BUDAPEST BAMAKO RALLY 2007 & ON TO TIMBUKTU

RALLY ROUTE: HUNGARY (Budapest)- AUSTRIA- ITALY- FRANCE- SPAIN- MOROCCO- WESTERN SAHARA- MAURITANIA- MALI (Bamako)-  and ...................on to TIMBUKTU.

Click for Pictures of Budapest Bamako Rally 2007

Complete details of rally and hundreds of pictures at http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e3739f67b15d9e8c8c9e7c56ba37815f47d1eb268adb433a

Pictures of Timbuktu at

hhttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-LBIq6dmxWxxbgGlpelF3YebBvs8D8h0?usp=sharing

How many know where Timbuktu is? Or how many believe Timbuktu does exist?

The image of the city as mysterious or mythical has survived to the present day. A survey among 150 young Britons in 2006 found 33% did not believe the town existed, while the other 66% considered it "a mythical place". Only 1% knew where it was.

My teacher in school once caught me when I fixed a pin vertically on the seat of her chair, which deflated much of her backside, and inflated her dislike for me. She threw me out of class saying “Get lost to Timbuktu, and don’t ever come back to my class”. That was the start of my educational life and my passion for travel, and I decided to visit Timbuktu, wherever that may be, that very moment! My educational life was absolutely uninterrupted, since most of my teachers in school and college kept me out of their classrooms, some of the teachers substituting the word “hell” for the word “Timbuktu”. I have been to Timbuktu, but am yet to see hell, where the reservations have already been made for my arrival by most of my departed friends, my name being placed on the “Persona non grata” list in Heaven. Thankfully so, for I will miss my friends in Heaven.

“The Road to Timbuktu” started with my participating in the Budapest Bamako Rally in Jan 2007. This is a one of a kind rally in world today.

I have started off the picture file with a few pictures from the rally. I have not included many pictures of the usual places that anyone can visit. I have included more pictures of Timbuktu and other rare places, and West African customs. I have also added some interesting pictures under headings “Cuisine of West Africa” and “Mud Cloth of Timbuktu”. You can see pictures from The Dogon Country and Djenne, listed as the most inaccessible World Heritage sites on the face of the earth. However, there is one segment that is “not recommended for the faint-hearted”. That is the last segment of pictures titled “Ritual Goat Sacrifice”. Pardon me for including it. It may be gruesome to some, but it is part of the Malinese Sahara custom when a guest of honor arrives.

BUDAPEST BAMAKO RALLY 2007:

Budapest –Bamako Rally is meant for those with enthusiasm for adventure, tourism and adrenaline highs. It gives each participant the courage to persevere through 9 countries (app. 8000 km.) of unpredictable temperature, unexpected variables and the volatile temperament of nature within 16 days! This is race is a test of endurance, will power, agility, tolerance, adaptation, and navigational skill while being under extreme pressure and intense conditions. This rough and dangerous ride is not for the faint hearted or the weak of character, this race is for the absolute unstoppable winner, the dreamer with ambition for fuel! Driving nearly 8000 kilometers on uncertain African roads, being locked up with another person in a car for two weeks and traveling through four seasons is no small accomplishment. After the rally finished at Bamako, a few of us took our vehicles and headed across the Sahara to Timbuktu. A dream of mine was fulfilled.

Here are some highlights of my experience on the “Budapest Bamako Rally” which was nothing but "The Road to Timbuktu”

On 13 January 2007, one hundred and five teams lined up in Budapest's Heroes Square for the second run of the Budapest-Bamako Rally. The Budapest-Bamako or Great African Run is a rally organized by a group of Hungarians. It passes through Hungary, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and ends in capital of Mali, Bamako. The Budapest-Bamako was inspired by the Paris Dakar Rally.

I purchased a 3.2 liter Nissan Patrol 2000 model 4WD Turbo Diesel LHD a/c in Budapest and spent more than a month altering it to international rally specifications. The vehicle was fitted with all mandatory requirements like CB radio, GPS, fire fighting systems, emergency lamps, etc.

