North-West African extravaganza…

The mention of the Festival au Desert in Essakane, Mali, has seriously fired me up for a North-West African extravaganza in December-January. Who knows if it will happen - as ever, if I have the money, I probably won’t have the time, and vice versa, but planning is always good, even for trips I never take (as I think I may have mentioned, I have had trips to Central America and West Africa planned since at least 1997).

Continuing my tradition of spending xmas outside the UK, I had vague plans of spending xmas in Marrakech with my parents and boyfriends, probably flying out about a week in advance to have a look around Morocco (which I have never visited). It looks like two weeks to travel overland from Marrakech to Tombouctou is fairly reasonable (hurrah for Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree, which kno all). Let’s see: according to Hans Rossel’s Morocco travel pages, there are daily buses from Marrakech to Dakhla, Western Sahara (though I would be tempted to spend a little longer in Western Sahara, if at all possible). From Dakhla it seems that one can cross into Mauritania in a variety of comedic ways.

From Nouadhibou, just into Mauritania, there are apparently fairly nightmarish 30-50 hour truck/land rover rides to Nouakchott (there are also direct flights, apparently, but as we all know, Flying Is Cheating.  Nouakchott to Bamako is apparently three days at a push, and Bamako to Tombouctou is the same.

And then what? Back to Bamako, and thence to Banjul and a cheap flight back to the UK? It seems that there is transport from Bamako to Dakar (possibly detailed on the Dakar Demm Dikk site, though my French is too rusty for speed-reading). Hmmm. Worth it for the sake of adventure, or totally insane?