roof top tents thinking about sleep. By 22:35 no one is around. Not even the Romans could have done it so quick. It used to take them 15 minutes to empty the Coliseum in Rome of its spectators.
Kidira is a simple crossing over to Diboli and I’m glad we are leaving behind both the Senegalese and the humidity for now. Immediately into Mali, we travel through the most amazing Baobab forest, which goes on for kilometres. The trees are magnificent as they are known for; enormous trunks and branches, which look more like roots. The upside down tree! We find a beautiful spot, hidden from the road and spend our first night in Mali enjoying a cool evening with no humidity. Away from the ocean and rivers the air is dry with no mosquitoes. My body is full of small bites though, so I think the sleeping bags need to be put out in the boiling sun. These could be Nat bites; next time we have a day off I will air and shake out the bags.
Kayes is the next large town on our road map, where we once again top up on provisions for the next few days, before we actually reach the capital of Mali, which is Bamako. From Kayes to Bamako we will be following the old French Colonial railway, which was built in 1899 and runs from Dakar, in Senegal, to Bamako in Mali; then called the Soudan Francais. The 1200km trans-empire train line was built with forced labour, causing in later times nationalist sentiment and rebellion. Plantations were established along this route of cotton, gum arabic and groundnuts. Since then, having gained independence in 1960, the now REpublic of Mali has seen many disasters; corrupted governments, droughts, uprisings and coups; the devaluation of the CFA (franc of the African financial community) in the 1990s and Tuareg insurgences, which ended in 1996 with the symbolic burning of the weapons in Tombouctou.
Mali has always had a positive attitude and the government is now stable, clamping down on corruption. It has the largest media freedom in Africa and the diverse population live in harmony. A rare gift in this part of the world. In fact since we crossed the border we have not had any problems either with the police or the people. They are always smiling and polite.
Leaving Kayes with provisions and fuel, we begin a very challenging off-road piste, which is renown for it’s difficulty and yet exciting and beautiful at the same time. We arrive in Bamako tired but knowing we have successfully completed an amazing off-road challenge.
Mali is proving to be more interesting than Senegal for its landscape. The piste is talking us over sand, different coloured earth from clay beige, brown, red sienna, ochre and over patches of short stubbly grass to walls of yellow, high and very dry grass tickets, the kind people and military like burning to have a better view of the land. The cars are thrown left and right as we cross dry river beds full of rocks and boulders and again as we dip and rise through water filled streams, over rocky plateaus and along the ruts left by the larger trucks, which dare to come this way to the many forgotten villages, even during the recent rainy season. Not only are we following the trans-Empire railway line, which we cross many times, and ride along the crest of the ghostly mound, when once rails and sleepers carried carriages of cotton, gum arabic, groundnuts and people, (the old sleepers used now to make Bomas for the cattle), the new railroad has been built not far from the old and it as well as our zig-zag route, also follows the Bekoye river. This river starts in Maléa in Guinee and flows along our route back to Kayes and into the Senegal River. The first chutes, or waterfalls, we come across are the “Chutes de Felou”. Here we stop, on our first day on the off-road piste, to have lunch and to photograph the low but extensive falls. It’s here, whilst crossing a crudely built iron bridge, that Alan falls into the river after a dragon fly hits him on the nose and puts him off balance.
Bleeding from a cut on the nose, a bashed thunb and looking like a drowned rat we quickly get him into dry clothes and disinfect the wounds. Bilharzia is common in the African rivers. Now on their way to the hydro electric plant a few hundred metres away, are his Giorgio Armarni sunglasses.
The three days and nights, which it takes for us to get to Bamako, take us through flat lands filled with thorn trees, the African Acacia, forests of Eucalyptus, palm trees, mango groves, banana plantations, past some Kaypok trees with their trunks full of small “rose-type” thorns and many other bushes with drooping branches that are flicked away and backlash onto the side windows and doors by the bush wires on the front of the car.
The villages, with their round mud houses and thatched roofs, remind me again of Kenya. The people are friendly and we use their boreholes to fill up our water tanks and solar shower bag on the roof of the car. After a day in the boiling sun, we have hot showers at the end of every dusty, sweaty and tiring day.