Some of the strange vehicles that were part of the rally were a motorbike with a side car an old army truck modified as a room on wheels with 3 diesel tanks carrying a total of 600 plus liters of diesel a Hummer a vehicle called the Bulibusz that carried the rally organizer’s materials like dune buggies, cycles, mopeds, food, soft drinks, medicines, music systems, refrigerators and all that you need for the night parties.

Budapest to Venice: This year’s rally started off in Budapest on a cold early morning of around 5 degrees C. The advertisements said Come Wish Us Goodbye, Maybe Forever, since some people thought that mad participants on this rally would possibly not come back alive!. There was even one car with a sextant, in case you got lost in the Sahara!

Venice to Meyreuil: One of the challenges on the rally was to find the door number of Tina Turner’s house in Monte Carlo and to visit a casino at Monaco near the F1 track. One enterprising rally participant we found out later on, had not only located Tina Turner’s house and noted her door number, he even opened her mail box on the gate and brought a letter addressed to her as proof!!

Meyreuil to Murcia:  Along the Mediterranean Coast. We have paid tolls of nearly 300 Euros between Budapest and here! A flight from Budapest to Murcia and back costs you just 100 Euros.

Murcia to Almeria: Almeria is a port town with huge Moorish Forts on the hills. You take a ferry across the Mediterranean. The ferry ticketing is fast and expensive too. 275 Euros for the car and 2 persons.

Almeria to Nador: The ferry is actually a luxury ship with cargo. We dock at Nador in five hours and reset our watch forward by 1 hour for Moroccan time. This is where we see corruption, inefficiency and time delay for the first time. A walk around town and we find that there are lovely eating-places but no beer! First taste of a Muslim country!

Nador to Merzouga: Here end the expressways, tolled drives, major GPS satellite links and most of civilization’s pleasures. We changed the winter tires to summer tires for the drive ahead. Crossing the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert does the Nador to Merzouga route. It is incredible that world-class roads have been built literally up the mountains and across the deserts, though they pale before the expressways in Europe.  Merzouga is a touristy oasis in the Sahara. The night was spent in a Bedouin tent at freezing temperatures while the whole day we have been driving through the Sahara Desert at 45 degrees C The danger was how to avoid being bitten by desert huge scorpions!

Merzouga to Tata: From Merzouga you drive to Tata on wonderful roads till Zagora. Though there is a good road from Zagora to Tata, we took the off-road through the desert from Zagora to Tata via Foum Zguid. This is where we had the only problem with the car. The rear right wheel blew into shreds in the middle of the desert at around 11 pm. It was a great experience replacing the tire in the desert by means of emergency and headlamps, (not the ones in the vehicle- these are lamps you wear around your head, fixed by an elastic band!). It is then that we found that the hydraulic jacks we were using were of no use in the desert sands. It was getting buried into the sand. With a bit of luck and some brainstorming we managed to ultimately change the tire. Much luck here; as in the middle of the desert, mobile phones do not work! The CB radio is practically no use as cars are not traveling in bunches. Moreover, since you can take any route to reach your day’s destination, there is no way you can know who is traveling within  radio reachable distance in such vast expanse of nothingness. On the sands, at night it is very difficult to see the tracks that we have to take. Sometimes, we drive for hours and find we are off track and have to re-orient our course to get to the right track. We reached Tata around 4 am. There are only 2 hotels and a few camping sites in Tata. The temperature was around 4 degrees C., and we had driven from Merzouga to Tata in an incredible non-stop drive of 17 hours through the desert, mostly by night!

Tata to Laayonne: The drive from Morocco to Western Sahara is a wonderful drive on excellent roads. Western Sahara has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since the 1960s when it was a Spanish colony. The Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement (and government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic or SADR) dispute control of the territory. The disputed territory is something like the Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. Dangerous to enter. The entire country is filled with landmines and political buccaneers who kidnap the unsuspecting few adventure travelers who venture in.

Where the Sahara Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean, the sight is incredible Shipwrecks in all states of disintegration line the coast.  You cannot get off the vehicle even to pee on the roadside as the entire stretch other than the tarred road is still filled with landmines. Sand walls, called Berms, have been built for miles on end in the desert sands by the Polisario who are rebels who control Western Sahara.

