All entries for Wednesday 27 December 2006

Timbuktu Tomorrow

I am off tomorrow morning on my latest adventure / expedition driving from the UK to Timbuktu in Mali to see if thar Timbuktu place actually exists…

Blame it on a cocktail of a passion for petrol, travel and adventure and too much Paul Theroux, Alan Wicker, Micheal Palin… So tomorrow I leave with my good friend Karl Parsons in a 1988 un-tested Volvo 240 with a group of twenty others. The plan is to travel down through France and Spain, into Morocco by Saturday and to a tiny coastal resort call Sidi Ifni for New Years Eve. Then follow the north African coast line for about 1,000 miles until heading into Mauritania before turning East into the Sahara Desert. This is where the action begins in earnest, where the roads run out and the barren empty desert opens up. The intention is to get to Timbuktu by the 11th January and the Sahara Music Festival a couple of days later. We will fly back into the UK from Bamako, Mali on the 20th January.

Tomorrow is already here, so time to do last minute packing and then a big of kip and off in the morning down to home and Coventry and then onto Exeter to pick up Karl and then to the ferry at Portsmouth…

Until later,

M

Mark Swift : 27 Dec 2006 00:30 |  Tags: Desert Sahara Timbuktu Travel |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem