My first ever hitchhiking journey, through the Sahara Desert in Mauritania.
I was sitting on the side of a road in the surf town Taghazout, on the west coast of Morocco, with my best friend Tamsin, when a boy we had both met the night before walked passed. We called him over and asked his plans.
He said, ‘well I have a few weeks left on my visa, so I thought I’d hitchhike to Mauritania and get a cargo train across the desert, it’s said to be one of the longest trains in the world, I’d love to have some company if either of you want to come with me’.
I was sold. I had never even heard of Mauritania, had no idea where it was, and had known Ben for just ten minutes. I knew this was going to be the journey of a lifetime. Not something I was going to miss out on. Tamsin was less enthusiastic, made it clear she didn’t want to come and was happy to split.
I hugged my best friend good bye and set off hitchhiking to an African country that I’d never heard of, with a person I’d only just met. Ben seemed to know very little about the country too, which in a way, made me feel better, the oblivion became equal.
We got our first ride with a male nurse, the next one squeezed in the back of a car with a bicycle, and so on and so on.
The further we drove, the more desolate the landscapes became. Instead of the small villages and settlements between the larger towns there was just a vast, open desert landscape. The cities didn’t have outskirts or suburbs, just the scorching emptiness of the Sahara.
I gasped as I noticed a wild herd of camels galloping through the hazy mirage of heat that filled my eyes. Their thundering, stomping movement had an unexpected elegance. As the camels stormed to the right another movement on the left hand side of the horizon caught my eye, A tornado was rasping itself up into the sky sucking the desert sand into a swirling pillar of ferocious turmoil.
Although in 2018 Mauritania was declared landmine free, (I was there in 2019) the effects of the conflict with Western Sahara in 1976 were still visible. There were signs at regular intervals along the side of the road warning us of minefields on the edge of the well trodden paths in the thick sand. It’s an understatement to say that this was unnerving every time I stepped off the road to go to the loo.
Tea was served at every stop. A Moroccan delicacy, mint with a blood curdling amount of sugar. The delicacy was in the pouring of the tea. It would first come from the tea pot, and poured into a glass, from a height of almost a meter. Then it would be poured into another glass, from an equally mountainous height, creating froth from the air that was captured in the liquid. The more froth on the tea, the higher the quality.
The Gendarmerie border, from Western Sahara to Mauritania, is undoubtably, one of the most mysterious, extraordinary places I have ever visited in my life.
There was no road to follow whatsoever, simply vast open desert landscape, and not a building in sight. Considering this was a legal, official border, I would have thought there would be at least an office or a sign? To make things even harder to navigate, the desert was so windy, that fresh sand was covering all the potential previous tyre tracks.
Something that I still to this day find difficult to describe, is the sight from the window in this extraordinary land. For miles, as far as I could see, stretching out across the shimmering sand, were hundreds, thousands, of rotting cars. Some fairly new, some just pieces of metal, some were smashed, others were buried with the years of Saharan sand that had blasted onto them. There were encapsulated into the guts of the desert. All were abandoned. Why they were there, I do not know.
Eventually we got to the immigration office, a rotting shed in the middle of the dunes. Whilst waiting for our visas to process, we met a man named Mokhtar who said he could host us.
Mokhtar told us to wait for half an hour, and he would be finished working. We could then go with him to his home which was a five minute walk from the cargo train that this whole journey was about. After four hours of waiting I began to get suspicious, ‘don’t worry, this is Africa, time does not exist’ I was told. After six hours, Mokhtar re-appeared in a battered black car with broken windows. ’You took way longer than half an hour’ I said to Mokhtar, ‘yes my friend, you are in Africa’ I was once again reminded.
Mokhtar’s house was utterly humble, consisting of one room, with no furniture. We slept on the floor, and cooked on a camping stove. This may sound desperately uncomfortable, but the humbleness, made me feel an instant connection to my host, there was no need for me to be falsely polite as a guest, I could be, at one, as I am, and in equality with those around me.
Finally, onto the train, the section that this entire article is all about!
Mokhtar lived in Nouadhibou, the exact ‘city’ where the train would supposedly leave from (I put the word city in inverted commas because these African desert settlements are not what most would call cities). And the ‘train station’ was just a ten minute walk from his house. The main issue we had was with the timetable which simply stated that our train would arrive once every 24 hours. At which hour specifically, was a fact left to the knowledge of the soul of the Sahara. Only time would tell.
The main reason for this vague timing was because the train was not meant for passengers. This great steel anaconda, was 2.5km in length, carrying iron ore on a 704km journey across the Sahara, from an iron ore factory in Zouerat to the dusty settlement of Nouadhibou in the West.
We walked to the area of the desert which had train tracks running through, (there’s no way I can name this place a train station). To our delight, we could see a vast amount of locals that were already waiting by the tracks, carrying huge loads of their own cargo, such a vegetables, all piled into sacks. Although the train is not officially for people, I was reminded once again, that I was in Africa, and there certainly wasn’t any other form of transport to get across the desert. I enjoyed the wait, small fires were built up along the tracks, and tea was being prepared in every direction I looked. Boxes of juicy dates were being shared around, and one of my fellow local passengers even tied me a turban, in preparation for the wind and sand on the train!
After just two hours, as if by some miracle, the train arrived. It lurched along the tracks, making a cacophony of screeching and chugging, blasting my ears, creating a wind so powerful that I could not open my eyes until it came to a halt. We climbed up the metal ladder into the pit of an empty cart, assisting the locals with chucking their vegetables in with us, and within the honk of a horn, we were off. There were certainly no pit stops in store for us on this ride! Or so I thought…
There may not be service stations or cafes along the way while you travel in the pit of a cargo train through the biggest desert in the world, however this will never stop the accustomed locals from making themselves comfortable at all times. In the far left corner of the cart, a fire was beginning to crack, and of course, the delicacy of the sugary mint tea was on the brew. There really isn’t a place that these people are unable to drink their tea!
The cart trundled and wobbled, sand swirling up the walls, but without fail, the tea was poured from the highest of heights, aimed with uncanny accuracy into the bottom of the glasss, creating a froth thicker than the layer of sand gradually building up on the floor. I was stunned. As I looked up and out of the cart, the desert swallowed my view, filling my entire vision. Nothingness. As I looked down, a small crammed metal cart, a fire, and a tea party. Exquisite.
However, the commodities didn’t stop there! Once everyone sat in the cart had received their hourly dose of tea, what did they whack on the fire but a huge pot of spaghetti! I was gobsmacked.
I love the fantastic uncertainty in Saharan culture regarding the number of people that may appear for a meal. By some mysterious and unspoken understanding there seems to always be enough.. The sharing, and providing, is the most important thing about the meal itself.
Ben and I enjoyed what we called our ‘Mauritani-spaghetti’, as we all shared one giant plate across the cart. Because that’s how they do it there, there are no stingy personal portions. There is one plate, X amount of people, and you all just tuck in, using your bare hands as cutlery.
The train rumbled as the tracks curved. As the sun became dimmer, the stars shone brighter. As the rich orange sky faded a deep and darkening blue gradually filled the enormity of the space above us dominating the orange that was the sky. The only thing I could see, other than cascading dunes.
The cart got quieter and the fire faded down to just a glow. I lay down, looking up at the stars of the clean Sahara night sky.
‘Yes my friend, you are in Africa’, the words rung gently as I fell asleep.