Laayonne to Dakhla: We had to exhaust all the alcohol in the vehicles at the all-night party before you cross into Mauritania as per the rules there, you cannot carry in liquor to Mauritania, since it claims to be a perfectly Islamic country. (But in my travels I have not come across a place in the whole wide world, where you cannot get booze to drink). Any way, we did smuggle some booze into Islamic Countries as you will soon see.

An unexplainable experience – while driving in the dark with head lights on this road with a vast expanse of water on your right and a vast expanse of desert sand on your left, with no structures or vegetation in the vast nothingness on both sides, you tend to get a most exotic hallucination. As you drive through this emptiness and can see as far as the head light beam reaches, you start seeing trees on both sides of the road. But where are the trees? They are not there. This does not happen on desert sands. It happens only on tarred roads, only at night, when you drive through emptiness. I do not have an explanation for this. But I feel that when driving on desert sands, you are conscious about the sand over which you are driving, the movement of the vehicle, the feeling of the steering wheel and what your body feels is not something you experience regularly in your day to day life. So your mind does not feel you are doing something you are used to always. It is a new experience with no records in your mental screen. Whereas, when you drive on perfectly laid roads, invariably laid perfectly straight through the emptiness I have mentioned earlier, your subconscious mind retrieves, embedded visages from your cache of memories. As you are mostly used to driving at night on roads with trees on the sides, the mind starts overlapping the visible image of the existent road with the mental image of the non-existence trees. This is my explanation and I hope to solve this puzzle one day.

Dakhla to Nouadhoubou: Dakhla was the last stop before we enter Mauritania. Mauritania being a “no alcohol” Muslim country, (only by name, as we will find out subsequently!), we purchased black market booze in a few places. We wrapped them with packing tape, and hid them in all places A few under the spare tires and the seats, and the best were a couple of bottles inside the engine compartment! (No calamities. All bottles will arrive safe later.) As we crossed the Tropic of Cancer there was a lunch party in the desert.

The road from Dakhla is a paved road for most of the drive. The border control on the Western Sahara side is a well laid out place with well-built control rooms. The entire border is fenced as we could see from the Western Sahara side.  The control staff is absolutely corrupt guys. Even if everything is in order for the border crossing, you have to pay a “fee”. We fill in many forms in English, half of the entries illegible or wrong. All they want to see on the form is some form of writing though they cannot read English. Having paid the “fees” and interacting with arrogant, ignorant but corrupt border guards, who speak only French or Moroccan, we cross the gate into no man’s land. The time was 6.20pm, a few minutes after sunset, and it gets dark in these areas by the second. The no man’s land is the biggest garbage dump you can see. Garbage everywhere, blown in by the desert winds from the Western Sahara border control outpost.

This was the scariest part of the rally, scarier than driving through the Sahara at night. The border from Western Sahara to Mauritania is a no-man’s land of around 20 km wide on an average. The entire area is filled with landmines. There are no markers, pathways or roads. You are supposed to follow the tracks of the earlier vehicles on the desert sands, but this idea is stupid, as the tracks do not stay for long in the ever-changing “sandscape”.  You cannot get down from the car, as if you step a few feet off the track on the desert sand, you could be blown dead by a land mine. Just a couple of weeks earlier, a British team in a Land Rover (not from our rally), lost their bearings, veered away from the safe track, and within 5 feet were blown to pieces by a landmine. The rally road book gives the GPS co-ordinates you have to follow on the no man’s land to reach the Mauritania border check post. You just have to follow the GPS and drive. Here again is a fallacy. The GPS co-ordinates are not so exact to a few inches. You could follow the co-ordinates and still be off track considering this error. There is an unorganized group of “guides” who are standing in the dark. They are used to this place and can take you safely to the Mauritania border check post by the correct route. We asked one of these “guides” to get into the car and negotiated a fee. Just then we heard a horn from a car in the stillness of the desert in front of us. We asked the “guide” to guide us to this car. We found it to be the Lada team whose car had stalled.  Luckily they were on the safe track. We stopped in front of them and tried to start that car. No luck. We took the tow -ropes from our car and towed the Lada to the Mauritania border check post. That was one hell of an experience.

