Welcome to Dave Need and Phil Gendall's blog. This is a record of our 2008/9 journey from Cornwall to Timbuktu in a 15 year-old totally unmodified Pugeot 205, as part of the Plymouth-Timbuktu Challenge (http://www.plymouth-banjul.co.uk/). Phil is a director at Gendall Design (www.gendall.co.uk), and Dave is a carpenter and boat builder. We left on boxing day 2008 from Portsmouth - and traveled to Marrakesh for New Year's Eve - then on down through Western Sahara and Mauritania, turning left somewhere and on to Mali.... and thence to Timbuktu. If you want to get the best from this blog now it's finished, go to the end and work forwards. If you want to know more about the challenge or just to get in touch email me on phil.gendall@btinternet.com Phil x
| Up at crack of dawn on the 18th, we drive Lee and Chis to the Timbuktu airport as they have to be back at work in the UK. That leaves Phil, Dave, Tom and Jack. We are on the first ferry out... a bit subdued, but pleased to be heading for Djenne - reputedly the most beautiful town in Mali, and a World Heritge Site. |
| It's been a hard-driving few days and we are all exhausted. The final road up takes four hours, and we see one or two other vehicles every hour - mostly Toyota Landcruisers hammering along. You can see them coming miles off as they trail huge plumes of dust. Most of us have had one form of travellers tummy or another, but we're fine. Timbuktu is neither impressive, nor a let-down. Its small and busy and a melting put of desert and sub-Saharan cultures. Everyone wants to know if the car is for sale. We eat late - the ubiquitous chicken and chips... very sophisticated. This is the Hotel Buktu, an old Foreign Legion style fort where we are staying. |
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| It's a seriously big river, and the ferry crossing takes about half an hour. As the Timbuktu side nears there is more activity - washing clothes in the river, there beautiful pinnaces, reeds and birds, and the desert lying beyond. |
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The last stop before the final assult on Timbuktu... we spent the evening and morning trading... a last chance to jettison stuff and lighten the vehicles. Everyone wants to buy... you only have to open the car door and it means Open For Business. This man is a Touareg. He had over a hundred Chamels and Dave sold him the car radio and shovel and we gave him our two hi-vis bibs as a cadeau. Good for entene cordial... and Lee turns out to be a very good trader indeed, obviously some Arab in him somewhere. |
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| We hire a guide, called Mohammed (like all good guides). He has three little scarifications on his cheek. He takes us to two villages on the plateau. One old man proudly shows us his three ancient flintlocks. They must be from around 1860... he uses one of them and has a monkey hanging on the wall of his hut as proof. We go the the chief's house... he is old and wise. The Dogon are animists, and bring offereings to him to ensure the next year's harvests. Pictured is a girl outside his hut, grinding millet. |
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| Termites are big thing here. Some of the nests are taller than a person. Rock-hard pinnacles. On our way to Timbukto we visit Dogon country... all their huts are built on little stone stilts to keep the termites out or they eat the millet, and, quite possibly, the babies. |
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| It's all go in Bamako... but we are all off. Some are returning to UK in the morning, but Phil, Dave, Lee, Chris, Tom and Jack are plugging on to Timbuktu in the 205 and the Pajero like, now... off in a minute. No posts here for a few days... maybe from Tilmbuk if they have a cyber-caf. Officially two-wheel drives can't make it but we met a Brit who had just done it in an Escort. Travelling light. Love to all. |
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| As night fell the group felt the pressure of days of mechanical trouble... and with just 80k to go the Panda and Cheap Trick head on for Bamako and remainder (the 205 and two 4x4s without lights) head into the bush for free-camping. To be be met by a nice gent with a 30'' machette who thought it may not be possible for us to camp... really he was very polite... so we dropped in here instead. The proprietor Mountaga-Bane was dressed in a 2-peice suit, and sold us beers and made fish and chips on a one ring gas burner in the yard. All the water comes from the well, and the electicity from solar panels on the roof. Happy night. We said we't handle his global marketing - so remember where yuo heard it first. |
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We think the myth is is that The Creator planted it upside down... something like that anyway. This is in Mali - there are more trees the further south we go, grass, scrub, cattle and goats rather than camels, and even horses. It's beautiful, but very, very dusty. Apparently over 60% of ALL the dust in the world comes from the Sahara. Most of it is in our little car. |
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| ... can survive on virtually nothing, strong, useful, resourceful... can be stubborn and wily... and that's just Dave. |
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