Just when it seems we might be destined to spend the rest of our lives in Kayes, a shudder runs through the train and we jerk into motion. Our endlessly cheery guard reckons we’ll be in Bamako at ten o’clock tonight and slaps his hand in mine to seal the prediction.
The scenery changes now, as we cross the land of the Malinke people, from whom Mali took its name. This is more like the heat-cracked plateau of Mauritania than the flat bush country of Senegal. Escarpments and weirdly sculpted rocks rise around us. We stop at stations without platforms, surrounded by that-chroofed rondavels and mud huts, where women with charcoal braziers in one hand and corn-cobs in the other ply the train, selling bananas, roast goat, loaves of bread, tea, smoked fish, yams, bags of nuts.
At a place called Mehani we are becalmed again, waiting for a train from Bamako to come through on the single-track line ahead of us.
I feel tired, unwashed and greasy, but I keep my spirits up by reading Sanche de Gramont’s The Strong Brown God, and imagining how immeasurably more awful it was for the British explorer Mungo Park, as he made his way through this same territory in 1796, intent on becoming the first Westerner to set eyes on the fabled River Niger.
Dusk is falling as the Bamako - Kayes train comes in. It pulls up opposite us, each window crammed with faces.
The last sight I remember before night falls is crossing the Senegal for the very last time, at the point where, fed by the Bafing and Bakoye rivers, it is a majestic half-mile wide, its banks turning a deep ruddy brown in the dying light.
It’s ten o’clock and we are still so far from Bamako that I cannot even make light of it with our friendly guard. Faced with the realisation that we shall have to spend another night on the train, the spirit seems to have gone out of everyone. They just want to be home, not on this hot and sticky train, full of people but empty of almost everything else. There is an air of resigned listlessness as we swing once more into the darkness.
Arched doorway at Chefchaouen, Morocco.
GIBRALTAR
On the road in Gibraltar. Left to right: Peter Meakin, Nigel Meakin, Aaton Super 16 XTR Prod (aka ‘The Baby’), MP, Roger Mills, Gloria Macedo, Natalia Fernandez, John Pritchard.
GIBRALTAR
Africa, seen from O’Hara’s Battery and seagull toilet. The distant peak of Jebel Musa (2761 feet) breaks the clouds on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar.
GIBRALTAR
The Royal Gibraltar Regiment is the Rock’s own army. Here they put on a ceremonial parade in Casemates Square.
MOROCCO
Timbuktu sign, Zagora, Morocco.
MOROCCO
Catching up with the diary in the corner of a cafe in the casbah, Tangier.
Backstage at St Andrew’s Church, Tangier. Mustapha Chergui, sexton for the last thirty-eight years, introduces me to Fatima, his wife of forty years, and their son (framed).
Jonathan and Birdie enjoy a quiet moment.
Man of the mountains in the square at Chefchaouen.
Trio of fine buildings in the Plaza Uta El Hammam, Chefchaouen: (left to right) casbah, medersa (Koranic school) and mosque.
Lounging around in the funduq. Out-of-town traders mull over marketing strategy.
The calm before the storm. On my way to the hammam clutching my new shorts.
Hands up those who’ve had enough. My masseur and I get to grips at the hammam at Chefchaouen.
Street life in Fez. The low-tech medina is an intricate network of small businesses that has remained largely unchanged for the last 1000 years.
Hides on their way to the tannery.
Donkey bearing radishes. No motor vehicles are allowed in.
The nearest thing to a supermarket.
Abdelfettah in his workshop, carving designs in white plaster.
Worshippers wash before prayer at the Kairouyine Mosque in Fez. Founded in 859, it is one of the largest and finest mosques in North Africa, accommodating 20,000 people. Alongside it is one of the oldest universities in the world (founded in 850), and the incomparably rich Kairouyine Library.
Paintbox effect at the medieval tanneries in Fez. Skins are treated and dyed in stone vats, as they have been for hundreds of years, by individual human effort. There were once 200 tanneries like this.
Man strikes oil in the main square. Other attractions include acrobats, transvestites, snake charmers and dentists.
Haggling for a pair of backless slippers they call ‘babouches’. The sign of quality is the number of stitches round each one. The yellow pair had 350 on each slipper.
Ait Benhaddou. Impressive and elegant towers below, thanks to Hollywood and UNESCO, but the neglected old fortification at the top of the hill is half reduced to ruin by rain and wind.
Southern Morocco. Bedouin tribesmen secure their camels in the teeth of a gale. Many now depend for their livelihood on the demand for camel safaris from increasingly adventurous tourists.
ALGERIA
Smara Camp, Algeria. For the last twenty-five years it has been home to 40,000 Saharawi refugees, who left their Western Saharan homeland rather than accept Moroccan domination.
ALGERIA
Saharawi women outside a weaving school. Women virtually run the camps. They cook, build, administrate and run the children, whilst many of the men are in the army.
Metou, the partly Welsh-educated woman who showed me round the camp, sporting her traditional melepha and less traditional jeans and Doc Martens.
Abstract patterns are important, as Islam discourages figurative art. Here just a glimpse on a melepha and tent covering behind.
Bachir, Krikiba and the children.
Sweet tea is the national drink of the Sahara. Everything stops for its preparation, which must never be hurried.
In Western Sahara: camel stew with the drivers.
Tyremarks on the surface of a typical reg, the flat gravel or coarse sand plains which are a driver’s delight.
WESTERN SAHARA
Inspecting Polisario troops near the wall. Their problem is partly lack of equipment, partly motivation after an eleven-year ceasefire. The flag of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic flies at the right.
WESTERN SAHARA
Nothing is wasted in the desert. Empty ammunition cans help solve the housing shortage.
The team that brought us safely through our first test in tough desert travel. Mohammed Salim is on my right, and next to him is the gentle Khalihena, who looked after me at my lowest ebb.
Street art in Zouerat. The bold telephone sign not only looks good, but is also vital in a place where many cannot read.