The Mauritania border control is something to be seen to be believed. In the middle of nowhere on the sands of the Sahara at near zero temperatures; we had the first experience of seeing border check points in the desert where the personnel work with candle-light! The border control itself is a tent and the staff, live and work in these tents. Most of them are high on alcohol or hashish! (Islamic country!!) Again a “fee” is demanded which we pay as a matter of regularity.  The guards make illegible entries in a torn notebook that in all probability will be blown away soon. Then they ask for “cadeau”, that is gifts in French. Yes! We will give you the “cadeau”, but please get the formalities finished. We give them a few pens and notebooks with biscuits. They ask if we have any booze. We say no, since Mauritania is a Muslim country we respect your traditions and we will not bring in booze or drink in Mauritania. The guards have a laugh and tell us everyone takes in booze after giving them a bottle or two! One of the guards was so drunk, that he took our papers very near the candle, and the papers caught fire! We then asked them to stamp our passports. They just mentioned to a dark corner of the tent. We go there, take the rubber stamp, ink it and stamp our passports ourselves. When we asked for their signature, a guard just threw a pen at us and asked us to sign the passport ourselves! Anyway, we pass out of the border control and the no man’s land.

Nouadhoubou to Nouamghar: We locate a spot in the Sahara that has unexplained mounds in perfect formations. There is a group that believes this to be the work of aliens. These so called “UFO mounds” were not difficult to find as we had “Googled” the GPS coordinates in advance. But you reach this by driving on the desert sands off road.

The most exciting drive of my life: You drive along a good road on the sands of the Sahara. The sand dunes are beautiful and the sands seem to be blowing on to the road at many places, covering the tarred road completely. In some patches shrubs with small plastic barriers have been laid out to prevent the sand from blowing on to the road, but this mostly is never effective. The Sahara sand is filled with seashells, and dried marine animal coverings of all shapes and sizes. As a matter of fact, much of this is being collected to make lime for plastering in the Saharan oases we passed.  You reach a point near Nouamghar, where we turn perfectly west towards the Atlantic Ocean shore. The Sahara joins the Atlantic Ocean here, as it does all the way from north of Laayonne. The sand on the seashore is our “road” for about 30km. But the vehicles can be driven on a 200 feet wide sea shore only at low tide. So we wait for the low tide and start driving on the seashore. To one side is the ocean. To the other side are the tall sand dunes. In between the shoreline is the narrow strip of beach. This strip is our road. You race at high speed on the seashore, (as slow speed makes the vehicle sink) on the partially dried sand surface, while the waves literally lap your wheels. If you get stuck on this stretch, you just have to abandon your vehicle with your belongings and run to safety on the dunes as the tide will become high in a couple of hours and drag the vehicle into the ocean! An amazing drive considering that all natural elements are against you. And, you have to race back the same way tomorrow morning!

Nouamghar to Nouakchott:

The next morning dawned bright. A motorized boat turned up on the sea with fishermen selling the first catch in the morning. Lobsters and fish were purchased and cooked to last till lunchtime. Yes! Lobsters in the desert . Lunchtime was on the beach since the low tide was again between 3.30pm and 5.30pm and we had to wait for the low tide to trace our way back on the shore to Nouakchott. So there we were. Racing across the sand of the Sahara on the shore of the Atlantic for the second time.

Nouakchott to Boutilimit:  The route from Nouakchott to Bamako now splits. There is one official route through Mbout, Hamoud, Kayes, Kita, which is the treacherous one recommended for extreme terrain vehicles, and the other easy route through Boutilimit, Kiffa, and Niori and on to Bamako. The adventure through Sahara and the road past Zagora made us choose the safer alternative route. The short drive to Boutilimit was done easily.

