…

I’m sitting on a bench where each seat is divided by armrests. It’s set amongst other rows of seats half-filled with eventual travellers out of Tangier. The airport is clean like a hospital. Its marble floors glisten under fluorescent light. And it’s quiet. Not busy like an international airport should be. There was a crowd of passengers, all lined up haphazardly, waiting to be ushered out to the tarmac, waiting to be filed into a plane to Madrid. But that flight has taken off and they’re gone.

It’s quiet now and I’m watching the waiter of the airport’s cafeteria watch his left-over customers. He’s built like a penguin, and his short, pudgy frame is being held up by a wall. He wears black slacks with a crease pressed down each leg. His arms are crossed over the chest of a khaki dress shirt. His greasy black hair moves from right to left in the world’s worst comb-over.

…

I’m sitting at my cousin’s computer desk in London. It’s half-past one and I’m halfway drunk off an Italian red with a screw top. I’ve run out of money, so this will be my one and final stop in Europe. And it’s sunk in that I’ll be heading home soon. It’s sunk in that it’ll be awhile again before I find myself another silhouette on a desert skyline, or left speechless in a jungle among giants, or sleepless on a bamboo mattress, or almost shocked into tears by the generosity of those who have so little. It’s sunk in that it’ll be awhile before I get the chance to chase after another dream, sunk in that I’m going to have to search for a new adventure. And I’m trying to figure out if this is where I’m supposed to share some lesson-learned or wisdom-gained. But I’m dancing around the question – avoiding the conclusion – because when you learn the moral, isn’t it the end?

I remember getting ready to leave 4 short months ago. I remember letting my plan slip to friends and co-workers. Africa. Where exactly? Don’t know. How long? Not sure. And I remember being surprised by some of the responses I got back. There were the standard good for you’s and wow that’s great’s. The sort of things that are all at once appreciated and expected.

But then there were the occasional you’re crazy’s. Some questions of why africa? And others who even seemed impressed – like I was embarking on some great undertaking. They were the ones who told me they could never go on that sort of trip; to somewhere so foreign without a firm plan, to somewhere so unfamiliar. And they’d often say how lucky I was, that they wished they could do something similar, that they had always had something in mind, but left it relegated to a realm of thought where dreams never manifest. And I remember for a short while I felt special. It didn’t last.

I remember arriving to my first hotel in Africa. From the airport a taxi raced past palms and torn billboards, through the sticky, humid heat and leaving people pulsing with life in a blur of colour. Music I could feel but couldn’t understand was falling recklessly out of the cabbie’s stereo. The hotel itself was more of a compound, just on the outskirts of Kampala. Gated off from the surrounding locals, it had a few buildings that acted as dorms, some others that were split into pairs of private rooms and ran along a winding gravel path that wound down a hillside. Besides bedrooms, the place’s walls enclosed a garden of tropical leaves and well-tended lawns and a small pool. There was an open-air building that acted as a lounge/restaurant/bar. It was the sort of place travellers use to meet other travellers, and to rest from the cultural onslaught of their surroundings.

This is where I arrived with a bit of a swagger. A self-important strut. I had bought into the mantra that had poured from friends’ mouths back home. It took a certain something to get here. You needed a special quality – a bit of daring – to go on a trip like this.

And so, when I approached the travellers around me, when I entered into the requisite verbal ballet – the dance where you test each other with itineraries – I did so confidently. But the people I’d meet would counter my 7 month plan with their own year-long excursions. They’d offer up more dangerous routes, more far-flung destinations. And I quickly realized how easy it is to do something like this.

There’s nothing special about what I’ve done. There’s nothing exceptional about leaving for a destination. The places themselves might be unique, and the experiences they impart are invaluable. Some aspects of nature – of humanity – are so beautiful that nothing can prepare you. They demand to be witnessed first-hand. And maybe travelling is the best way to let these things wash over you. And maybe it can be hard along the way – challenges certainly pop up – but the actual setting off is easy. It’s just a shame were so often convinced otherwise.

I don’t know why that is. I don’t understand where the programming comes from. I just know it’s a lie. And I hope you can shake it. I hope you set off. I hope you leave comfort and caution shrinking into the horizon. I hope you get lost along the way and wander into adventure. I hope you meet people who see the world through a different lens, and I hope they challenge you. Leap wildly into life. Into its bliss, its sadness, wonder and humour. There’s no greater pursuit. No undertaking more worthwhile. There’s nothing else.

Until we meet again,

John

The same lines are thrown out, word for word, again and again. Really? You have family in Montreal? Friends in Toronto? Someone from Vancouver was just here to buy a rug? What a small world. And everyone here seems to know the song and dance – not just in Fes but throughout the country. The rhythm is ubiquitous; the steps are put to memory, the lyrics practiced. By men and women, young and old.

Take these 2. They look sweet don’t they? 2 children, sister and brother, smiling for a stranger’s camera. Her hazel eyes feigning innocence, brown curls tied back in a pony-tail and a back-pack slung over her jean-jacketed right shoulder. And him, extending a thumbs-up towards the photographer, 2 front teeth peeking out from his grin and the front of his cap bent up – like a bubble gum cartoon character brought to life.

