Mali 2 and Niger 2

We spent Christmas in Hombori in Eastern Mali. When you approach Hombori from Gao the land is completely flat and suddenly a huge rock face becomes apparent and that is Mount Hombori. The whole area is famous for its rock climbing and the hills here are really impressive. We spent 5 days here. It was the first time we had stopped properly since Ghana. Urs and Elsa had stayed at the Leles camp place six months before and were excited to be back. We spent Christmas rock climbing which was great fun. Urs our Swiss mountain climber knew exactly what he was doing and hired us some ropes and karibenas. The rock face had lots of options on it for different climbing abilities so everyone was challenged. On Christmas Eve Christopher and Katrina arrived and we had a great beef filet dinner. Slade had spotted a cow just about to be slaughtered and had requested the filet before the cow had even hit the ground. He was very excited by all this fresh meat and had spent several afternoons marinading and turning the meat into biltong. He hung the biltong up on the terrace and sometimes we missed him for several hours. We'd find him on the terrace with Bayo staring at the biltong swinging in the wind, as if hypnotised!

We also met Chris and Monique who were also really good climbers. They had climbed the Hand of Fatima, very challenging rock face, a few days before so were very experienced. They seemed keen to play rock climbing with us on Christmas day. We watched as they both skimmed up the rock face with no grunting, long pauses and ungraceful body movements to the top!! Slade managed to do the tricky over hang and perfected a new move which involved engaging every part of the body including the head into the rock face and manoeuvring himself upwards! Everyone was impressed, even Bayo. There was a beautiful sunset that night on top of the red sand dunes behind Hombori. The day was finished with a Swiss fondue dinner! Not a bad Christmas Day!

Christopher and Katrina left early on Boxing Day morning back to Cotonou. We set off also. The Harmattan wind was blowing and the dust was obscuring all the scenery. We couldn't see the mountains that were next to the road due to all the dust, crazy!

Next stop Sevare. The second time back in this rather small, unimpressive town in Mali. We had successfully completed a huge loop of West Africa in 3 months!

Karen and Stefan arrived from Switzerland on 30^{th December. Their bus was about 6 hours late. We had all been instructed by Elza to be clean for the arrival of their friends so we were all scrubbed and shiny, even the landy had a spring clean! We looked a bit more dishevelled after waiting in the bar for six hours but I think we made a good impression.}

The plan was to go to Dogon country for New Years and do a couple of days walking before heading to the Festival au Desert north of Timbuctoo. We had a good bush camp on the way to Dogon where Karen and Stefan had camped three years previously. It soon became apparent that they liked a wee drink so we were happy to oblige and helped them with their Pastis and Whisky. It was funny being back in Dogon three months later. It was much drier now. Whilst we were having lunch and a beer a familiar voice yelled at us from the door. It was Juan, our crazy German friend. We were very surprised to see him but not as surprised as he was to see us again! He now had a house in Sevare so there was a possibility to meet him again.

The Hotel car park where we had parked the cars before was still the same and we ended up spending New Years Eve in it. Never thought we019d see the New Year in there. We started our New Year at 7.30 am. There had been some debate over this start time but considering....we didn't feel too bad! It was a great couple of days walking. We went up to Yogopiri and climbed up into the Falise and hidden inside were the Telem caves where the pygmies used to live. You couldn't see the caves or houses from the outside but inside it was a maze of passages. The views from the top of the plateau were also stunning.

After two days walking we slept another night in the car park, did a lot of washing and left for a nice bush camp on the piste to Douentza. The new plan was for Krissy and Slade to return to Sevare and hopefully stay with Juan whilst Tubbs joined the others for the Festival of the Desert, 70 km north of Timbuctoo. Slade was pretty ill at that time having picked up a bug in Hombori and they both didn't fancy the big trip back to Tim. Actually the Paris - Dakar road race was passing through Sevare that weekend and that was more appealing! After over 5 months of 24/7 travel together we parted for over a week. It was all very strange. Tubbs felt like she was moving out and Krissy and Slade were pretty excited about a week of being a couple again and not a threesome (meant in the wholesome sense of the word.)

