Across the Sahara to Timbuktu

from the Ray I. Doan Photographic Collection

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Day 6

We had a 6:30 am breakfast of Granola and the local bread, outdoors on the porch of the Amanar Hotel.  They seem quite proud of the unique bread that many of the Timbuktu locals make in mud brick, wood fired ovens.  I thought the bread was only a couple of steps above awful. After breakfast we packed up and left Timbuktu for an evening campsite that was supposed to be at the best sand dunes I would see on the trip. I was still sick, but I was better than the day before, which was good because it would have been serious if I were worse.

It was the normal twisting, lurching, bucking cross-country trip on our way to the village of Egasher on the Niger River, where we were to stop for lunch.  First we broke a suspension u-bolt and then cracked in half a shock absorber mounting plate.  Just a regular trip.  We got to Egasher and had spaghetti with goat meat for lunch.  Another memorable meal.  We gave the leftovers, which were plentiful, to five local village kids.  Later I saw a five-year-old picking up and eating spaghetti that we had dropped in the sand.  In an unusual move Nimit bought firewood from the local villagers.  He said where we'd be camping for the night; there was no firewood for miles.  The term 'village', for Egasher is probably pushing the concept of a village.  I'd say there were two families or maybe three families living there. 

We packed up and drove on to our evening campsite near the village of Temera, again on the Niger River.  We were constantly driving in the vicinity of the Niger River but we were seldom in sight of the water.  Whenever we did see the river, I was constantly amazed at how all that water, in such a big wide river, seemed to have practically no effect on the surrounding countryside.  It was still Sahara Desert right up to the riverbank.  Practically all the really big sand dunes I saw were along the Niger River.  Almost always on the other side of the river, with no way to cross the river.

The first exception to this were the dunes at Temera, which were finally on our side of the river.  There were enough people living at Temera to call it a village.  They were the so-called river people of the Songhoy tribe.  (Pronounced Song-Hi).  There was a great, more or less single line, of sand dunes starting at their village.  There were some additional smaller dunes, a mile or so away out in the desert, but nothing concentrated like the dunes in Death Valley California.  We arrived at the dunes at the right, late afternoon time, but unfortunately we were still having the gray overcast skies.  I only took a few shots of the smaller dunes, out in the desert, because that was the only sun from a small hole in the clouds.

Diner was a meal of a packaged beef stroganoff.  It was a meal of which my wife Mary has no fear of the competition.  I went to bed praying for clear skies in the morning.  During the night, for the first time I decided I was cold, so I got out the blanket Nimit was always setting beside my bed.  In the morning everyone said they'd gotten cold and had intended to use the blanket that I never used, but much to their dismay I already had it over me.

 

Day 7

I leaped out of bed at first light to clear skies, except for some haze at the horizon.  I went tearing up the highest sand dune to start my great Sahara sand dune picture series.  I'd traveled from here to Timbuktu, and beyond, to get to this beautiful place on this beautiful morning.  It didn't get any better than this.  I was so excited I forgot I was sick, except for my constantly running nose.

I was using the long 300 mm telephoto lens on the Fuji 617 almost exclusively for the panorama shots.  I was trying to isolate smaller sections of the dunes and show some of the most sensuous curved shapes.  I was also shooting with the medium format Contax 645.  I shot continuously from sunrise at 6:45 am to about 8 am.  I could only make one pass and shoot in one direction because I left a trail of big footprints behind me across the top of the dunes.  I took quite a few pictures that included the river in the distance.  I'll just have to see whether that's good or bad.

For most of the time I was up on the dunes Nimit and the crew were pushing the truck back and forth, trying to get it started.  They must have pushed it twenty times without success.  I wasn't really up tight about it not starting, because I was right where I wanted to be.  I figured if there was some place for it not to start, this was the perfect place.  It was a very cold morning and I thought they'd get it started as soon as sun got over the dune and warmed it up.  By the time I was walking back, after 8 pm, one of the villagers had been recruited in the pushing efforts and the truck started just as I walked up.

I wouldn't have minded spending the day there and shooting the dunes again in the afternoon light.  That wasn't in Nimit's plans.  I wouldn't have hesitated to override the plan but it had been clouding up in the afternoons.  That would have meant bad light and I would probably have my footprints to contend with, in the afternoon so I gave up that idea.  We had a late breakfast of Granola cereal and Nescafe.  They don't even refer to coffee in Mali, just Nescafe.  We packed up and headed for Gao (pronounced Gow-aa).  We got to Gao around noon.  Gao is at the north end of the national highway, in the Sahara Desert.  North of Goa it's only the Sahara and nomads.

