Niger River Project

Far as we’ve come to find it, we don’t have much time in Timbuktu. After visiting the explorers’ houses, we all pile into our hired Land Cruiser to set off for somewhere even more remote than Timbuktu.

The Festival au Desert is now a major fixture on the world music calendar. It’s held every year in an area of the desert near to a tiny Tuareg village, Essakane, 70km from Timbuktu.

Initially, the festival was started by Tuareg for Tuareg. During the early 1990s, the Tuareg, the nomadic people of the Sahara, fought a bitter and bloody battle with the governments of the desert states of Mai, Niger and Algeria. They claimed that since these countries became independent in the 1960s, the Tuareg had been persecuted and unfairly treated by their respective governments.

The Tuareg uprising which kicked off in 1990 went on for five years and led to many deaths. Ultimately, it failed to give the Tuareg what they wanted – an independent Tuareg state. However, things have improved for the Tuareg now, and one of the positive developments to come out of the troubles is the festival, intended as a showcase for Tuareg culture.

In fact, the festival is now one of Mali’s biggest tourist events, attracting several thousand ‘toubabs’ from Europe, the States and other parts of Africa. Sadly, this is also its least attractive aspects, meaning it has become something of a commercial feeding frenzy. But it’s not everyday you get to go to a three-day music festival in the Sahara…

We leave Timbuktu in a cloud of red dust. There are no roads here, just ‘pistes’. In fact, the snow analogy is a pretty good one; the road here is more sand-drift than road.

During the journey, our mild-mannered driver, Adoman, undergoes a strange transformation. We hit what we’ve been told is going to be the worst bit of the journey, where the piste veers off into the desert. As soon as we do, Adoman slams in a Bob Marley cassette, cranks it up and puts his foot down. Suddenly, we are in the Paris-Dakar rally.

Adoman’s philsosophy, it seems, is this: go so fast you won’t sink in the sand. And it turns out to be a good one, for the piste has been churned up beyond recognition by other festival traffic (traffic! in the desert!) coming this way. In England furrows like this would be full of mud, but here, there’s no mud, only sand. Adoman’s right: the only way to get a heavy 4×4 laden with people and gear through is to go hell for leather, before you have time to sink.

After a couple of hours of being thrown around, we finally make Essakane. The festival site is in a beautiful area of rolling sand-dunes to the east of the village. The sand here is almost unbelievably fine and soft. Hidden within it, however, are crum-crums, the so-called moquitos of the desert, little spiny seeds that stick in your flesh like sea urchins.

The focal point of the festival is the stage, a permanent structure overlooked by a great sweeping sand-dune that acts as a perfect natural amphitheatre. This is surrounded by clusters of Tuareg tents containing sleeping qurters, restuarants and bars. Yes, you can even get a cold beer in the middle of the desert!

It’s a colourful scene. Although tourists pay through the nose to come here, Africans get in free, so there are plenty of locals around. Most eye-catching are the Tuareg, dressed up in their finery, strutting around on great camels, the biggest I’ve seen before. Some of them are carrying alarmingly large swords. Must remember not to piss any of them off.

The festival kicks off with a parade of Tuareg men, who come sweeping into the performance area on camelback. Then the music gets underway, provided by a mixture of West African, Tuareg, European and Amercan artists.

The only downside to the three days is the large number of Tuareg traders hassling you to buy their wares. Some of what they’re offering is beautiful craftwork, but after three days of constant pressure, the hard-sell becomes wearying. Still, with this many tourists and their dollars on site, who could blame them?

Tags: Sahara, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 6:07 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.