But soon they too would be claiming cousins in Quebec. Would assure me that I was heading for a dead-end. But they knew the way to a lovely view of the city if I wanted. Or nice spot to glimpse the city’s famous tanneries. It wouldn’t even cost me much. Of course I owed them a few dirham for the picture. The one they had asked to be taken.

And so is it surprising? That I was almost ready to give up on this city, this country?

…

It’s a wooden stand draped in white plastic, standing next to one of this city’s ancient walls, with an enormous steel pot that’s flanked on both sides by pyramids of small porcelain bowls and is sunk half-way into the centre of its table-top. Darkness is descending on Fes. The sky is being filled with pinks that will move to violets that will be swallowed by blacks. And in the dimming light 2 young boys are trying to find customers for their makeshift soup kitchen.

The smaller of the 2 waves at me. He wears a green t-shirt. A small scar cuts through the olive skin that stretches over his right cheek to match his short almond hair. He’s on tip-toes and points his chin in the air – stretching for my attention – and his small voice lets out a ‘Yes sir! Welcome, welcome!’ And as I move toward where he stands next to the cart, I ask him his price. “Ca coute combien pour une peu de soupe?”

“No sir, English.” He responds. “1 bowl, with some bread, 5 dirham.” And his small fingers stretch out around the palm of his right hand to signal the price. And his partner – the boy who is standing between the cart and the wall – takes notice.

He’s bigger than his friend in the green t-shirt; a little chubby even. He has a quiet, kind face with round cheeks that glow rose even in the dusk. And that same face, topped with short black hair in a box-cut, had avoided eye contact up until his partner’s hand flashed a ’5.’ He had stared at the steel cauldron in front of him, withdrawn into the sweet shyness we all go through as kids, before we become sure of ourselves. But now he’s glaring at his friend. Speaking sternly in Arabic and wagging a finger. And I see his right hand tuck a pinky under a thumb so 3 thick little fingers stand alone.

Skinny-in-Green turns to me and tries to hide his embarassment. He says “Sorry sir. 3 dirham. With bread.” I nod. Signal for a bowl. And after The Chubby Boy with the kind face has poured me a few ladle-fulls of harir, I look at him and try my best Arabic thank-you. ‘Shukran.’ His cheeks blush a deeper rose as a slight smile creeps across his face and his eyes dive to look at his feet.

And soon a man in grey and black sweat-pants, with a red fanny-pack and a black-mustache, will come to stand behind the soup-cart and beside The Chubby Boy, who must be his his son. He will greet me – Salaam – and offer me some lemon and oil for my harir as other men start to crowd around the stand and order their own bowls.

I’ll empty the small porcelain dish in front of me; will sop up the last of its soup with the last of my bread. And, in leaving, I’ll turn to the man in the fanny pack and his son to offer another ‘shukran.’ But before my legs can carry me past the soup cart, one of its customers – a man in an old red ball-cap and a grey 5 o’clock shadow – will ask where I’m from. “Canada…” I’ll say, waiting for the usual response, waiting for the claim of friends in Montréal, of family in Toronto. But it never comes. He doesn’t enter into the dance I expect.

“Canada? I hear it’s beautiful. I hope you like Morocco. You’re welcome here. Feel at home.”

And, for the first time, I can feel the weight of honesty behind the words.

Until a return,

John

Marrakesh is one of these cities. When the sun has set and darkness blankets the sky, the locals flock to its beating heart. They flock to Djemaa el Fna, to the square that introduces the old medina and sits as an enormous stage of human theater.

In the daytime the square is filled with snake-charmers teasing de-fanged cobras, with men pulling their trained and chained barbary apes, with faux-guides offering city tours, old men peddling fabled cure-alls and others in traditional garb posing for photographs. These are enterprises geared mostly towards tourists, meant to garner a few dirham for photos taken or snakes held.

But when the moon replaces the sun, locals join the fray. The flutes of snake-charmers fade and the square pulses with the beating drums of bands who attract ever-widening circles of on-lookers. And the crowds reach their height as food-stalls fill the of cobble-stone, as grill smoke sends trails through the night air, as men in white jackets offer up snails, salad, sheep’s brain and everything in between.

It’s a city that’s hard to describe in a few paragraphs. Hopefully a few photos will help.

Market in Marrakesh's Medina

Cameras for sale in Marrakesh

Baboushes for sale

Marrakesh archways.

Sheep's brain anyone?

Through his broken English the guard motions with his left hand. In a quick arc it points towards each of the 2 lines of barbed-wire fencing that run along both sides of the rocky track, while his right hand grips the strap of the Kalashnikov draped over his right shoulder. ‘Merci’ we all mumble, although none of us had any plans to explore the surrounding wasteland anyway.

Dusk has rolled in, and in the dimming light the 4 of us are waiting for the small gas-stove hooked up to the back of Martin’s Land Rover to send his soot-ridden kettle into a whistle. We hadn’t planned to be stuck here overnight – in the 3 km of no-man’s land that seperates Mauritania from Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara. But sometimes things don’t go as planned. Sometimes plans change.