Our first night bushcamp is next to the second waterfalls on route, the “Chutes de Guignou”, which are taller, wider and noisier and with the sun setting, we take some superb photos, from the high plateau on which we are parked. A bushfire flares and blazes on the opposite bank lighting up the night sky.
By the second day my coxix is hurting from all the rocking and rolling but the Ikea neck band is ideal for sitting on. The horseshoe shape makes a comfy ride with my tailbone in the hole!
We stop, after, shopping, for bread and water in Bafolabe, near a village called Foungala for our second night in the bush. At 02:45 Alain ( we are still travelling with Alain & Rosemary) wakes me up, with his torch in hand. A hundred metres away a tree is burning fiercely. It had probably been smouldering and we hadn’t noticed it before zipping up our mosquito screens after we climbed into bed. It really is our only worry each night that these pyromanical fires get to us, though we do try to select grass free areas. The fire soon died down and we all went back to bed again. Now into our third day of this challenging piste the going gets worse, an excellent saying epitomizes our situation “When the going gets tough the tough get going!” Not only do we loose Alain & Rosemary, we then get a rear wheel stuck deep up to the axel in the only hidden muddy hole. Revving doesn’t get us out so Alan hooks up the winch to some handy bushes and slowly gets the car free. By this time Alain comes back on his tracks to find us leaving Rosemary in the bush 5kms away.
Following in convoy again we now get our first puncture! (the first in all our travels) The Acacia thorns are aggressive. We manage to get to our last nights stop, before Bamako and only 50kms from Kita, to change the wheel.
Parked in a Biscap field, a wild bush with red flowers which can be eaten raw or boiled to make a refreshing pink coloured drink, we start up a BBQ, clearing the tall grass first, and laugh at our days ordeals. The roast beef goes down well with pumpkin mash! The pumpkin was sitting earlier on in the day in the middle of the road. Even the donkey drawn cart, full of pumpkins from the owners field, had rocked and rolled once to often and off it came. The Biscap drink too was delicious and even better the next day striaght from our fridge.
Just before the Kita the piste suddenly comes out of the forest and a signpost shows 950kms. Its the kilometres post on the new railway line from Dakar. 250kms to go to Bamako. There is no road. We find ourselves driving on the polished tracks. A sound like a train is near by. From around the corner, our hearts in our mouths, a small rail cart arrives with four maintenance men aboard who shout at us its “Enterdit”. But there is no other way now across the river Bekoye. They kindly say we can follow them, cars straddling the rails, over the bridge to the opposite bank. They wave us goodby and we take the piste off the rails to the left.
We reach Bamako. We are only here to colect our visas at the Mali Embassy, which is near to a terrible campsite but the only one in Bamako, the campment Dgoliba.
Bamako is a large city with two many cars, people and piki-pikis (mopeds) but we decide to stay two nights in the camp to wash our clothes and put the sleeping bags out in the sun to kill the gnats, finally! As we take the matress out, two huge cockroaches scurry out of the tent too. Quite disgusting. We’ve probably carried them with us since that terrible campsite in Agadir! We spring clean the roof-tent.
We leave Bamako heading towards Segou. Our plans are to go onto Tombouctou (Timbuktu) eventually so we are now following the long Niger River. Having left late in the morning, we find a spot, hidden away from curious eyes, too late in the evening to cook, on the river. Mosquitoes everywhere. So we eat a sandwich in the car and go to bed, at least gnat and cockroach free. We want to see the largest mud built Mosque in the world in a town called Djenne. We have a lot of hassle at the ferry which takes us over the Niger River to the town on the other side, but its worth it. You can only take photo’s of the Mosque from the outside now days due to an Italian fashion photographer who took some sexy shots on a fashion shoot, and westerners are now forbidden to enter.