Boutilimit to Kiffa: We also checked the newly laid “Highway of Hope” connecting Nouakchott to Bamako that has recently been completed and is not on the published maps. Some new portions are not yet on the GPS also. Nearly everywhere in West Africa. Fuel (adulterated of course! ) for vehicles is sold from bottles. Most gas stations are so badly damaged that it is difficult to buy fuel in the outback.

Kiffa to Niori: This was a very picturesque drive. Strange shaped mountains and rocks and most areas filled with old volcanic lava. The highway, newly laid, made the drive easy and a small portion connecting the old highway to the new highway and bye pass roads through major towns brought us to the Mauritanian border town of Gogui.

Niori to Bamako: Miles and miles of the highway outside Niori are just being laid! So dust track for maybe 50 km. Then a portion of laid road. And then starts the piste. Soft sand that’s all. No road. The highway work has just been started. We drove on to join the tarred road and the drive to Bamako. Nearing Bamako, the whole road looks like India. Drunks swaying on the road, some lying on the sides, markets, villages, people, people, people and people. Nearer Bamako, the sky turns dark. Pollution and smoke. The time was around 6pm. And even the motorbike with the side car arrived! The whole place was teeming with car brokers as it is possible to sell the car you are using in Mali. (We sold it later in Bamako after we drove to Timbuktu & back).

THE FINISH PARTY:

It was a party everyone was looking forward to. It was at a restaurant in downtown Bamako with blaring music and of course the mandatory booze and food. The party which started off at 8pm went on till the wee hours of the morning. This still did not deter many participants from trying out other “must be in” locations in Bamako catering to a much bohemian style!!

CONCLUSION OF RALLY:

On the whole the rally was an once-in-a-lifetime experience. Every participant had only one goal in his mind when we started off from Budapest. ARRIVING ALIVE IN BAMAKO. Considering that without technical and emergency support, evacuation facilities, driving through uninhabited and dangerous areas, keeping clear of land mines and bandits, this was literally the motto of the rally.  The physical and mental exhaustion is too taxing to try it twice in a life time. Lastly, is it worth risking your life just to say I’ve done it?

But once you finish the rally you realize a few things. The baobab tree is used like are plantain trees in India. Every part of it is useful. From food, nuts, oil to mking musical instruments, every part of the baobab is useful. Community ovens are in every village, where anyone can come and bake their bread.  We have a wrong conception that Africa is backward. The roads and electricity distribution in West Africa is better than in India by leaps and bounds. The towns even in disputed Western Sahara are so well laid out. The roads and streets are world class. The electricity distribution and the perfect distribution without fluctuations should be an eye opener for India. Store shelves are lined with the best products from around the world. What a different scenario we find in India when anything “global” is seen as a threat to the “local Indian” producer of shoddy goods. Then, the smile! Something absent in India, from a street-side vendor to the check out girl at the posh international supermarket. Lastly, we think it a great achievement in India to cross the Atlas Mountains or the Sahara by vehicles. The hordes of tourists who are swarming all over the deserts and mountains of Africa, not forgetting such strange and rare places as the Western Sahara, Mauritania and Timbuktu (or Tombouctou) shows that India and tourism are far apart. All in all a good rally, great experience. Can never forget it.

GETTING LOST TO TIMBUKTU!

After the rally a few of us took our cars and headed north to Timbuktu. Like Mumbai and Yangon, it has been renamed Tombouctou.

SEGOU: A town known for hosting the Woodstock of Africa, a music festival called “Music Festival on the River Niger”.

DJENNE: It is a World Heritage Site inhabited since 250 B.C. Djenné became a market centre and an important link in the trans-Saharan gold trade. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it was one of the centers for the propagation of Islam. Its traditional houses, of which nearly 2,000 have survived, are built on hillocks of mud bricks. Even today mud bricks are made and used

MOPTI: Built on three islands connected by dikes, Mopti is the country’s major route intersection. Once a Bozo fishing village, it has the largest river port in what was the French Sudan and now has about 100,000 people. Pirogues and their larger counterparts, pinasses, carry goods up and down the Bani/Niger River. Transport is even possible to Timbuktu during and after the rainy season.