…

I met Martin in a small air-conditioned room of Mauritania’s embassy in Bamako. Sitting across from each other, on dark leather sofas placed against white walls, we were both waiting – him for a visa application, me for a visa – and so we entered into the verbal testing grounds travellers regularly put each other through during a first encounter. Where are you from? Where have you been? How long have you been gone? Where are you going?

Martin was German. Through glasses and an accent he explained that he had started in Morocco, worked his way down through Mauritania, Senegal, Guinnea, back into Senegal, into Mali, and was now on his way back. I listened to all of this but what I heard was how he got here. What I heard was how he was getting back. Martin had a 4×4. Martin had a free seat.

Everytime I stare at the pages torn out of his ‘Rough Guide’ and given to me by Ben, the first line on the first page reminds me that French colonialists reffered to the country as Le Grand Vide. The Great Void. And Mauritania was always a blank spot in my plans. An unknown. I had little idea of what was waiting there – only that I needed to get through it if I wanted to reach Morocco.

Sure, I knew the country contained a few desert villages and oases turned UNESCO heritage sites. An iron ore train that pushed its way to and from the desert, carrying anything and everything that could be piled into its carts. An old ship graveyard – so many hulking boats lining a coastline that it can be seen on google earth. But I also knew that – other than the coastline – getting through Mauritania can be time consuming and expensive. And I was running out of time and money. The shortage of the former a direct product of a more serious shortage of the latter. So how could I refuse a ride into Morocco?

There were some conditions. First I had to meet Martin in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he was dropping off his current travel partner. This meant 28 hours of straight travel by bus to Dakar. Then a night in the sprawling, bustling, heathing capital before another 3 hour ride in a sept-place – one of the ancient Peugots station wagons that leave once its 7 places have been filled. It also meant waiting a few nights in Saint-Louis itself.

There are worse things than a few nights in Saint-Louis. The city is the French Carribean dropped into West Africa. It’s an island near the mouth of the Senegal river whose streets are lined with old colonial architechture painted in pastels. It’s brick peeking through cracked stucco. It’s rusted wrought-iron balconies over-flowing with flowers and bakeries firing French pastries. It’s shores lined with vibrant pirogues and alleyways lined with crafts geared for tourists. But as colourful, and comfortable, as the town is, after a few days there I found myself anxious to be on the move again. I was anxious to reach Morocco, to reach it’s arab archways and pulsing medinas. And as much as I was a little disappointed there’d be no exploration of that big empty between me and my destination, I was anxious to get through Mauritania.

…

Darkness has crept in past the dusk, and the 2 Frenchmen have swung their old white Renault 4L around so that it’s back-bumper to back-bumper with Martin’s white Land Rover Defender.
Their names are Emmanuel and Odin. They are both around my age, are from Paris, and look like they’ve stepped out of a GQ shoot for travel clothing. But they’re friendly – funny – and the khaki shirts, photographer’s vests, and loafers they wear match the nostalgia of the old car they’ve ridden through West Africa for the past 6 weeks.

The kettle has almost come to a boil now. Martin is searching through his stock of canned-food for something to compliment the cans of tuna the Parisiens have offerred up as their contribution to the night’s dinner, while the interior lights of his Defender illuminate the makeshift table of ply-wood and storage cases we’ve set up between the 2 vehicles. And all the while the 4 of us are sharing travel stories to pass the time. Stories of claiming a relative in a foreign embassy to avoid paying a bribe, of getting bogged down in deep Saharan sands, of riding on top of luggage strapped down to the roof of a rickety old truck, or of killing a sheep for a party.

And despite only having met a few hours ago the conversation flows easily. Martin was right. While driving up the Mauritanian coastline he had said it isn’t difficult to get along with fellow travellers. Your age, origin and destination don’t seem to matter. When you make it a priority to put miles behind your feet and adventure in front of your eyes, you almost join a fraternity. And you find that many of the people you meet along the way either share your ideals or are genuinely interested in your differences. It can certainly make it easier to walk into a foreign place – or to spend a night shut out from a country, surrounded by buried explosives.

It took 2 days of driving to get here. Through a landscape that suits the sardonic tag given it by the French. The road from Mauritania to Morocco cuts through endless plains of sand, rock and small brush. It winds lazily past enormous dunes that leap from the horizon. It creeps beyond patches of desert where the wind mixes bronze grains with others as white as ivory, past cliffs that stand stalwart against the Atlantic. In places it’s beautiful. But the beauty is fleeting, is lost in the repetition and monotony.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the ride. It was in good company. It was comfortable. 3 months of moving through West Africa in public transport makes you appreciate a plush seat – with leg room. Especially when that seat is attached to a vehicle like Martin’s Defender. It looks like something built to survive, and it is – with white painted panels, scratched and marked with lines of grit, sitting on top of knobbly off-road tires that have been chewed by the stones that have ran beneath the behemoths 2 and a half metric tons.

Within it’s exterior lies everything you’d need to live in the farthest reaches you could imagine. Enough gas for over 1200 km. Enough water for over a week. A compressor. 2 spare tires. A gas stove. A refrigerator. A power source for anything from cameras to laptops. A roof that extends upwards to reveal a plush sleeping place. 2 dogs in the back to keep you company.

The thing draws stares. It did from Emmanuel and Odin when we met them at the Mauritanian border. It was 630 in the evening and they asked us to wait for them while they got through some border bureaucracies. And although it wasn’t said directly, it was probably so they could follow us for the short stretch to the next border. 3 km seperate the Mauritanian border post from its neighbour to the North, and the road is rough. At least it is when you can find it. And you don’t want to stray off-course.

Landmines bolster the border of what would technically be Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. Although the threat sometimes feels exaggerated. Moving through the swath of unclaimed territory you pass the skeletons of stripped down vehicles. Their parts have been plundered and their frames dumped where no law can be offended, or will at least bother to take notice. Of course, you’re bound to hear other more explosive explanations from locals – lies geared to strike fear in tourists, or to promote the source’s services as a guide.

But after some twists and turns our small caravan made it through without issue – except for that we were an hour late. The Morrocan border was closed and no amount of money-palmed or cold soft-drinks offerred would open it. Maybe it was the first sign that we were gaining ground on Europe.

So here we sit – 2 Parisiens and their run-down-but-reliable Renault, a German with his 2 dogs and mobile survival station, and a Canadian kid hitching a ride – at the front of a small line waiting for the morning, flanked by grey dirt, garbage, barbed-wire and hidden demolitions. We’ve finished a dinner of tuna, mayonaise, canned-corn, diced tomato and onion served with crackers. The kettle has finished boiling now, and as the 4 of us huddle in the cold around our small ply-wood table, cups of mint tea warm our hands and stomachs. And despite the inherent inhospitality of our campground, it feels secure here, relaxing, to be with new friends, staring up at innumerable stars in a measureless sky.

Until Morocco,

John

We started moving at nightfall. Me, sitting in a wood and leather saddle that sits on the dark brown hair of the single hump of the large camel underneath. There are 2 ropes tied to the animal. One attaches its tail to the mouth of the smaller camel that follows us and carries our supplies – food, water, cooking pots, blankets – while the other leaves the mouth of my ride and sags through the air till it meets his hand.

I met him the day before. His name is Yoobo. At least that’s how it sounds. He’s Tuareg, one of the nomadic people that wander through parts of the Sahel and Northern Sahara. They call themselves Kel Tamasheq – ‘speakers of Tamasheq’ – and indeed he speaks no English and no French either beyond one-word commands like manger or dormir. And so over the next 5 days we’ll communicate through hand signals and hyroglyphics; having unspoken conversations by tracing lines through sand with fingers.

His tall silhouette is barely visible in the surrounding darkness – just another shadow among shadows – and it sinks further into blackness as we continue to move away from the city. I can barely make out the horizon in front of us, but I know we’re heading Northeast. I know this because the North star – the one that faintly beckons from Ursa Minor’s tail – has been perched over my left shoulder since we left. I know this is the North star because it was another piece of random information that spilled from Ben’s head before we parted ways.

And so for the past 60 minutes I’ve watced that star fix itself in the sky as a mark of dependability among a slowly spinning mural of infinite space. But still I feel like I’m spinning along with that sky. It’s dizzying, perched up here in the darkness, unable to predict the dips or gullies, like a ship stranded in the black of night and rolling over swells of sand.

So after another half hour I’ll get down, walk along side Yoobo for 45 minutes. Then he’ll stop, bend over to feel the sand with his hands, signal this is where we’ll be resting. A bamboo mat will be laid out for me along with a thick blanket. He’ll hand me a snack of dried dates and stale biscuits, then silently wander off into the night, returning a few minutes later with an armful of twigs and thorny branches beaten bone dry by the desert. A small fire will be built and a dinner of rice and dried meat boiled in a cast-iron pot. And not long after eating we’ll both fall asleep on the sand, underneath the glittering velvet curtain, and we won’t wake till the sun reaches out towards us.

…

Time passes strangely here. Unevenly. In fits and starts. Sometimes you’ll get lost in thought, turned around in your own labyrinth, and 30 minutes will feel like 3. Then, all at once, time will change the rules – won’t let the seconds pass unless it’s at a belly-crawl – and you’ll be left staring at your watch in contempt, wondering how only 5 minutes lived and died when at least 60 should have faded into history.

And this is where I find myself. Again perched on my camel, shielded from the late-morning sun by an indigo boubou, a burgundy turban, and Ray-Bans, cursing time and my watch that was supposed to keep it but couldn’t possibly be doing the job. We woke 2 hours earlier just as the sun began to step over and rise above the Sahel. And after washing down more dried dates and stale biscuits with a few small cups of tea we began to make our way, again, into the desert.