Nimit checked me into the World Vision Guest House.  World Vision is a Protestant missionary group from California, with a lot of money.  They have a tough road to go in Mali but they're giving it the good fight.  They have a big headquarters down on the Niger River waterfront and their guesthouse out in the city.  The guesthouse is used for conferences and overflow guests.  When it's not in use they rent out rooms like a hotel.  The African manager took me in and put me in room No.1.  Nimit asked if they'd given me the suite.  I said no, I didn't think so.  He then looked at my room and said, sure this is the suite, see, it has the bathroom in the room.  Of course, the suite didn't have any hot water.  The place has a kitchen and a cook, plus a room the manager called the salon, where we had our meals. 

Our driver immediately went in search of repair parts for the suspension system.  Little problems, like not starting, we weren't worried about.  Gao is a little bit bigger than Timbuktu but it's a lot better off.  That's of course by Mali standards.  It is at the north end of the National Highway, which is the only paved road in Mali.  Bamako is about 750 mile south, at the other end of the road, with about 20 times the population of Gao.  Gao is in the Sahara while Bamako is in an area that will support farming.

Gao has that same mud brown look of Timbuktu but there is the occasional, non-brown, real plaster building to break up the monotony.   It also is the big city down south, for the nomads up north.  Nimit was planning on taking a Pinasse across the Niger, in the afternoon, to the Rose Dune, which was naturally on the other side of the river.  At 3:30 pm Nimit, Amadou and I left the waterfront as the only passengers aboard a 100-foot long Pinasse bound for the half hour ride to the Rose Dune.  The Pinasse had a crew of five but as far as I could see they only needed two.  One man at the rear to run the outboard motor and the other man at the front, to man the pole for maneuvering at the shore.  Mali has not yet discovered the concept of docks, even for larger ships like ferries.

The Rose Dune is a major tourist attraction at Gao.  It doesn't take much to be a tourist attraction at Gao.  As far as I could figure out, the town has absolutely nothing to offer the tourist.  While we were approaching the dune I was studying all the people walking up the crest.   I told Nimit I thought it was hopeless, to get the kind of pictures I wanted, because of all the footprints.  He said, don't worry, the dune is bigger than you think, and people get tired and only walk so far.  He said there are plenty of dunes without footprints.  His plan was to walk around the backside, at ground level, past anyone on top and then climb up to an undisturbed area.

When we left the boat I learned that part of the crew was detailed to carry camera equipment.  I had brought along every piece of camera equipment I had with me, because I wasn't sure what cameras and lens I'd want to use.   Since I had four helpers going along, I didn't carry anything.  Later on it got down to where I was carrying the little level, for the panoramic camera, but that was as far as I was prepared to go.  We professional photographers have to have Some standards.  We followed Nimit's plan, of walking along the backside, and it worked perfectly.  It was a pretty good climb up the dune, because it's 600 feet high, and the last part is really soft sand.

From up on top, it was a magnificent vista of the river, a small village at the end of the dune and more dunes off in the distance.  Nimit was right in that I had nothing but undisturbed sand dune in front of me.  My entourage and I started making our way along the crest north toward the small village at the end of the dune.  I was taking pictures every 50 feet of anything and everything that looked good.  We got to the end of the dune, and the end of the light, at about the same time.

The Rose Dune is part of a string of dunes, along the Niger, that just go until they're out of sight.   The Rose Dune is at the southern end of this string of dunes, and it is the highest.  I'd guess the Rose Dune is about a mile long and I probably photographed the northern half of it.  At the northern end of the dune it drops down to 30 to 50 feet high for about a quarter mile.  This is where the little village sits at the edge of the river.  Then there is another very attractive line of dunes stretching to the northern horizon.  These dunes are about 2/3 as high as the Rose Dune.  I thought this was a beautiful place and I resolved to do some more photography on these dunes, even though it wasn't in Nimit's schedule.

By the time we got back to Gao our driver had found parts and fixed the suspension system on the Land Cruiser.  Life was good.  I went to bed a happy man.  I thought I'd done a good days work and had taken some pretty nice sand dune pictures.

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This page was last updated: March 15, 2008