Timbuktu and Beyond 1997

The sands blew in from the north, hot and dry, so dry that you never sweated but you could feel your body’s moisture escaping just the same. I need more water, you think, and maybe a salt tablet, hoping to retain the water that you drank. And what you drank never seemed to quench your thirst. So you fantasized about a big cold glass of ice water. This was the Sahel, south of the Sahara but north of the tropical rain forest of West Africa. The sand was from the Sahara, hot and dry as the name sounds. I was journeying to Timbuktu, or Tombouctou as it calls itself, on the edge of remoteness.

Thus begins a desert adventure in this chronicle of a journey to the fabled city of Timbuktu.