I hadn’t planned on going to Tombouctou. My goal was to get to Dogon Country and maximize my time there. But when I found myself in Mopti with extra days and my stomach recovered from ‘Les Galettes de Dogon,’ I figured I probably wouldn’t get a better chance. Now or never.

I could fly, in which case I’d have a day there, or I could hire a 4WD and a driver and stay as long as I want. The bus takes 2-4 days, depending on weather and breakdowns. The boat takes 3 days. The 4WD takes 7.5 hours with a normal driver, but 7 hours flat if you go with Cargo, the Mopti driving machine. I should say 7 hours, including the flat tire we got. Also, with a driver, you don’t have to pull over to the side of the road to pray, as you do with the buses here.

We sped North to Tombouctou on Wednesday, virtually floating over the dusty red washboard hardpack, passing Pelle cowherders, who walk with their cows and drink their milk. Aside from a few days every couple months in town to sell their cows, these people walk and sleep with their herd, and cows milk as their only food. They wear cone-shaped hats that make them easy to identify, but they don’t make these hats. We passed by the village of another tribe that makes the hats for them. It’s similar to the shoe situation. Everyone in Africa wears either Flip Flops or leather shoes of some kind, and you would think there would be shoe factories here, but those are in China. I even saw a pair of NIKEs for sale in Bamako.

Cargo got his name from riding on top of his father’s truck all over Northern Mali as a kid. His right foot is 5” shorter than his left – everyone can recognize him at a distance. He seems to know everyone in every town and always has a smile on his face. We talked in French on the drive. I’m fond of telling people about the Earth, stars, the Universe, and evolution – things they know nothing about. I told Cargo the Earth was 4 billion years old, and he thought about that for a while. Then he said, “That means, next year the Earth will be 4 billion and one?”

We crossed the Niger river on the ferry and arrived Tombouctou by 4pm. Cargo got me a Tuareg guide, who took me on an evening camel (Dromedary, actually) ride into the Sahara to visit some Tuaregs. I kept expecting to see Omar Sharif ride up on his camel. I sat and had tea with the Tuareg family. They had many questions about my watch, which has a GPS. They hadn’t heard of GPS, so I explained how it worked, and they were amazed. They told me about the salt caravans to the desert and how they navigate by the stars, but also by the smell of the sand.

I had studied up, so I was prepared for the tour of the town the next day, all in French. The town had almost no tourists and just a small flock of American Peace Corp girls going through orientation. The town is dusty and small, and you can’t go into any buildings except the museum and the library, so you need to follow the history. Without the history, you might as well be in Guadalafuckinghara – that’s how impressive Tombouctou is. But the stories of 50-day camel (Dromedary) rides, ancient centers of learning (Tombouctou U had 25,000 students!), the development of Malian archtecture, a 1200-year-old well with its ‘original’ (yeah, right) camelskin water bag hanging over it (the well is now 2 feet deep), and a brilliant tour of an ancient rich person’s household (women were – and in many places still are – banished from view during menses) all convinced me that this is, indeed, a must-see-before-you-die place. Plus, you get the cool stamp in your passport.

On the way back, Cargo floored it through the desert and only hit one cow. We came over a rise careening over the washboard hardpack, and there was a herd of cattle, their cone-hat Pelle herder nowhere in sight. Drivers are careful with livestock, because animals have a tendency to cross back in front of the vehicle at the last second, trying to stay with the herd – splitting a herd is something you do carefully. Cargo was decelerating from 60 mph and this one last cow just couldn’t decide left or right. He hit the brakes harder and we skidded into the cow squarely from the rear with a BANG! The sound was that of 2,500 pounds of Toyota Landcruiser hitting the rear end of a 300-pound skinny bony cow walking slowly. We catapulted the cow about two feet. Cargo got out immediately to check the damage to the car; I wastched the cow to check for any signs of broken bones. The cow kept walking, calmly, then drifted off the road as if it had just seen some delicious grass. No breaks. I asked Cargo how often that happened. He said about one a year. If he’s going a bit faster, he carries a hatchet and puts the cow on the roof rack, and his family eats for two weeks. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not.

Soon after, I notice my hands were sweating, thinking about the poor cow. Then I noticed the AC wasn’t working – the impact had leaked all the freeon out of the system. We rode back on the dusty road with the windows open, getting the red dust of Africa into every pore.

Once on the sealed road that runs from Gao to Mopti, we stopped for a drink and saw the storm coming. This is the most powerful storm I’ve ever seen in my life. It was preceded by a dramatic dust storm that looked more like something you see through a telescope – a supernova of roiling twisting churning dust, followed by immense black clouds, all very low to the ground and very, very dangerous. I tried to take photos, but I didn’t have the right camera out, and I had seconds to shoot before we were engulfed. We managed to drive for a while, but when the water came and the winds started lifting the car a bit, we slowed down to a crawl. Trees blew past us. Other cars struggled to stay on their side of the road. We crept along until we got a flat, and Cargo got out to change it. I handed him my GoreTex jacket, which he was very thankful for. The storm slowed us down by half an hour, and we arrived in Mopti around 6pm. The resulting flash floods damaged bridges and snarled traffic on that route for the next two days.

- by David Siegel

You can help.