Meeting up with Alain & Rosemary again on the opposite bank we set up camp in the bush not far from the ferry, and BBQ some tender beef accompanied by tomato, cucumber and lettuce salad. Continuing onwards, Alain suggests visiting the port town of Mopti, which is famous for its dried fish, and the Pirogue boats which are built there. The smell coming from the huge dried fish area is nauseating. We don’t stay too long filming and taking photo’s of the blacksmith’s and carpenters at work on their Pirogue’s and leave the dusty market for Bandiagara, where Alan has a waypoint for a reasonable campsite. Bandiagara is in the famous Dogon area and we stop along the way to visit on off the villages, Sogon. A charming guide leads us through the complex of his home town telling us all about the Dogon secrets.
The Dogon country is known for its witchery and fetishes. Each village has its own fetish, either a lizard, a crocodile, a hare etc, which protects the people. The houses are all made of mud as are the granaries. However the men and the women each have there own granaries, the men’s are covered in straw like a witches hat while the women’s have rounded roofs. All have small wooden windows, a symbol of Dogon culture. In fact, these wooden panels have become so popular with tourists that they are now handcrafted solely for the purpose, protecting the remains of the originals.
The Dogon people arrived round the 1500s and have kept their culture alive ever since. Villages spread along the 150lm Bandiagara escarpment with many cliff face dwellings where the Dogon bury their dead. In fact funerals are even celebrated with more fervour than weddings, the masks and dancing having magical powers. Having walked through the tiny alleyways the guide takes us high up a cliff where only men, never women, from 14 years of age upwards, can go. Its where the boys are circumcised and on the cliff face are symbols of the Dogon story. The boys have to stay 30 days up there, once circumcised “en masse”, sometimes 80 at a time, and the teacher teaches them all about the Dogon culture and secrets. Now as men, they will continue the tribes traditions.
Leaving Sogon we make our way to the Togona campment, where we are looking forward to a relaxing evening and a good nights sleep. Unfortunately a group of 35 Belgian tourists turn up and again like Foundougne are entertained by the local musicians and dancers, the music goes on until the early hours. The next morning, after not too many hours sleep, we head to Duentza to take our off-piste track, which was built by the military, for Tombouctou (Timbuktu).
Both Bandiagara and Duentza are called the gates into the Dogon country, so we follow the escarpment all the way to Duentza and once we start heading north on the piste the land once again flattens out. But not the piste.
The car rattles away over the corrugations left by the wind and rain, and the ruts left by the trucks, so we find an alternative route along side. By late afternoon we are halfway to Tombouctou and stop under some thorn trees to bushcamp for the night, exhausted. The next part of the journey by piste is the same, but this time we come across enormous herds of cattle, maybe 100 - 200 all walking at a steady pace towards the river Niger and over to Tombouctou. Its the famous cattle market held here once a year. Herders with their animals have walked for days sometimes weeks in the heat. They still look very healthy, both the animals and the men.
We reach the ferry crossing and now we chug half an hour over the Niger river to Tombouctou, which is not quite what we expected. The legend of this far forbidden place is into the desert, about 25kms, but close enough to the river. Famous as a trading city in times gone by, all tracks lead to Tombouctou. Camel trains would cross from all directions such as Morocco, to buy and sell their wares.
There is a sign in Zagora (Morocco) which says “52 days to Tombouctou” and an arrow pointing across the desert. Today is 21st November and since leaving Rome it’s taken us 53 days! Quite a coincidence!
As we pull off the ferry Alan notices our tyre is soft - another puncture, using the compressor to blow it up for now, till we get a chance to change the wheel we get to the mysterious city of the desert. 50,000 wanna-be-guides begin to bug us, try to sell us something, hassle us. This first impression is a total disappointment. So as soon as we fuel up, get money from the bank and a few provisions we head into the desert to bushcamp again. We tried to look for a campsite but most of the places are just hotels geared up for the hordes of tourists coming here with organized tour groups. As a result everything is more expensive. Alain hits the roof, when a run-down campsite was asking for 4000CFAs per person (€ 7)which is a lot for Africa, let alone a place where there are really no facilities and you have to park on a rough piece of ground with no shade!. But there’s room for discussing politely. The man shouted back at Alain telling him that he was French, just an ex colonial and that the French are all the same.