DOGON COUNTRY (BANDIAGARA ESCARPMENT)

The Bandiagara Escarpment was listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989.The Cliffs of Bandiagara are a sandstone chain ranging from south to northeast over 200 km The end of the massif is marked by the Hombori Tondo, Mali's highest peak at 1,115 meters. Because of its archaeological, ethnological and geological characteristics, the entire site is one of the most imposing in West Africa.

The Tellem who earlier lived here, were the people who inhabited the Bandiagara Escarpment. The Dogon people migrated to the escarpment region around the 14th century. The Tellem were pygmies or "small red people" who built dwellings around the base of the escarpment as well as directly into the cliff-face. Many of these structures are still visible in the area. The Tellem legacy is evident in the caves they carved into the cliffs so that they could bury their dead high up far from the frequent flash floods of the area. Dozens of villages are located along the cliff. The Tellem legacy is evident in the caves they carved into the cliffs so that they could bury their dead high up far from the frequent flash floods of the area Dozens of villages are located along the cliff. Some Tellem buildings- most notably the granaries- are still in use by the Dogon, the tribe that now live in this area, although generally Dogon villages are at the bottom or top of the escarpment, where water gathers and farming is possible. The Tellem people have disappeared from the area either by assimilation into the Dogon culture or some-other unknown reason. Strangely I found a children’s game just like our “pallanguzhi”.

Dogon villages have different buildings:

House for women that have their period: This house is on the outside of the village. It is constructed by women and is of lower quality than the other village buildings. Women having their period are considered to be unclean and have to leave their family house to live during five days in this house. They use kitchen equipment only to be used here. They bring with them their youngest children. This house is a gathering place for women during the evening.

Male granary storage place for pearl millet and other grains. Building with a pointed roof. This building is well protected from mice. The amount of filled male granaries is an indication for the size and the richness of a village.

Female granary:  Storage place for a woman's things, her husband has no access. Building with a pointed roof. It looks like a male granary but is less protected against mice. Here, she stores her personal belongings such as clothes, jewelry, money and some food. A woman is economically independent and earnings and things related to her merchandise are stored in her personal granary. She can for example make cotton or pottery. The amount of female granaries is an indication for the amount of women living in the village.

Toguna (also called case à palabres): building only for men. They rest, discuss and take important decisions in the toguna. The roof of a toguna is made by 8 layers of millet stalks. It is a low building in which one cannot stand upright. This helps avoiding violence when discussions get heated.

Hunter’s house: With dead animals strung all round.

TIMUBUKTU:

Until I found Timbuktu on the map—a faint dot there in the southern Sahara—it existed in my mind as a mythical place used for indicating hopelessly long distances. But its reputation depends finally on the degree of difficulty in reaching the invisible city. To this day Timbuktu continues to resist the casual visitor, although its power is weakening. The word "Timbuktu" (or Timbuctoo or Tombouctou) is used in several languages to represent a far-away place but Timbuktu is an actual city in the African country of Mali.

Timbuktu was founded by nomads in the twelfth century and it rapidly became a major trading depot for the caravans of the Sahara Desert. Located near the edge the Niger River during the rainy season (but about 8 miles from the river during much of the year!!!), Timbuktu was established by the nomadic Tuareg as early as the 10th century. At one time the caravan route from Timbuktu extended through Taoudenni to Taghaza, another salt-mining site, and on to the lands north of the Sahara on the Mediterranean Sea. Caravans with up to 10,000 camels carried gold and slaves north, returning with manufactured goods and salt from Taghaza and Taoudenni. Even today there are salt caravans going through the Sahara and quite a few foreigners go on these trips which travel by night and rest by day. Some of these camels have GPS chips imbedded in their body for tracking!!!!

Timbuktu is in the middle of nowhere and inside the Sahara, which is rapidly expanding southwards at an astronomical rate. Timbuktu is a place that sells itself on its own novelty of name. The main road in the town is 6 feet of sand and needs a 4 wheel drive just to go to a shop. Poverty stares you in the face while history is everywhere and modern SUVs and satellite dish antennae jostle for space with goats and donkeys Most people go to Timbuktu to say I’ve been there. The Mali government cashes in on this craze and you get your passport stamped for your Timbuktu visit for 50 Euros. All over the Sahara, you find boards advertising “To Timbuktu”.  An old painting of Timbuktu shows the main monuments that stand even today.

