The wheels of the old Land Cruiser sunk deep into the hot sand for the third time that afternoon. With a tired groan the engine stalled and Ali cursed in Bambara, thumped the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. He tried to get out. He couldn’t. The car sat at an angle as the left side had dug itself into the Sahara and the dunes were level with the doors. He swung his sandaled and bony feet over, slid uphill to the passenger side and tried again to extricate himself. His billowing robes hadn’t cleared the gear stick, wouldn’t come free and promptly yanked him back into the car. He hit his head on the roof and ended up flat out on the seats with his noble indigo headscarf pushed forward over his large beaked brown nose.

We were on our way to Mali’s ‘Festival au Désert, an annual nomadic gathering in the sands of the Sahara. I wondered if I’d ever get there. I decided that if I did, and if the festival was as good as I’d been promised, then next time I’d use a reputable tour company! 

Ali didn’t look at me as he cursed again, fixed his headgear and wrapped his skirts round his thin legs. He carefully climbed out, the strength of his arms and his new-found agility belying his sixty years. In my stumbling French, and between his bubbly mouthfuls of treacly chewing tobacco, I’d understood that not only was he 66 years old but was already a great-grandfather 27 times!

He appeared at my window and said something unintelligible, squinting painfully in the sunshine and pointing dismally at the wheels.

“Oui,” I said enthusiastically, leaning out the window and pointing at the wheels too. “Insh’Allah?” I added, hoping this was an answer fitting with his mood.

It wasn’t, he looked at me long and forgiving then began to clear the sand from under the belly of the car with his bare hands. I sighed, removed my sunglasses, squinted with equal discomfort and joined him digging.

After another three hours and two more digs we rolled into the fabled city of Timbuctoo, where we immediately met the group I’d seen more than a week previously in Bamako! Guerba World Travel had organised their festival trip, and their itinerary also contained a visit to the Dogon villages in the Bandiagara escarpment, the world’s largest mud mosque at Djenne and (most irksome to me at that moment) a ‘pinasse’ (river-boat) trip on the Niger River to Timbuctoo! So while I’d been breathing sand and tearing my knuckles on the hot exhaust of our sand-embedded four-wheel-drive, they’d been sipping sundowners before slipping into their riverside tents!

Ali gruffly motioned me to my sleeping quarters, a small but comfortable pension close to the market place. Timbuctoo streets aren’t paved with gold. They’re dusted with sand, but despite the terribly ‘outback’ and ‘forgotten’ feel to the town, it was tremendous to be there.

Bruce Chatwin said about this city: “Timbuctoo, Tumbuto, Tombouctou, Tumbyktu, Tumbuktu or Tembuch? It doesn't matter how you spell it. The word is a slogan, a ritual formula, once heard never forgotten.”
It’s very true. It’s a sprawl of mud huts, fighting for space with the encroaching desert, but there is a palpable mystique about Timbuctoo that’s been luring travellers and explorers (often to their deaths) for hundreds of years.

The following morning we bumped and bounced our way over the final couple of hours of desert pistes and arrived at the festival site. Set in the dunes in the middle of the greatest expanse of sand in the world, this was no ordinary festival. Mystical Tuareg warriors lurched past on bug-eyed, knobbly-kneed camels. They were soon to take part in races where the humped beasts became the pedigreed stallions of the sands in a quest for tribal fame and glory.

During the three days of the festival, the camel races are just one of the spectacular sideline attractions. Songhai, Bambara, Fulani, and Mandinka people all have displays of dancing and singing, there are games and shows, poetry readings, food stalls with crispy Nile Perch, sizzling goat and lamb skewers, bubbling urns of vegetable stews and peanut sauces and cauldrons of millet cous cous. There are traditional Tuareg swordplay jousts reminiscent of pirate battles as cutlasses flash in the desert sunlight, and little stalls selling handcrafted items that aren’t just for the tourists. This festival is first and foremost a meeting place for the different clans and communities in the desert, and these nomadic and pastoral people barter and buy each other’s goods as they’ve been doing for centuries along the winding course of the Niger River.

The festival was as Saharan as the Tuareg themselves, yet it had a distinctly ‘world’ feel to it. There were performances from European groups and a Native American Indian act. Behind one sagging camel-hair tent I even found five or six flamboyant Tuareg youths spellbound by an Australian playing didgeridu music through a length of plastic pipe. Soon they were all scouring the site for their own Aboriginal instruments, laughing with excitement at the raspberry sound they’d been taught to make between their lips!

I surreptitiously wiped my own lips on my sleeve after finishing a particularly tasty chicken kebab, and was contemplating a warm beer when Ali grabbed me suddenly by the elbow, his broken brown teeth now balancing a long fluted wooden pipe stuffed with dry, powdery tobacco.

“Venez ici monsieur! Venez ici!” he shouted, lighting the pipe hurriedly with a shiny Zippo.

 We half-ran - as quickly as anyone can half-run through soft sand - and approached the main stage. Ali looked round, possibly to check I was still there and that he hadn’t pulled my arm off. He was speaking to me in Bambara now and his eyes shone with excitement as he pointed to the stage. Haira Arby (herself from Timbuctoo) was performing and I could see from his boyish stare that Ali held her in high regard. Whether it was the enchanting calabash rhythms, her wonderfully enticing voice or her voluptuous double chin that so entranced him I’ll never know, but we both sat in the sand with the crowd and swayed to the music. Ali Farka Toure was next up and as the sun disappeared and the African night sky shrouded us in stars, his spiritual presence brought home to me how surreal a festival this really is.