Timia Transportation

We kept following the main track. Both the camels and I were completely exhausted. It was dark now and nothing to enjoy anymore. I had a really hard time now, after 10 hours on the saddle. I couldn’t persuade my camel anymore to follow the others. “More only one hour”, Moussa – 50 meters in front - shouted.

I was in a state of giving up, and became unreasonable. “We stay here”, I replied to Moussa. I must have sounded upset, I guess. Moussa stopped, gave me a good torch and convinced me to continue. The last half hour I walked besides the camels, slowly slogging through the sand.

Continued at "Must See"-Tips

But still, I was so happy to have the ride. Late in the afternoon we reached Agadez. Next day I left for Ingall, where the (official) Cure Salee Festival still lasted for at least two more days (check out my Ingall page).

When I returned from Ingall I met Moussa again. He told me still no other vehicle had arrived from Timia...Sometimes travellers need some luck…

Next day, on Thursday, it took another 8 arduous hours before we reached Agadez. We stopped near the scenic valley with El Meki village and made several other, rather shameful photo stops.

At one of these several occasions we passed a small camel caravan and however I agree it was photogenic, the way the tourists behaved struck me. The cars halted, a dozen of white strangers jumped out and immediately took positions to shoot the family with their outrageous cameras. No greetings, no asking for permission.

Some minutes later we left again in the dust, leaving the perplexed family behind with some small presents.

We drove for 4 dusty, bumpy and hot hours and it was hard for me to imagine how this could be fun for 5 or more days, driving every day for many hours. The scenery was unusual, the shapes of the peaks extravagant, but also quite monotonous and sombre.

The group turned out to be very hospitable. Moussa and I were invited to share their excellent meals and that night at the camp around the fire I listened to the great stories Klaus had to tell about the ancient caravan routes. Moussa on the other hand turned out to be an attraction for the group members.

Despite the steady pace and sparse breaks, I enjoyed the day a lot. The monotonous barren land soon gave way to spectacular rock formations and land covered with zillions of stones in all sizes and varieties as far as I could see.

We climbed up a little hill and when we reached the top I was stunned to see that we were actually on the rim of what looked like a gigantic partly collapsed crater. The “walls” preciously towering hundreds of meters high above the valley ground. “One tiny earthquake and the world would collapse completely”, I thought.

We went down and 3 hours later up again, where we reached the main Agadez – Timia track. The camels did a great job here, as did the camelboy.

We encountered several rocks with carvings that are believed to be at least 8.000 years old.

In the Aiir Mountains there are quite a bit of sites with carvings like that, along with discoveries of tools from the Stone Age.

This doesn’t only prove that the area has been inhabited for a long time, but also that the world looked very different by that time. The carvings even show elephants, giraffes, and other animals that are only found several 1000 km. more south these days.

The next morning we left early on my request, by 7am, after prayers and – of course – a session of strong Tuareg tea and a selection of fast food.

The plan was to reach Timia today, but the distance was quite huge and the terrain became harder now. Moussa was quite focussed. For him there was the bonus of less cost for the camels than planned, and to be honest I preferred to reach Timia as fast as possible as well.

At this stage my body started to hurt so much that I decided to continue by foot for a while, but although the animals seemed to move pretty slowly, there was no way of following them in the soft sand.

It was clear that Moussa aimed at reaching Timia by tomorrow night and he wanted to reach today as far as possible.

It became darker now and I thought it was enough for the day. We made our camp right in the riverbed and Moussa marked it with the two saddles.

The camel boy that accompanied us knew this area good enough to know that we were close to a small plantation of grapefruit trees. He took some of our stocks of Tuareg tea, and came back with fresh, juicy grapefruits as much as he could carry. What a great treat was that after a day of borehole water, which was clean enough to drink untreated but tasting awfully and too much heated in the sun.