But this isn’t the desert most imagine. It’s not all rolling dunes of red sand filling a great expanse. Lawrence never led a rebellion here. Yet still there’s a sort of desolate beauty. Small shrubs spring up from the sand in green-yellow wisps like tufts of grass through cracks in an old parking lot. Thorn trees stretch bare branches into the sun and cast shade over small patches of earth. And everywhere there are the signs of lives passed. Old tracks fading, pebbles of dried dung, carcasses with skin stretched tight over bleached ribs like a macabre drum.

And you’ll realize you’re alone. Alone with the wind and the footsteps of the animal under you. That you’ve fallen into an isolation that forces self-reflection. And you won’t contemplate the meaning of life or some other impossible unknown, but you will consider who you are, why you came here, where you want to end up.

And this is where I find myself. 3 hours and 12 km into a camel ride through a big empty, under the full weight of the African sun, counting my carrier’s footsteps and considering my life to pass the time. And soon Yoobo will lead us in silence to the shade of a thorn tree. And we’ll sit here for 5 hours, waiting for the sun to move farther in her arc while I’ll try to learn my guide’s language and fail miserably.

After another long trek – I’ll walk this time and will for the rest of my time here – and nightfall, we’ll be camped on the soft, fine grains of a set of dunes shooting up from the harsher sand and brush below. And Yoobo will sit beside another small fire, watching his cast-iron pot hang above it from a branch half-buried in the dirt. And as the flames lick at the bottom of the pot, their light will cast his hard features in dancing shadows and orange afterglow. His slender, weathered hands will be obvious. His dark goatee and hawkish nose less so. And his eyes will pierce grey through the shade set by his pronounced brow.

…

We’re in the middle of our 1st trek of our 3rd day. The wind has picked up today. Dust is filling the air and shortening the horizon. And in another hour and a half we’ll find ourselves resting under the sparse shade of a small thorntree. It will have no real leaves to speak of – it’s branches just a twisted mess of pricks and spikes – but it’s here where we’ll seek refuge from the crippling heat.

How can I describe the heat here? The sun must have a grudge against this place. Even when she sets there is no great fanfare, no colour, no evening redness, just a dimming into grey dusk as she fades behind a shroud of spinning dust. No where else have I felt this sort of heat. When I return to Timbuktu, in another 2 days, I’ll be told that the city’s temperatures were reaching 47 degrees – in the shade – while I was wandering around under a desert sun.

So, just like yesterday, in the afternoon we sit under a small tree whose branches reach out like the thin bones of a twisted skeleton.
And the sun drains my body of all its energy and moisture. I can feel the focused heat when a beam of light breaks through the mass of twigs above me to scar my skin. Sweat comes through pores sticky and thick, and the swirling dust clings to me. Saliva congeals in my mouth and doesn’t slide down my throat so much as it slithers. And it’s like this that I wait – for the heat to pass – and wonder what would drive a people to live here, to spend the length of their lives lashed by sunlight.

But the sun will relent, and at 5 we’ll begin to move again. And 2 hours later, just as the desert falls into darkness, we will reach the outskirts of Yoobo’s village. A few hundred yards out he will hand me the camels’ lead rope, signal with his hands for me to wait, and will then walk alone toward his home, leaving me in the void.

…

I rose this morning once the sun climbed over the sand and it’s heat hit me in the face. Among bodies laid out on the ground across blankets, amid goats lazily searching for scraps of discarded food, and just outside of one of the large tents that make up this tiny campment.

There are no more than 10 of these tents and each one is seperated by at least a 100 meters from its neighbour – making the village feel seperated and contributing a silence that conforms with desert’s isolation. They are all tightly woven thatch supported by walls of fabric sewn together in abstract – like homes wrapped in enormous quilts, their walls draped in large patches of violet and indigo.

And sitting inside one is like sitting in the belly of a plush whale – like having been swallowed by some giant child’s once-favourite toy that’s been forgotten and left half-buried in his sandbox. Gnarled branches rise up as supports from the sand in arches like ribs, and criss-cross in a dome overhead to hold up the fabric walls. And all of it is held together, tied and fastened, by yet more fabric torn in strips and used in place of rope.

So I sit here, in the belly of the beast, on a blanket spread across a desert floor, with a group of Tuareg children crowded around me and signalling for me to take their picture.
It’s one of the constants you’ll find in almost all small African villages, and one of the things I’ve learnt to rely on when the language barrier seems insurmountable.

Walk into any small circle of huts or series of tents, and if you can’t connect with people through words then work with your hands – paint actions in air or carve out drawings in soil. And when all that can be said silently has passed, and you find yourself struggling to fill the emptiness, then break out a few photos of home, or your camera, or a map, or mirror.

I tire of the photos before the kids do. The heat of the mid-day has stripped me of any urge to be playful. Yoobo must have noticed. Laying on another blanket beside me he speaks what must be a command to the surrounding kids and they file dejected outside of the tent.

All except one. A young boy, almost a baby and no older than 2, stays behind. But he isn’t interested in me or my camera. With short brown hair, and wearing a blue t-shirt, he climbs over and around Yoobo, tugging at my guide’s beard or his boubou. And the stoicism that I’d grown used to leaves Yoobo as he plays and laughs with the child, with his son.

