Tam, Algeria to Niamey, Niger

Thursday 5th January
We left after a great breakfast of fresh bread, homemade marmalade and cake. It was late morning by the time we’d fuelled up and headed south with our cars smelling like a fresh bakery. We camped only just off the piste in an area just north of the construction site location we’d stopped at on our way up. Steve’s car was making a bit of a strange noise and opened up the bonnet to investigate, but felt best to leave things as they were.
Friday 6th January
We got quite an early start for us – about 9 and headed south for the border. As we reached the tarmac Steve’s car cut out. The guys worked out that the alternator had packed up. A few alterations were made and we got going again, but we hadn’t got far down the tarmac when the car cut out again. John called Scorpian Racing for some advice – the great advantage of the sat phone. As both cars had two batteries – one for working a fridge or freezer the suggestion was to keep swapping car batteries. This we did and we were 9.5 km from In Guezum before the car cut out again. The freezer was still on in the car and draining the other battery. So we swapped batteries again and jump started the car. At this point I started on a new book – travels with myself and another, five journeys from hell, by Martha Gellhorn, which sounded quite extreme and made the present situation seem more mundane – at this short distance from In Guezum I could even pick up a mobile signal – quite unusual for the journey. She does state in the introduction that the only aspects of travel that is guaranteed to hold an audience is disaster! In In Guezum we fuelled up – fuels much cheaper in Algeria than the more European Niger prices. Steve fuelled up keeping the car running – but this is something that’s not noted here. We then reached the border post at 15:30. It took about an hour and a half to sort out the paperwork – we were the only people at the border. This was long enough for the car to cut out again. John thought about another call to Scorpian Racing but our guide Sleaman, advised it would not be wise to use a sat phone in front of the border Police. We then said goodbye to our guide and his son before heading south. We wanted to avoid the Niger border of Assamaka because we’d never managed to find it on the way out. We knew the waypoint we had for Assamaka from Chris Scott’s book was wrong from the way up. Unfortunately within 10-15 minutes we could see something on the ridge of the horizon which revealed itself to be Assamaka. We should have headed back to the erroneous waypoint as we knew this was out of site of the border. We kept both cars running and started on the paperwork. It was now 17:30 and only about half an hour until sunset. The border town had a few officially uniformed officers and quite a few hangers on. One was trying to negotiate being our guide to Arlit, but I managed to convince him that there was really no space in our car. We left Steve and John to try and do the paperwork quickly. There were tourist taxes to pay, but each receipt only stated half the amount, and car insurance together with the money changer and poor rates this was definitely a place we would have been better to avoid at this time. There wasn’t much change from 100 Euros for two cars and four people, but we were keen to get some distance between us and the border town. We drove east towards Arlit until we were out of site of the border post and then headed south in the direction of Ingal. The piste to Arlit is quite wide here and we realized later that we stopped and camped, not that far from the main piste, but we’d managed to find a dune to get behind which was welcome as the desert was pretty flat here.
Saturday 7th January
We jump started Steve’s car and headed south west and managed to pick up the clear piste to Ingal quite quickly. It was pretty featureless white desert until we reached the area of the first well, Anes Barakka shown on the Michelin map where there were lots of camels grazing and the odd herdsman. There didn’t appear to be much to graze on except mirages. As we got further south to the I-n-Abangharit well there were more tribes and people collecting water from the well. We later learned that the women in black at the well may have been slaves to the Tuareg. After Tegguidda-n-Tessoum we took the piste towards Agadez and the soil became a browner iron rich colour. Donkeys were now getting more frequent instead of the camels. The landscape was still pretty flat but we managed to find a small valley between two villages to camp the night.