Karen, Stefan and I sat at the back of the Pinzgauer and with all our bags and with Bayo we had pretty much filled up the back of the vehicle. Twenty minutes after leaving K and S we had a flat tyre. Oops I hoped we hadn't over laden the vehicle. In the last three months they had tarmaced quite a bit of the piste to Timbuctoo. It is rubbish. It looked like someone had smeared tarmac onto the sand, like icing on a cake. It was easier to drive on the side of the road. What a waste of time and money. So, Timbuctoo twice in a lifetime. Not bad. Got there for my birthday and celebrated in the restaurant opposite the Sahara Passion Hotel where we were staying. Stefan who had been dreaming and talking about cold beer for the last four days was first to get the drinks in. We'd met some other overlanders whilst we'd waited for the ferry earlier that day and they were also in the bar. Stephanie and Aran were travelling to SA and Rona and Malcolm from Ireland were travelling around W Africa. It was good to finally meet others doing the same trip as us.

We had a day in Timbuctoo to get supplies and to do a tour of the town. The market here isn019t anything special but we managed to pick up some great scarves for the festival. We could buy the material and then take it to the sewing man on the other side of the street who sewed up the loose ends on his Singer sewing machine.

The town was full of tourists compared to three months ago when we were the only ones in town. Most people were on the way to the festival or in the area because of the Paris to Dakar race. A lot of the people were from the media and had flown in from all over the world for 5 days to cover the festival. The Festival au Desert was set up to bring the different tribal people of Mali together to improve their relationships. The musicians came from Mali but also from different countries in West and North Africa as well as from France (Manu Chou) and America. The festival is also a good way of promoting Mali to the outside world. The festival was open to non Africans but the numbers were limited to several hundred, the idea being to keep it mostly an African event.

We were looking forward to it and left for the 70 km drive to Essakane on the 8th January. On the way we met several of the organisers stuck in the soft sand in their powerful Land cruisers. Actually not so powerful because the four wheel drive system had broken and they were trying to make it with only 2 wheel drive instead. It was amazing how some of the drivers just did not know how to handle their vehicles in the sand. Their usual method was to drive flat out and hope for the best. We helped push the organisers and their film crew out, cameras rolling as we did so. We wondered if they picked up any of our comments on tape.

Essokane is on the edge of the Sahel, in the white sand dunes as it showed on the poster. (The floating lady also depicted hovering above the sand wasn't to be seen though). Aran, the South African over lander invited us to camp with them outside the festival. It was hard to tell the boundaries of the festival as there was no fence to mark it, just a few stones. However, if we were on the wrong side it would have cost us another 100 euros. It cost 100 euros to listen to the music but if you wanted a tent and food it would set you back another 115 euros. However, there were all sorts of deals going on for people making they way in from Timbuctoo and needing their own transport and tickets.

We met some of the BBC camera men, Louie and Doanna in the bar that evening. There was lots of English there all wondering into the bar and asking for beer. It sounded very familiar and very strange to hear so many English voices after 5 months of not really meeting anyone from home. After 2 hours the beer was finished as the drinks truck had broken down 2 kilometres from the site! The moon was full and on the white sand the whole place was lit up. After drinking whisky and rum with Louie and Doanna we found it hard work to walk back across the sand to the camp, good thing it was quite light!

At 3 pm on Friday the opening ceremony was meant to start. Two hours later after calling for the band Navorone and then asking for any band to come forward, the festival started. We missed it having given up and gone to the bar. We watched the second half of the evening without problems sitting up on the dunes. There was a real mix of people sat there, us non Africans, several hundred in all, Tauregs on camels, local people and Maliens. Probably several thousand of us in total. The women looked beautiful with their hair decorated, colourful clothes and makeup. There was a real mix of music, some of it very traditional, some funky stuff from Senegal and others a mix between traditional and new. The Mauritanians singing traditional Islamic music with an electric guitar didn't really work though....The two commentators were in competition with each other as to who could talk the most and drove us all mad!

The whole festival was good fun - once in a lifetime. The organisation left something to be desired as did the toilets and showers but all the bands got to play. Damin from Blur even jammed with one of the groups. During the day, there were meetings and conferences held for the Tauregs and Maliens so it gave lots of time to wake up, wonder around the camp and listen to the artists playing together in their tents, have tea or a beer or go for a camel ride (actually no one else was keen for the camel riding part).....The last night we spent up on the dunes where we got a good view of the stage, the previous evenings we'd moved to the front jostling for position and being told to sit down by the Gendarmerie. Only when the music had really got going did people ignore the calls to sit down and start dancing. David, a nice French man was recording the music but we ruined his recording by talking to him all night. We ended the festival as we started in the bar with the BBC finishing off the whisky and rum. They left us at 4am in order to catch the one plane that left Timbuctoo the next day, if not they faced a 2 day journey to Bamako or a weeks wait for the next flight........