And I felt like maybe I understood a small part about why people live here; amid the fever, the wind and the dust. You can’t always decide where home is. Sometimes it’s a house sat comfortably among a creek and large trees of maple, their leaves dancing translucent in the light of day. Sometimes it’s a tent in the desert, a small refuge from swirling grit and flame. But its not the place you love so much as the ones waiting there for you.

Once dusk hit we moved back outside. And laying once again amongst the villagers, amongst families laughing together, amongst strings of Arabic floating through the cool of the night air, and staring up at the stars, I fell asleep. I was awoken 30 minutes later, by the village elder’s commands of Jean, manges. Manges! And so I did, in the traditional way, scooping up balls of rice with my right hand. Then, signalling I was full and thanking my hosts – Shukran, shukran – I rolled back over, and shut my eyes in anticipation for the morning.

And the next day – my last in the Sahel – would mirror the others before it. We’ll walk, Yoobo and I, in the morning, then rest through the heat of the afternoon, then move again through dusk. Except this time the silhouette of Timbuktu will appear on the horizon. And as we creep closer its orange glow will grow stronger. And when we arrive, and I sit down with a cold glass of water, it will taste almost sweet with satisfaction.

Until a German, a 4×4, an alternate route, and a night in no-man’s land,

John

We sit on large rugs woven in ornate patterns, laid out in a room that’s the size of a squash court, that finds itself on the second floor of a stone and mud building – one that must be centuries-old – and overlooks a small courtyard below. The room’s walls are lined with sheets of old Koranic scripture and large rectangular cushions. A small television is propped up in one corner – but is turned off – and the old man is playing with his new cellphone. He seems to barely notice I’m here, yet still I’m nervous, self-conscious. I wish my shirt wasn’t so wrinkled. I wish I had shaved this morning. Christ, I wish I had shaved earlier this week.

…

“A while back I was thinking, and writing, about why people travel…”

Ben is from Brooklyn.

“…about that search for the undiscovered, about that desire to seek out authenticity within foreign cultures or places…”

But he originally hails from Kentucky, so his voice doesn’t carry that stereotypical New York accent – his lips don’t stretch o’s into aw’s, and r’s aren’t dropped off the ends of words by a lazy tongue.

“…and I was thinking about how that authenticity is becoming more difficult to find…”

He has that New York confidence though – that directness that can cut someone soft. When he meets you, he’ll sit back, take you in from a steely-stare set in tanned skin, throw quick bursts of questions your way from a mouth wrapped in the same short light-brown hair that tops his head. He’ll size you up. And if you’re lucky he’ll accept you.

“…I don’t know if you remember, or heard of, that tribe in the Amazon a while back, the one that had no previous, or at least very little, contact with any other humans, with any sort of modern civilization, until someone flew over top of ‘em and snapped a few pictures? In the photos, you could see these tribes-people firing arrows at the plane…”

I say lucky not because he’s unlikely to accept to you – he’s an amicable guy – but because he’s damn interesting. He’s a writer and his love of the pen fuels a thirst for knowledge to translate into subject. His head is a kaleidoscope of eccentric facts – intrigue seems to come out in random bursts of colourful lore. You’re bound to here him talk about the history behind anthropic measurement, or come up with a list of prices for return flights from New york to a host of destinations around the world, or end up in a discussion about the traveller’s search for the unknown, for authenticity.

“…and I remember it kind of made me sad. I mean there isn’t really any groups of people, civilizations, left to be discovered. A while ago we entered an era where almost everyone had been touched by modernity. And things like globalization are slowly making us more similar. Finding that authentic cultural experience – finding something that isn’t staged for tourists – it isn’t going to get any easier from here.”

He could be right. In many places it seems like all you can find is staged versions of cultural expression put on for tourists. And destinations that were once far-flung are now draped in power-lines connecting a web of hotels and satelite TV. Authentic experiences were never something you could arrange, they’ve always been something you stumble upon or fall into, like a child experiencing a first – a first few steps, a first sip of orange juice, a first sunset. But the world is growing up. Mystery is fading. The unknown is dying. And maybe, if a place could embody this decline, it would be Timbuktu.

Timbuktu. It’s a city whose very name is attributed to the remote, the far-flung, to the middle-of-nowhere, to the unknown. Say its name. Let the syllables roll playfully off the tip of your tongue, let them dance through the ether, slip into your mind to paint pictures of camel caravans and sand-swept streets, of wonder and mystery, let them ignite a desire for adventure. You’re not the first to be caught in its siren-song. For centuries this place has called to explorers, travellers and vagabonds. And for centuries its reality has left many of them disappointed.

There was a race to reach this city in the 1800s. Fueled by rumours of the city’s importance as an islamic center of learning, of its tremendous wealth, its reserves of gold and magnificent architechture, Europeans with a taste for adventure and a thirst for fame fought to be the first to reach its fabled streets. Men like Caillié, Laing and Barth braved desert sun and barren landscape. Some would die in their pursuit. Others would come back with tales not of a place of great marvel, but of a tiny town slowly being consumed by the encroaching desert – even then 300 years past its prime.