Sunday 8th January
As we approached Agadez the distinctive mud mosque minaret and water towers showed us the way. The outskirts were quite busy and we passed the animal market. We checked back into the Hotel Tidane. That afternoon Kathy and I had our second attempt at trying to visit the mosque minaret. An English speaking man took us to the Sultans Palace to get permission, although he was not around or busy sleeping and the caretaker was sent for while we were taken to his brother’s jewellery shop opposite. We weren’t given any pressure to buy anything and after 5/10 mins were taken inside the mosque. The entrance to the minaret is very low and like going inside the pyramids at Giza, but after once revolution of the minaret we could stand up until we neared the top where it became progressively narrower and you had to squeeze up to the top viewing space which just fit 3 of us. It was quite hazy, but impressive the uniform terracotta buildings, all of only one storey, the Air mountains and a good view of the bustling street by the grand Marche. Agadez is still quite compact and we could see the edges of town. When I asked how many people lived in Agadez, the guy told me only 8,000. John and Steve dropped Desiree’s excess luggage from Tam off with a friend and asked for any good car mechanics. He did know a place where we could take e alternator, but it wouldn’t be open until tomorrow. We went to Pension Tellit for Sundowner drinks, near the mosque, although it was quite hazy and not a spectacular sunset, but pleasant rooftop terrace – this was where Michel Palin had stayed in Agadez. We went to the le Pillier restaurant – run by the same hotel owner and old Italian. I enjoyed a fantastic freshly filled pasta, buttered steak and ice cream together with a gin and tonic. We visited a bar on the way back to the hotel which had pleasant courtyard seating out the back – that was until the urinal in the corner that we hadn’t noticed, started being used. The smell and ambience was not quite the same after that!
Monday 9th January
I went to the bank before 8:30 as having been there before I knew the queues could get quite long and involved 3 queues – one for the card transaction, another to get a signed receipt and the third longest queue to finally get the cash. On the way back from the bank I bought some material to hopefully make some cooler clothes. They have lots of bright coloured materials, but the bright blues yellows and greens I thought would be a bit much for me. I took the material to a tailors shop who had pictures of lots of different outfits on the wall but said it would take 3 days. Tomorrow was Tabaski, so I imagined that it would be difficult to get an outfit made quickly anywhere, so I decided to wait until Niamey. A lot of the women’s outfits were fitted and look very nice on the slim women – but to call them slim was probably insulting as for the majority it was difficult not to be slim in Niger. Early in the morning, there were quite a number of children wandering around with bowls which may have been just in the hope of food, or they may have been given food somewhere in town. One of the jewellery shops opposite the mosque was run by handicapped people. I bought an Agadez cross pendant. The Tuareg have a pendant for each of their towns. We’d first seen them in Ghat, Libya. John hadn’t noticed there was a pendant for each town until Algeria which shows how well he was doing at avoiding the jewellery sellers! The guys had dropped the alternator off at the car mechanic and we met up for breakfast.
At the breakfast café we met a journalist who has spent time filming in West Africa for the BBC and is now doing some work for the Anthropological Society. He talked about places of interest on our route in Mauritania and Mali. In the bank Kathy met 3 guys who ate lunch next to us at lunch in a café yesterday who all turned out to be journalists.
Of the foreign visitors to Agadez a few were wealthy tourists from Europe or else they were journalists or aid workers. The reason that tourists need to be wealthy here is the cost of the flights and traveling in the popular Air mountain region to the north east is expensive as guides are recommended and can cost about 100 pounds a day. Within the last month a French doctor had been shot dead in the Air mountains. We’ first learnt about this from Mohammed in El Katrun, Libya. It wasn’t easy to find the news out here, but the story seemed to be that the guide who was driving his vehicle with the tourists tried to drive off when someone tried to stop the vehicle. A gunman shot at the vehicle and whether he was aiming to or not, shot the French Doctor dead. It wasn’t clear whether the motive was a robbery or not. The others weren’t keen to visit the Air mountains because of the price of guides and they felt southern Algeria probably held the best scenery, although the villages, oasis, waterfalls and mountains sounded very beautiful in the guide book.
Kathy found a craft shop in the afternoon and I got some new sandals – quite environmentally sound as made from old tyres! They also had some books in the shop, but a number of the thick paperback books turned out to be catalogues of artwork by Sotherbys for auction. In the Dogon region of Mali it is said that many of the historic masks have been sold to the western world.