Today, Timbuktu is an impoverished town, although its reputation makes it a tourist attraction to the point where it even has The Timbuktu International Airport. But the flights in and out of Timbuktu have been kept as monopoly routes with very high ticket costs! It is one of the eight regions of Mali, and is home to the region's local governor. The main language of Timbuktu is a Songhay language called Koyra Chiini, spoken by over 80% of residents.

Four or five wealthy families in Timbuktu still have slaves; or rather, descendants of slaves when slavery was legal. It was still possible, I was told, to buy or exchange a slave—although there was now little wealth in Timbuktu.

How does it get its name Toumbouctou? There are many myths and legends. The one that comes nearest is this. In the days when camel caravans traveled across the Sahara to bring slaves, gold and natural salt slabs to the River Niger banks fro nearly a 1000km north, there was nothing here except a well in an oasis. There was a woman supposedly named Bouctou who was in charge of this well. Imagine being in charge of a well in the desert. Caravans halted here. When the caravans traveled, they usually mentioned this place as Tim Bouctou, which in the local Mali dialect means The Well of Bouctou. When the French took over Mali, the meaning of Tim Bouctou got corrupted. In French Timbuktu got a new meaning. It means the woman with the big navel. Then myths added fate to the bones and stories followed one another. But Tim the well of Boctou the woman still seems the best bet.

The main attractions here are: Djinguereber Mosque, built in 1327 by El Saheli; Sankore Mosque, also known as Sankore University, built in the early fifteenth century; Sidi Yahya mosque, built in the 1441 by Mohamed Naddah. Other attractions include a museum, terraced gardens and a water tower. Most mosques have an ostrich egg placed on the minarets as a sign of prosperity

In 1824, the Geographical Society of Paris offered a reward of 7000 francs and a gold metal valued at 2,000 francs to the first European who could visit Timbuktu and return to tell their story of the mythical city...

The first European acknowledged to have reached Timbuktu was Scottish explorer Gordon Laing He left Tripoli in 1825 and traveled for a year and a month to reach Timbuktu. On the way, he was attacked by the ruling Tuareg nomads and was shot, cut by swords, and broke his arm. He recovered from the vicious attack and made his way to Timbuktu and arrived in August 1826. He was unimpressed with Timbuktu, which had, as Leo Africanus reported, become simply a salt trading outpost filled with mud-walled homes in the middle of a barren desert. Laing remained in Timbuktu for just over one month. Two days after leaving Timbuktu, Laing was murdered.

French explorer Rene-Auguste Caillie had better luck than Laing. He planned to make his trip to Timbuktu disguised as an Arab as part of a caravan, much to the chagrin of proper European explorers of the era. Caillie studied Arabic and the Islamic religion for several years. In April 1827, he left the coast of West Africa and reached Timbuktu a year later even though he was ill for five months during the trip. Caillie was unimpressed with Timbuktu and remained there for two weeks. He then returned to Morocco and then home to France. Caillie published three volumes about his travels and was awarded the prize from the Geographical Society of Paris.

German geographer Heinrich Barth left Tripoli with two other explorers in 1850 for a trek to Timbuktu but his companions both died. Barth reached Timbuktu in 1853 and did not return home until 1855 - he was feared dead by many. Barth gained fame through the publication of his five volumes of his experiences. As with previous explorers to Timbuktu, Barth found the city quite the anti-climax.

Even after the invention of air travel, the Sahara was unyielding. The plane making inaugural air flight from Algiers to Timbuktu in 1920 was lost. Eventually, a successful air strip was established although today Timbuktu is still most commonly reached by camel, motor vehicle, or boat. In 1960, Timbuktu became part of the independent country of Mali.

The population of Timbuktu in a 1940 census was estimated at approximately 5,000 people; in 1976, the population was 19,000; in 2006 (the latest estimate available), 32,000 people resided in the city.

