Still clean after our break in Tamba

7pm in Mali

17 january. tambacounda to medine, mali

Tshukudu is sparkling clean! I’ve lovingly cleaned him, for the first time since we set off. It needed doing. The logo on the spare wheel gleams and anything that can shine is shining in the morning sun. By this evening, the car will be absolutely bloody filthy again, covered in red, red dust. D’oh!

The 270 km of road from Tambacounda to Kayes in Mali is brand new. We zip along at a steady 60 mph, passing broken down lorry after broken down lorry. One guy we stop and chat to has been stuck at the side of the road for 10 days! We leave him some cigarettes and wish him luck that his boss returns from Kayes at some stage in the near future.

The border is a breeze. So laid back, in fact, it would have been easy to have driven through both sides without stopping.

At Kayes, there’s a choice to be made. There’s no easy route to Bamako, although they are slowly tarmacing the 600 km or so. Instead of taking the tarmac, we head south on a route that takes in Bafoulabe, Manantali and Kita on the way to Bamako. Apart from the last few miles, there’s no tarmac at all. The dirt track leading south from Kayes to the ruins of the French fort at Medine is the worst piste we’ve had to endure so far. The countryside is lovely - rolling hills, cotton bushes, date trees and the Senegal river winding it’s way slowly towards St. Louis. Above all though, there’s dust. Red dust that sticks to the sides of the Landy and fluffy white dust, the dried remains of deep muddy stretches on the piste, that the wheels churn up into clouds that billow in our wake. Both the red and the white dust are equally adept at finding their way through the windows and door frames to cover everything inside the Landy in an ever deepening layer.

Medine was the initial administrative and commercial centre of French run Mali in the mid-19th century, when the Senegal river was the main trade link to the coast. Once railway links were developed and rail took over from the river as the principal means of transporting goods, Kayes and then Bamako took over as the French headquarters in Mali. In 1860, some 12,000 people lived in Medine, vs. the 1,000 or so to-day. The fort is an imposing ruin above the Senegal river, next door to the abandoned raliway terminus. We had tea sitting in the shade of the old railway office with teachers from the new village school and watched them marking maths papers in the afternoon sun. One of the teachers is also a national guide and he showed us round the fort, the railway buildings and round tower where France hid part of its’ gold reserves from the Germans during the second world war. The safe the gold was stored in is still there. The gold, unfortunately, the French returned to collect in 1945.

We camped a few miles down the track, beside the waterfalls at Felou; watching the villagers returning from Kayes by battered minibus, bicycle and pirogue. The 20 mile trip from Kayes by the track a hell of an uncomfortable commute. Unlike in London, however, everyone took the time to shout a hello and wave as they passed.

Overlander info:

Senegal-Mali border at Kidira. Very easy. We got through in half an hour.

1) Senegal exit stamp.

Arriving at Kidira, drive past the row of lorries on the right. There’s a road off to the right with a police check point on the left after the junction .This is the road to Mali. Ignore for the time being and follow the road you’re on past the junction, round to the left and on until the end of the tarmac. The Gendarmerie National is on your right.

2) Senegal carnet.

Driving back to the road junction, turn left. We stopped at the police check point and they took the normal names, reg number and job details. Might be possible to bypass? The Douane is down the slope to the left of the road before the bridge for the carnet.

3) Mali carnet.

Over the bridge, the customs post is again on the left off the road.

4) Mali police for passport entry stamp.

There seem to be 2 police posts, and it looks as if they are building a new customs/police border point in the middle of the road about 2km after the bridge. The first is a few hundred metres after the customs post, down a side road off to the right by the railway station. Alternatively, there is another about 1 mile along the road on the left hand side.

No money changed hands during the crossing of this border.

18 january. medine to manantali

To-day’s a long, bumpy 10 hour drive down to the dam at Manantali. The drive to Bafoulabe is a joy of first gear driving, choosing tracks, then reversing to try another, dry river crossing, sand trap driving, swerving to miss goats, traversing villages and general bumping around the inside of the cab. After lunch, we stop to help a lorry stuck in the middle of the track, lending them a battery to start their engine to power their compressor to blow up their very worn looking spare trye to replace one of the two that had burst at the same time. As with all the buses and lorries here, tyres look as if they are run until they burst. It’s seems a fair way of getting the most out of them at any rate.

On the ferry over the river at Bafoulabe, we meet a couple of Red Cross people on their way to Bamako for a conference. They’re aiming to do Kayes-Bamako in one day, a crazy idea. They don’t seem to have any idea about the state of the pistes or that there’s a route further north that is mostly tarmaced. Their white Land Cruiser speeds off in a cloud of dust when we dock, it’s big aerial swaying vigorously off the front bumper. They don’t see the group of hippos lounging on the far shore, nor stop to chat to the American Peace Corps girls cycling along the road, a year into their one and a half year stint in two local villages. The one Mali TV channel tells us that evening that the conference is organised by the World Social Forum, where another world is possible. Looking on the internet, I see they will be discussing topics such as: Towards a global multipolar system based on peace, law and negotiated rights. (Alternative to the military control of the Planet by US). Good luck to them and we hope they got to Bamako in time (http://www.fsmmali.org/article108.html?lang=en).

Having crossed the Senegal river once on the ferry, we recross it a few miles down the piste, this time by the railway bridge, straddling the railway tracks. The piste down to Manantali is the best to-day and we manage a reasonable 40 mph between potholes.

Manantali is at the head of an enormous dam, built in 1987. In 2000, they got round to adding the turbines to generate electricity (Mali now sells electricity to Senegal and Mauritania). We camp in the Cite des Cadres, an enclosed village built to house the families of the dam’s management. The complex includes a swimming pool, supermarket and bowling lane. It’s pretty run down now. The supermarket has row upon row of empty shelves, but does sell Heinz Baked Beans and Bovril.

Overlander info: The Cite des Cadres is at the end of the piste from Bafoulabe, just after the police checkpoint. A small bungalow costs 3,000 CFA - offering a hot shower, private toilet and somewhere to change. It’s not pretty though. We camped outside.

Bumpy road!

Can we help?