There was quite a lot of music playing in the streets of Agadez and I thought it would be good to buy some especially to get some variety to the car music. When I asked for popular Niger music the CD which were also videos seemed to be the traditional cure salee type music or otherwise rap music which didn’t sound very appealing or what we’d been listening to. I went back to the music shop opposite the hotel, and next to the popular table football and asked for what they were playing which turned out to be a cassette copy of Ethiopian music.
We went back to the le Pilier restaurant for our evening meal – not being very adventurous, but the fresh pasta and buttered steak tasted so good. For a final drink we went back to our hotel and sat on the roof. It was great listening to the sounds from the music shops and marche de nuit opposite the hotel. It was also a great place to go in the morning and take photos of the people passing by.
Tuesday 10th January
Outside our bedroom that morning was the sound of baaing as I looked out through the shutters to see some goats being cleaned – their final wash before being sacrificed later on. Out on the streets there wasn’t the usual rush of people going to work, but people dressed in their best outfits and carrying their prayer mats. A couple of horses dressed up also galloped past the hotel. As we left town at 10, the whole male population of Agadez seemed to be pouring into the centre. Once on the road to Tahoua it was much quieter and we only passed about 6-7 trucks and a broken down land rover – there aren’t many land rovers here. Towards Tahoua the villages started to have beehive shaped granaries. People were wearing their best clothes – some brighter colours such as men in pink. It was like driving out on their Christmas Day. Later in the afternoon fires could be seen in the villages with the goat meat stretched on poles around them. On the road we hadn’t seen many vehicles, but half the vehicles we’d passed were broken down. We reached Tahoua, Niger’s 5th town and checked into it most luxurious accommodation, which really the only merit was it had clean sheets. For our evening meal we walked a couple of kilometers across town to an Italian restaurant. The owner was very proud of his cooking, but unfortunately the gnocci – not that I have any idea how to cook it, tasted very doughy and the cheese sauce on the pasta was not desirable either.
Wednesday 11th January
We left at 8 to make the journey to Niamey before it got dark with no lights on Steve’s land rover. We passed lots of villages centred on the road with lots of ramps to slow the traffic down. There was more being grown in this area – mostly fields of onions with irrigation water. We passed through Birnin-Konni the border town to Nigeria by mid morning. Between the villages were herdsmen who showed great control over their animals who lined up in packs behind them before crossing the road. We reached Niamey and our first sight of the River Niger by late afternoon, just as I was comfortably falling asleep in the afternoon sun after a cool beer. The hotels were very full due to the annual West Africa conference of minister which this year was taking place in Niamey. There were also quite a lot aid workers around, so we ended up having to take a suite in a hotel, which was a lot more than we’d been paying in Niger, although at least the standard had gone up. This turned out to be the same hotel that a friend of Kathy and Steve who works for an anti slavery charity works for. In the hotel they had satellite television and the first television news we’d seen since Tunisia. We had no idea the debate on Iran was coming to the fore. We popped out to a restaurant round the corner. Guinea fowl and hedgehogs were some of the meat on the menu. The restaurant was very smart and the only other people there was a table of ministers who must have been attending the conference with their cars and chauffers waiting outside. The food was very good although difficult to chose some of the African speciality and sauces with the names not meaning very much and the waiter warned me against my first choice of sauce as being amer which I later learnt to be bitter. We enjoyed some French red wine which was a lot smoother than any red wine we’d drunk recently. Steve and Kathy’s friend joined us later in the restaurant and it was one in the morning before we left – a very late night for us.
Thursday 12th January.