But still people come here. I did. Mary and Nick left me a week ago, her to go back to work in Ghana, him to return home, to family and friends, to familiar rooms, comfortable beds, hot showers and warm smiles that have have been waiting to welcome him back for a year. But I made my way here, to Timbuktu, by way of a 4 x 4 on its last legs, crammed into its middle seat with an old Tuareg draped in vibrant linen, Ben and his girlfriend Aimée – a pretty girl with a bright smile, of French and Japanese descent, who’s finishing up a 2 year stint in the peace corps.

It was an 11 hour drive over roads of loose sand to reach this place. 11 hours of sticky sweat and thick dust to reach a tiny town which must leave many feeling let down, disillusioned. You see, upon first glance Timbuktu doesn’t live up to the shroud of mystery that surrounds its name. Its a small city with only 2 or 3 paved the roads – the rest find themselves winding lines of shifting sand. And the sand is everywhere here. When the wind blows it pushes walls of beige grains through the air, that cover everything, that create a tanned fog thick and penetrating. Its part of the slow death of this town. The Sahel is swallowing it in a great tide that will never recede back to its source. And so the people here fight the desertification as best they can. Old mud mosques and their striking minarets are in the process of being restored – this place is still incredibly important to the muslim world if for nothing other than its history.

But worse than the sands is the army of tour guides. The waves of young men offering to sell camel tours or show you the important sites of this ville mystèrieuse. If they aren’t upfront about their business, then they come in the guise of Tuaregs, inviting tourists to join them for tea, explaining that “la seule chose qui m’intèresse c’est la parole, je te le jure.” But they aren’t only interested in a friendly conversation over tea, these men aren’t even really Tuaregs, they certainly don’t live a nomadic life, may not have even ever ridden a camel. No these men are young Africans, who want nothing more than to sell you some over-priced trinkets, and if you don’t buy, than any interest in conversation quickly dries – along with your glass of tea. And this is the Timbuktu most foreigners will see – a city being swallowed by sand, whose culture is being stolen by tour guides, whose former mystery is being transformed into a product sold. And for awhile this was all I saw. How could I help it? It’s hard to love a place where you’re threatened with jail time on only you’re second night.

…

The skinny tour guide sits across from me, in Western dress – jeans and a golf shirt – and on a rug laid out on the sand that fills the auberge’s small courtyard, and under a sky increasingly blackening through the dusk. He’s shouting now, in broken French that I’m sruggling to understand. Maybe it’s not so much broken as that he keeps throwing in spots of Songhay. Maybe everytime he does he’s swearing. I’m still struggling to understand why he’s angry with me. Last night it was him that missed our meeting. He wasn’t the one who waited at the tiny, over-priced restaurant for 2 hours. I was. But apparently I’ve commited a great injustice by organizing a trek into the desert through someone else? Apparently the logical thing for me to do would have been to give him 24 hours?

Yesterday I had given up trying to attach myself to a salt caravan. Throughout the year Tuaregs work their way Northward from Timbuktu, up through the Sahel and into the Sahara. With strings of camels in tow they move toward the salt mines to gather the white gold for trade. The trip is more than a month return and I wanted to take part for a week or 2 before leaving the caravan at a small town and hiring a 4×4 back.

Ben and Aimée have already left on a short tour into the empty plains of sand. Before they did, Aimée’s eyes widened in a question of ‘why?’ when she heard my plan. Ben laughed, “John’s trying to find authenticity.” But now I’ve given up trying, decided it was best to arrange a long tour to a remote Tuareg village. Something not typically visited by tourists, something largely untouched.

The Angry Guide was supposed to give me an idea of pricing, was supposed to show up to the tiny restaurant at the city’s Northern edge, the one with the half burnt-out rope lights shooting out dim greens and fading reds into the night and wrapped around awnings and rusted railings, the one that sees hardly any customers in this, the low season, the season that’s so hot no one wants to be here. But he didn’t. So I organized my tour through my hotel’s owner, Shindouk, this morning – over the phone since he’s in Bamako and won’t arrive in Timbuktu for at least another day.

No instead of showing up last night at the restaurant, the Angry Guide is here, at my hotel, tonight, sitting on a rug in the sand across from me, and yelling in French about giving him 24 hours and swearing in Songhay about God knows what else. Beside me – on other rugs and carpets laid out in the sand – sits Abba, the young boy I met in town who was nice enough to show me the internet cafe, that sits inside an old islamic library, that sits across a cobblestone street from an even older mud mosque. He’s listening to my Ipod – only half-concerned about the war of words being fought in front of him – and beside him is Collo, the auberge’s manager in the absence of its proprietor. He looks slightly more concerned. Probably because, although he speaks little French, he’s fluent in Songhay. And beside him sits the Pink Arab – the man who’s been here, in his shimmering pink boubou, praying almost incessantly for the past 2 days – and he speaks nothing but Arabic, so he stares blankly at us, like a docile cow.

