Timbuktu!!
We
departed Dogon country in Douentza and headed up the dusty piste to Tombouctou
(or Timbuktu in English). The road
there was fairly difficult, everyone got stuck at least a couple times, but it
wasn’t as bad as we expected. We
camped halfway there and made it to the ferry crossing (over the River Niger
again!) around 1:00PM the next afternoon.
After a couple hours and a fight with a French guy who decided he wanted
to cut in front of us, we were on the ferry and headed to Tombouctou. We finally arrived at our hotel around
7:00PM and were surprised when about an hour later, who checked in, but the BBC
crew. We chatted some more with Mr.
Palin (he even bought us a round of drinks at the bar) and he was kind enough to
do a brief photo session for us the next morning. Life is strange . . . who’d have thunk
we’d meet Michael Palin, one of the world’s leading travel documentarians and in
my opinion, one of the funniest people around, in one of the most remote and
inaccessible places on the planet – Timbuktu. Weird, but way
cool!
There’s
not too much to say about Timbuktu.
It was founded in the 12th century by Tuareg nomads looking
for water. The city flourished in
the 16th and 17th centuries due to the salt trade –
caravans of thousands of camels loaded with salt slabs from salt mines north of
Timbuktu would sell their salt in Timbuktu. It came to be known as a very
inaccessible place during the 19th century after a few European
explorers died trying to reach it.
These days it’s a dusty desert town with not much to see except a few old
mosques and lots of sand. We took a
bunch of pictures in front of a “Bienvenue a Tombouctou” sign, poked around for
a few hours and then headed back to the ferry to leave for
Douentza.
We took
the same road back which was a bit harder going the other way and arrived in
Douentza the next day around noon.
We gassed up out of 55-gallon drums and headed off towards Gao, the last
town of any size we’d see in Mali.
Camped that night way off the road, but as usual, we had a visitor. A shepherd walked up after a while and
was watching us in amazement, so we invited him to eat dinner with us (which he
did – but very gingerly) which was very, very cool. He didn’t speak French, so we sort of
signed to each other to communicate.
Judging by all our IPF lights, Coleman gear and funny language the poor
guy must have thought we were from Mars!
We’re
noticing a few new problems with the trucks. Mike’s brakes have decided to work only
now and then and the engine does not like the bad gas we’ve been using. Al’s rear tires are still rubbing over
every bump in the road and he lost the rear half of the exhaust system he had
just bought in Bamako. Shane’s
tires are still giving us troubles and Jim’s truck body has sagged so much that
he can’t close two of his doors.
Hopefully we can sort out some of these problems in Niamey. Also, today we passed the 7,500km mark
which means we’re about ¾ done with the mileage on the trip. So far, it’s been a fun, but taxing trip
on us and the trucks. Hopefully
both the former and latter will make it the rest of the
way.
-Paul
Shumway