Steve found a garage just round the corner from the hotel which said they had a suitable alternator for the land rover. We headed off to the city centre to visit the museum. The rough guide describes it one of the best in West Africa, but after the visit I realized that this was on a very different scale to Europe. They had a number of small building with different exhibits, but a number of these were closed such as the dinosaur skeletons. The exhibits we saw included the different costumes of various tribes as well as their different types of huts. The wooden trunk of the arbre de tenere was cemented in concrete in a cage with some photos of what it look like in situ before it was hit by a truck. One of the most detailed buildings was about the Uranium industry, although nothing looked like it had been updated since the downturn in the mid 1980s. Outside the museum I bought a long cotton tent like dress to be a bit cooler. Here it must be in the thirties for a few hours each day. They had a big textiles shop which I went inside to see if they made clothes as I had some material – made in the Ivory Coast, bought in Agadez. All the cloth here was made in England – Manchester. I had no idea that there was still a textile industry in Manchester. An employee took me to a tailor in the petit marche opposite where I was measured up and shown a book of photos. The skirt and top will be made by Saturday and cost the equivalent of seven pound fifty. This seemed very reasonable so I didn’t see any point in negotiating. Even the poorer women on the roadside outside the petit marche selling a few vegetables look very smart in their fitted top and skirts of bright printed cotton. We went to a CD shop and bought 4 CDs, 3 pirate copies, the other by Mamar Kassey a group referred to in the guide book for traditional music including the flute. Later in the afternoon we headed down to the River Niger and the Kennedy bridge which was very busy with traffic pouring in both directions including people on the pavements. Steve and Kathy said they taken the dogs for a walk down to the river, but thought it would be dangerous to cross the river as people were parting ahead of Dillon this could be dangerous if people starting moving off the narrow pavement into the traffic. By the bridge looked like allotments with patches of lettuces being watered from the Niger. A young boy was in his pirogue and seemed to be continually bailing out water that it must have been quite a challenge to keep it afloat. We walked along the river to the back of the Palais de Congres where African music was playing for the ministers. We watched the sun setting across the Niger and made our way to the Grand hotel for a gin and tonic and great view of the Niger in the last light. We met up with Ramona again and made the short trip back to last nights restaurant, but this time we sat out the back which was like a different restaurant, much more informal but with the same great food. Yippee - this is the fastest internet cafe Ive found in West Africa.
Friday 13th January

We headed into town to see the Grand Marche and walked back along a street full of book stalls. We hadn’t seen many bookshops in Niger at all and did manage to find a few English books in these second hand stalls including animal farm. I bought a Nigerian novel, Elina and Miller’s Death of a Salesman – something I’d never read or seen. We retired back to the hotel for the heat of the day before going back into Niamey for the late afternoon opening of the bank and another walk by the River Niger towards sunset. We had drinks at the Grand Hotel for sunset, which was a lot more crowded and didn’t seem so pleasant. Although the grandest hotel in Niamey, the building looks to be a 60’s 70’s concrete construction, so not very grand at all apart from its views over the Niger.
We walked into Niamey for the first time at night and picked a Lebanese restaurant which served great food and a chilled red wine. We then went to try at some of the city’s bars starting at a rooftop terrace which was playing cheesy dance music with a few wealthier Nigerien clientele. After one drink John had soon had enough so went back to the hotel. We were going to visit La Cloche bar on the way back which was lit up and looked livelier by night than when John and I had visited during the day. As we walked to La Cloche we passed many boys and young men sleeping rough and retired for the night along the sides of the street. We got to about 50m from La Cloche bar and I heard Kathy shout as I felt a sharp tug on my shoulder as a guy had run up and pulled my bag. I had my left hand on my bag and was pulled backwards and across the street, but managed to get both hands on my bag handle, but then I was facing him with a tight grip on my bag handle the other side. I was facing away from Kathy and Steve and into the darkness and between my greater fear of being hit and his greater desperation he had the greater pull and disappeared down an alley. This had all probably happened within about a second although it felt like I’d held on for a while. From being in the La Cloche terrace the day before I knew the area behind the street was a big empty wasteland, although thought you had to climb over a wall to get to it. Steve ran after the guy down the alley but I shouted for him to come back and when he did he said it was impossible to see anything in the unlit area. This all happened outside the Commercial Bank of Niger which does have armed guards outside. Kathy said she think someone was offering to help but amid the confusion she was frightened it was someone else trying to take her bag and shouted for him to go away. We took a taxi to the police station which proved to be just a couple of blocks away and tried to find someone to report