Paris

A month ago we set off from London in two Toyota Land Cruisers. I am travelling with a man called Guy Lankester who was born in Zimbabwe and now spends six months of the year running bespoke tours in West Africa. So far he has organised everything, which is great for me because I can spend what little time we have trying to draw. Some of the drawings are below. The others you can see here.

Having missed the 2am ferry from Dover, we arrive in Paris a little later than planned to arrange our Malian visas (there is no Malian embassy in London; Algerian you can do in London, Tunisian you don’t need as a UK national). This usually takes 24 hours to be ready. After that we had a very easy run down to Lyon where we stayed on the floor with some Tuareg people, and onto Italy to catch the 24-hour ferry to Tunis.

Genoa

My first real opportunity to draw came in Genoa, where Africa seems to begin. A seething port of people, mostly men with their cars packed with everything you can imagine; sofas, mopeds, fridges, dining room tables, and anything that doesn’t fit inside goes on top. Every official we came to said ‘splendid’ and being English we were happy to agree, only later realizing that it was the name of the boat (the other option leaving the next day was ‘Excellent’).

Genoa boat

I would suggest booking a cabin on the boat, as with three beds and a shower it may be the last luxury for a while. I don’t think it is possible to avoid the visa/passport/vehicle paper queues in Tunis port – it took us a couple of hours, and, as I have come to learn, it is easier not to fight or hurry anything in Africa.

Tozeur cafe

After that we headed for the desert, spending a night in a perfectly clean hostel in Kairouan, where there is also a 5 star hotel (Hotel La Kasbah) if it is luxury you are after. The next morning we made a small detour past the giant salt lake called Chott el Jerid. Big enough to feature on Tunisian coins, it is worth driving past before arriving in Tozeur where I had an opportunity to draw the small dark reed market buildings, the friendly shop keepers and the café culture which replaces European drinking.

Before you get to the Algerian you will have had to organise a guide, as it is the law to travel with one ‘for your own safety’. And it is important to get the right one. For that reason I am not going to recommend ours! Travelling with Guy meant that visas and itineraries were all organised, (your guide should be able to do this,) but you will need to check in at each police post and this slows down the driving – along with having to stop for traditional Tuareg tea, which you will learn to love.

Police post

All that organised – Algeria begins to become a fascinating place to visit. Little oasis towns, usually understated in the guide books, are very welcoming to tourists, with cheap rooms available or camping if you prefer. I should also add there was always a more expensive option, although it was not one that we ever took. Each town is usually half-a-days drive away so when we were organised it was possible to drive in the mornings and see the sights in the afternoons. We weren’t allowed to drive much after dark, (another precaution taken after having so much trouble in the 90s) but this did not worry us because we were happy to see the giant Sahara desert and its indescribably large ergs in the sun light.

A Berber

Often we were invited into people’s houses to eat, usually around one big bowl of rice and meat with sauce. I found that the longer I spent in little places such as El Golea and In Salah, the more I enjoyed it, and enjoyed getting to know the shops, the prices and the local food.

As we got further south we left behind the Arabic influences and attitudes and moved into Tamashek territory. The Tamashek or Tuareg are a community of people that live in the southern half of the Sahara across Niger, Mali, Algeria and Mauritania. They are very welcoming and we found ourselves drinking tea with them a lot. The tradition being three small glasses; the first for death, the second for life and the third for love – this is the sweetest!

We were aiming for Tamanrasset, which was the real reason for going all that way. It sits just to the West of the Hoggar mountains and there is some impressive scenery to be explored, including Assekrem, a rival for the Grand Canyon. It is possible to explore the area by camel on a 28 day trek to Djanet over the mountains, though it’s not for the faint hearted. We stayed in the very friendly Campement Toulef just outside Tamanrasset.

As a town I found Tamanrasset had a lot of things to draw; a large market, infrastructure, generous and friendly people, mechanics and jewellery stores. However if it is museums, libraries, historic buildings and other tourists that you are looking for there aren’t very many. Their history is very oral like a lot of Africa’s. So we were really there for the desert, the people, a sense of achievement and the experience. All of which we got.

Our next objective was to get in to Mali…The border areas of Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania are not safe at the moment, as they are home to bandits searching for tourists and selling them on for ransom or to terrorists.

Having left Tamanrasset for Bordj – Mokhtar, we had a stunning drive of 600km with no road, just sand track, through some brilliant desert landscape. We comfortably and quite safely camped out over night. Our guide made Tugula, a type of bread, from semolina and water which was cooked in the sand under the fire, broken into tiny pieces and mixed with our meat sauce.

Timimoun

Having checked in with the friendly Algerian Army in the morning, we arrived in Bordj – Mohktar. Little did we know that four days later we would be doing the same trip in reverse in the early hours of the morning in turbans and boubous for disguise.

The next day we tried to cross the border. We always had a back up plan for crossing between Mali and Algeria. Following the recent spate of kidnappings the plan was to send our tourist-looking vehicles with our two guides who were of no interest to bandits and take another vehicle on the other route to Gao – 900km away. In short, (as you may have read in the Saturday Times,) this plan fell through and it turned out we were the target of a kidnap attempt, which meant we were all too happy to turn around and head for the safety of Tamanrasset. A decision that paid off when our guides took our cars over the border and were stopped and tied up by armed bandits looking for us. Four hours later they were released and continued amazingly with the cars to Gao.

This left us with a scary 600km drive back to Tamanrasset and a decision to make.

Did we now risk the border with Niger, public transport and 2100km detour to Gao or fly to Bamako and wait for the cars and drive up to Timbuktu? Eventually the flight was too tempting. That is one great thing about Tamanrasset: you can get in and out easily to Algers, Niamey, Bamako and the West.

This gives me the opportunity to write about Algers where we waited for our connecting flight to Bamako. As an illustrator it is an impressive city; white buildings with bright blue shutters all in different stages of disrepair. Palm trees and large European influenced buildings are all backed up onto the sea and there’s a commercial port too. Accompanied by a high hill behind it, there’s the usual chaos of public transport and the busy ‘casbah’ market – it is somewhere I could have drawn for a week.

To be fair to Mali and Algeria I should add that this problem of kidnapping is very much local to border areas, where there are vast spaces of unchartered territory and a thousand places to hide. I also believe that it is not vast network of terrorists or even Al Queda as our governments would have us believe. This means that you are not going to be targeted from anywhere with people, so public transport and towns are always safe, as is your hotel or campement.

The only other thing I would say is to read the FCO website, but immediately after to speak to somebody with local knowledge. Understandably the FCO have to err on the side of caution and so have a tendency to blanket areas as ‘no go’ which can be very off putting but is not necessarily a reason not to go to some wonderful areas, as we did, away from the trouble.

For more information about trips to West Africa visit: www.fromhere2timbuktu.com. Guy Lankester has become somewhat of an expert in West Africa and very natural with the locals. It was his contacts that warned us about the kidnap attempt so he is worth speaking to.

I also read a couple of very relevant books on my journey: Dead Aid by Dmabisa Moyo; The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa by Jeremy Keenan; Between Sea & Sahara by Eugene Fromentin.

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