MUD CLOTH OF TIMBUKTU: Mudcloth, or bogolan in the local language, is a unique African textile. Producing this cotton fabric is a home-grown handcraft, and the finished mudcloths are an authentic traditional art form. Briefly, the making of mudcloth entails:
- cotton is planted and harvested- cotton fiber is collected and hand-spun into thread- thread is woven into strips of cloth on traditional looms- strips are sewn into large panels- panels are dyed by soaking in decoctions of leaves and bark- patterns of clay-rich mud are applied with sticks and brushes; one application and one dye-bath are required for each successive shade of color.
Each piece of mud cloth is entirely hand-made and unique; there are no exact duplicates, even when the same pattern is replicated by the same artisan.

CUISINE OF WEST AFRICA:  The staple grain is semolina, (Arisi Ravai in Tamil) Onion has recently been cultivated in small patches in the desert regions. Tukasu, is a ball of meat and 9 local spices in thick gravy is the most popular dish of Timbuktu. In Djenne I found a dish, (cant remember the name), which is cooked just like our kuzhi panigaram More often than not in the Sahel and out of major towns, food is just plain fire roasted meats of all types. with tomatoes, calabash, baobab seed/fruit, and other local vegetables. Of course, tourism has brought its own type of speciality dish- The Camel Stew Bissap or djiballani juice-hibuscus juice, poullet yasa (chicken, onion, lemon sauce) wigila (sun dried dumplings), riz arachide (rice peanut sauce) Mashed baobab is a usual at all meals.  The locals eat with their guests from a single bowl by dipping their hands in it But they put all their fingers of the hand right into the mouth when eating It is considered bad manners to ask for a separate bowl for yourself.

RITUAL GOAT SACRIFICE:

Beware- Not for the faint hearted!

My friend Van had arranged a “ritual goat sacrifice” in my honor. He bought a huge goat in one of the biggest animal markets I have seen. Donkeys, goats, camels – you name it, you get it. We drove to his home village with the goat sitting in the boot of his huge Volvo car. The village family property consists of his late father’s two wives, their children, married sons with their families. There are separate dwellings for each family and also a common “drawing room” or a covered courtyard in the middle. The kitchen and well are common. So is the toilet. There is a special room for all boys above the age of 16 to sleep.

A goat sacrifice specialist comes and after mumbling some prayer, cuts the jugular vein of the goat. The blood has to flow on to the ground and become one with the soil. Then he makes a small incision on the side of its hind leg. He then blows through that with his mouth, and you see the skin separating from the animal’s body! What lung power he must have. The goat is then chopped, all meat and organs washed. He then cleans the skin of the goat and lays it on the ground. The rest of the meat is divided equally (all parts of the animal are equally distributed) among the many families in this joint family. The divided portions are displayed on the skin of the goat. The head and trotters are kept aside for the head of the joint family. After the family meets around it, each family takes their portion and goes to the common kitchen to cook. The head of the family being Van, he and the other male members sit in the common “drawing room” with me, and after beer and some talking, his family’s portion is cooked and brought in a bowl for all of us to eat. The skin is finally nailed to the wall in honor of the guest (me!). I added a bit of confirmation of date by writing the date on the wall next to the hung skin!

In 1988, Timbuktu was designated a United Nations World Heritage Site and efforts are underway to preserve and protect the city and especially its centuries-old mosques. But the desert is moving in very fast. Timbuktu is dying.

What happened later:

On June 13, 2012, the Fall of Timbuktu took place during the war in northern Mali. This is one of the first clashes between the MNLA and Ansar Dine. All monuments, mosques and library, including all World Heritage sites were destroyed. Lucky that I was able to see it when it was fine.

By the way, I am the ONLY’ INDIAN’ TO HAVE ‘DRIVEN’ INTO TIMBUKTU. Many Indians have been there. Indians with the UN, UNICEF, Ford Foundation, Indian Ministries & Embassies. But they all flew into Timbuktu. No Indian has “driven” into Timbuktu, excepting me. Of course there are many from other countries that have hiked, rode camels, mopeds, quads, other vehicles and been there.