to. At first it looked like we were walking towards some cells but may have just been some sleeping accommodation for the police. In what turned out to be the main building our arrival woke up a policeman speaking in the entrance hall who wrote down some information in a log book and gave me a number and told me to come back tomorrow morning. Steve recognized the way back to our hotel and we walked back. The insurance company only had a 24 hour no for medical emergencies and would not be open until Monday. Thankfully this had been the first day that I’d worn my money belt under my clothes and had the passports, my cards and some money in there. The big loss was the digital camera within my bag and my purse still had lots of money in it. This is a real cash society and we’d only been able to withdraw money on cards in Tripoli, Libya, Agadez and Niamey, Niger and in hindsight we would have carried a lot more Euros cash with us as cards were very limited. We had to borrow money from others in the group before we got to Agadez. The room was very hot and I didn’t sleep well with the moment of the mugging going over and over I my head, so I sat in the bathroom which had a tiled bench which felt nice and cool and started to read the Nigerian novel I’d bought in the market. I felt very stupid for going into town with so much in my bag. It was actually the first night on the trip of walking around a city, the rest of the trip not staying anywhere bigger than a town and like many cities in the world there was crime. It was also a city that felt fine to walk in during the day, but at night there weren’t many people walking around except the homeless. From the walk into the city it felt a lot quieter and I remember thinking we should take a taxi back. However, the distances were so short to walk and after what felt a big meal it was good to be walking. Seeing the pleased reaction of the uniformed guard at our hotel to a one pound tip the next day, in a place where they would be used to western people a tourists bag with any money was going to be huge.

Saturday 14th January
I got the telephone directory from reception to see if I could find any shops that sold cameras. I knew Niamey would not be a place to try and replace a digital SLR camera, but thought there might be somewhere that we could get some basic digital camera. We drove to an electronics store on one of the main avenues out of town which had a big advert in the telephone directory, but had one digital camera. We asked about any other shops and he directed us back towards the Petit Marche. After asking in a mobile phone shops, the owner sent one of his assistants to guide us to a shop which had 3 digital cameras, but they were asking hundreds of pounds for very basic Kodak digital cameras. We’d seen a bright red shop called photo guida the previous day which John thought might be a possibility which turned out to have one. As I suspected, people don’t come to one of the poorest capitals in the world to buy a digital camera. The shop had the prices written on the goods and were not willing to negotiate. They also had USB memory sticks which had also been in my bag. Realising that this was the best chance for this trip of replacing the camera and getting a basic USB stick we bought them and headed to the bank to replaced the stolen cash and cash used for the camera. Mali also has the same currency as Niger – the West African CFA which is directly linked to the Euro in rate.
We then went to the tailor in the Petit Marche who proudly showed me the skirt and elaborate top he’d made. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the best of moods and wasn’t able to show him the appreciation he deserved as my mind was on trying to find the police station again. We drove to a police station which I didn’t recognize and it looked like there was a group of people waiting to be charged. The officers gave us directions to the other police station, but we went back to the hotel to get the torn slip of paper I received with my crime number on it. The police station was a lot livier by day. I went to the same room and showed them my slip of paper. After five minutes another police officer walked in, one of the broadest men in Niger. He spoke good English and was very helpful. He said that the police officer was not very good the night before, as if an officer is sent down by the River Niger before 10 or 11 in the morning there is a good chance of finding items, although obviously not money. The policeman asked us if the police in our country would be likely to find a stolen bag for which we could only say no. He took an interest in the camera when we told him how much it was worth and said there would be no similar cameras in Niamey. He apologized and asked for some money to do some investigation to help people at the market talk – the equivalent of six pounds, gave us his mobile phone number and asked us to call him in a few days. He also gave us a form with details of the crime which could be sent to the insurance company. By this stage it was already the afternoon and we decided it would probably be best to relax and stay another night, rather than rushing on. We needed to find a cheaper hotel though. We drove across town down a wide avenue which contained the huge American embassy to a hotel that was already full before returning back to another hotel 100m down the road from our original hotel. The Hotel Sahel which was previously full proved to be much cheaper and cleaner with good views over the River Niger and we saw our best sunset with the river really glowing red. We returned back to the Lebanese restaurant that night – but this time we drove. It felt good to be going back into Niamey and not letting one incident and one man spoil a country that I’d really enjoyed.