We went back to Timbuctoo the next day several hours behind an English and Dutch couple also over landing. The English couple had a bouncy castle in the back of their landcruiser which they set up in different children's homes as they travelled around West Africa. On the way back to the town we saw one of the five new Land cruisers 'the Taureg' which had been sent to the festival to be test driven in the desert and to be promoted next to the real Taureg people. It didn't look good, driven too fast in the sand it was a write off. Turned out that 4 out of the 5 promotion vehicles had suffered quite badly out here and I guess not encouraging quite the image Toyota was looking for.

Stefan, Karin and I decided to travel back to Mopti by boat. At the jetty there was a commercial boat ready to leave that evening. The owner assured us that it would be in Mopti the next day and for 25,000 (£25) we would get food included. The boat was pretty empty and it had an open roof to sleep on. It looked good but I wondered when it would get filled up. They waited for us to pack a small bag and buy some food and we left. At 2am the boat pulled into Dire and there we stayed for the next 16 hours! So we wouldn't be arriving that day after all! It was market day in Dire and it was interesting to walk around the place, actually several times, as there was not much else to do. The noise in the in door fish market was incredible. The place was full of women shouting and discussing the price of fish. Outside all the men were selling goats and sheep and in between were a mix of the sexes selling great veggies, brochettes and bracelets, to name a few things. We bought more food (bread, mayonnaise, biscuits and brochette) as no breakfast or evening meal had yet appeared on board!

The boat was not pretty empty anymore, in fact we had been told to move from our 2 metre square spot as we were occupying the livestock area. After saying indignantly that we had paid a high price for the privilege of this corrugated iron space we realised we didn't have much room for negotiation. The sheep were being thrown onboard as we spoke from small pirogues which had been precariously paddled from the shore. As we shuffled along the narrow board on the outside of the boat with all our stuff plus a rather large water melon, we could see lines of sheep waiting to be loaded on board. From our new position, directly behind the Captain we accepted that we hadn't done too badly as everyone else was as squashed as the sheep and we could at least move our legs and arms.

We arrived in Mopti at 8pm the following day, having literally thrown all the sheep close to the shore several hours earlier. (A system that isn't to be recommended but didn't seem to bother the sheep who quickly put their heads down to start grazing once they had shaken the water off themselves.) Although it had taken longer than expected and we and the Captain were now experts at 151 and Yahtzee it had been good to take in how people lived in this part of Niger and to experience the pace of life here.

Arriving in Mopti we had to wait for the boat to dock, which meant drifting around until an enterprising fisherman arrived with his pirogue to ferry us to shore. He was quick to charge us for the 10 second journey. Luckily for us Slade and Juan were in town when we phoned and picked us up immediately and took us back to Sevare.

K and S had a slightly less eventful time in Sevare. The Paris to Dakar Mali section of the race had been cancelled due to security reasons. We found out this week that terrorists had been planning to kidnap members of the race, maybe on high speed camels but had been apprehended in the Loire Valley before the plan could be implemented. We were joyful to see each other again. Actually K and S looked slightly shell shocked as they had been enjoying a second honeymoon of blissful togetherness only to have their serenity shattered by the arrival of first Urs and Elza, then Juan and then us.

We all went to a restaurant to catch up. After 2 full days of Mayonnaise and biscuits, the one dinner that had been prepared had arrived after we were asleep, we were starving. David from the festival also joined us; he had got a lift in the Pinzguaer and was going to travel with us down to Burkina. Not much had happened in Sevare, Juan kindly let K and S stay at his house and they had spent 10 days eating goodies, playing spider solitaire and getting to know the locals.

Poor Elza had contracted Malaria and had been very sick in Douentza, halfway back to Sevare. Luckily, she had Halfan, an anti malarial drug to hand and had taken it immediately she felt the malarial symptoms.....The drugs washed her out but in the end it cleared up her symptoms.