I’m starting to get fed up. Even in French, I can hear my voice is starting to take on a curt, sarcastic tone. I can hear that in my frustration I’m starting to patronize the Angry Guide. Maybe this is a cultural thing. Because in my country if you miss a meeting without explanation, there is no business relationship. And, if you had tried, it’s not like I should have even been that hard to find this morning…there aren’t exactly that many white people walking around Timbuktu. Suprisingly, this hasn’t made the Angry guide any less angry. He shouts at me that if he were to call the police they would be on his side. Then he goes silent, and sits there motionless for what feels like an eternity.

Finally he stands up, walks just outside the courtyard and starts talking in Songhay to someone on his cell. Collo rises to follow him, and stands at the courtyard’s entryway. He keeps shifting his focus, from the Angry Guide to his left, back to me on his right, back to the Angry Guide. And the manager continues the drawn-out head shake as the Angry Guide continues his phone conversation. And each subsequent time he meets my eyes, his own show a graver concern. I ask Abba what’s going on – as he bobs his head to Kanye West – and as non-chalantly as one can while mouthing the lyrics to “Love Lockdown” he says the Angry Guide is calling the police, and that it doesn’t matter that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that here right falls on the side of bills and coins, and that if I didn’t want to spend the night in a Timbuktu prison cell I better call Shindouk.

So I’ll call Shindouk. And he will calm the the Angry Guide, who will try to hold on to his honour even after the matter has been settled. Si ce n’était pas toi, Shindouk, je te le jure que cet garçons sera en prison. If it wasn’t you, Shindouk, I swear this boy would be in prison. And the Angry Guide will leave angry. And I will lay on a rug laid out on the sand and under the stars, sipping at a small cup of tea made in the Malian style. It will be bitter, amère, since it will be the first, but by the third cup I’ll still be dumbfounded.

And I’ll think back to my earlier walk through Timbuktu. When a boy pointed out the trio of pelts hanging from a power line. They were the skins of dead cats. You could still make out the ears, and 3 triangular flaps that used to be filled by 3 seperate snouts. One even still had much of its fur – patches of white and black down clinging to dried leather. And how he couldn’t explain why they hung there, other than kids had grown hungry, eaten them, then hung the left-overs up to dry as a joke.

And laying here in the courtyard, the stars piercing through the surrounding darkness, blind anger still burning through me, I’ll think that maybe those dead cats are a good representation of Timbuktu itself. Once a proud creature, elusive even, all that remains of the city is a shell. It’s insides have been torn out – feasted on or made for sale – and its empty hide hangs on display, in the heat of the desert sun as vultures pick at the specks of meat that remain. And over the next 2 days I’ll realize how wrong I am.

…

We’ve been sitting here for around 5 minutes now – the old man, in the dim glow of his blue boubou, and I – but its felt like 30. The silence between us fills the room and I can feel its tremendous weight bearing down on me. But I can’t break it. I don’t know how to. What do you say to the Imam of Djingareyber Mosque, a mosque that recalls the city’s golden age, that still acts as an incredibly important centre of learning and worship for Islam? How was your day? Already been down that road and hit a dead-end. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I didn’t know I’d be having lunch with the man, didn’t know I’d be sitting here – on plush cushions and ornate carpets, surrounded by old scripture and stone walls – until about 2 minutes before I arrived. It was a surprise, another act of incredible generosity on behalf of Sididje, the young man who runs the internet cafe inside the old library, across from the older mud mosque, Timbuktu’s Great Mosque, the one that goes by the name of Djingareyber.

The day before I had mentioned to him that Timbuktu didn’t have enough cheap food, that all of its restaurants were geared towards tourists. And so he set out to prove me wrong. I hopped on the back of his moped as he swerved and weaved his way through the city’s narrow streets and alleyways. We stopped at 4 ‘restaurants.’ Each a shanty of corrugated metal and haphazzard planks. Each either out of meat, or gas, or a chef with any desire to cook. So Sididje became fed up. Took the money I had given him for the computer time and bought eggs, then took me back to his home and made lunch – an omelette with onion, tomatoes and a side of french bread. Then once I was finished – because he didn’t eat a thing, said he wasn’t hungry – he invited me back for lunch the next day, today.

But I’m not sitting in Sididje’s home. I’m here, in the cavernous room decorated in expensive carpets and manuscripts. The Imam is on my left, Sididje is on my right, across from me are a few old teachers of Islam and their students, and in between all of us is a great steel bowl of rice, and mutton, and stewed carrots and potatoes. We are eating in the traditional African way – with our right hands from a communal dish. And – like any other time I’ve eaten with locals – the meat is all being pushed in front of me while everyone else feasts on the rice. And afterwards we’ll take tea. I’ll sip on the second glass, leaning against a cushion as light gently filters in from the great wooden doors that lay open in front of me. And I’ll notice this glass is laced with mint. It’s refreshing, cleansing. And I’ll think to myself about what a wonderfully strange place Timbuktu is.

Until I walk under the weight of the sun,

John