We said goodbye to Karin and Stefan on Friday 16th January. As Stefan would say 'it's horrible'. It was sad to see them leave as they had become part of our traveling family. We left Sevare later the same day and had to say goodbye to Juan again. It had been great to see him and find out how everything was going. He said tourism in Mali was definitely on the increase but now after the terror attack on the Paris - Dakar tourism could be affected adversely. Hopefully, we would see him again in SA and not Sevare for the fourth time

We took a horrible piste to Bankass and bush camped just before the border. You can obtain a Burkina Transit Visa on the border. If you want to stay as a tourist in Burkina you then have to change this visa in Ouagadougou. We met Frans just before we camped and a Czech cyclist who had cycled to Mali in only a couple of months. He was traveling faster than we were! Frans camped with us as we discovered did a mouse. Little holes in the tomato bag, teeth marks in the potatoes and carrots and droppings in the cooler bag.....

Crossing the border the next day was a sociable event as Babs the crazy driver of the Dragoman bus turned up! Last seen in the Mole Game Park she had driven down to Cameroon via Nigeria. She had loved Nigeria and had no problems safety wise, said the people were great and scenery fantastic. It was great to see her but unfortunately she was going the opposite way with another busload of difficult passengers. We have a feeling we will see her again!

We drove down as far as Ouahigouya, the border formalities having taken a few hours and bush camped again with Frans. The next day he left taking David with him to Ouagadougou. We turned east and headed back to Niger via Dori and Tera. It took a couple of days to cover the 350 miles back to Niamey and return to Camping Rio Bravo for the third time! At Rio we sorted stuff out and tried to find mousey who had now acquired a nickname as he was becoming quite an unpopular visitor.

The main objective after Niamey was to drive directly to N'djamena in Chad. It was 2000 km to the border town Nguigmi. We left on the 22nd January and returned to a bush camp 60km east of Niamey. It was funny to return to the same spot in the bushes, the accuracy of GPS!!It took 6 days to reach the border. Along the way we went past towns like Golmi which didn't seem to sell anything but brightly coloured plastic buckets, chairs, kettles and ladles. In other towns huge nets full of onions were for sale, probably imports from Nigeria and not much else. We picked up cheap fuel again in Birnin Konni on the Nigerian border.

There isn't much growing at the side of the road at the moment, the millet stalks remain in the ground and we could see the wind picking up the topsoil and blowing it away. Surprisingly, the one thing that did grow here was onions. Dark green patches in an otherwise arid landscape. Every day was eventful we met friendly Gendarmie who after asking for our documents asked if we had any nice 2004 calendars, another discussed the quality of Johnny Clegg (who?)music with Slade for 10 minutes. We passed a man with a roof structure balanced on his head like a big hat, men with radios on their heads, a man sleeping on a bed next to his truck which had the axle and other important parts of his vehicle lying next to him and we got stuck in cow, camel and donkey cart traffic jams. We met a cheeky police man who picked us up heading on the wrong road out of Zinder. He casually enquired if we wanted a guide before informing us we were going the wrong way!

The people in eastern Niger have also changed the women sometimes had red mouths and their eyes had dark lines under them. These were the Housa people. They were cattle and sheep herders mainly and we saw more and more people riding horses here. Tubbs befriended a man on a horse who passed one of our bush camps and trotted off into the distance much to the owner's dismay. We were befriended a lot in our various camps people coming up with papya or calabashes full of milk for us. Our great guard dog on smelling milk befriended 4 young boys who were watching us, so much for looking aggressive! Mousey is still onboard, Slade discovered wine everywhere and two little teeth marks in the box. Krissy is most upset with the drunken mouse for this act.

The road to Diffa was pretty good and the landscape quite interesting as it strangely began to resemble parts of the New Forest or some country estate. The sign outside Diffa referred to a Festival that had occurred in 1981. Turns out since then not much had changed there. Two men explained that the roads and electrical system were exactly the same as 23 years ago due to lack of money. Someone had started an internet café but hadn't got a computer or found a way to connect the system up. After Diffa the road 'is horrible' all the way to the border. We arrived in Nguigmi not in time to do the border formalities, get water and meat before it got dark. Consequently we drove out of town after sunset. The road was all sand and dust so traveling behind the Pinzgauer we had even less vision. Urs drove past the Gendarmie who stopped us and shouted about why they hadn't stopped. They sent us to follow them and bring them back. Of course we would!!!