Well, at least to the departure lounge at Mopti airport, where I am writing this on my way to that perpetually illusive Timbuktu. My plane- above, has landed so it is looking hopeful...
What is it that makes everyone insist, in the face of enormous obstacles, on reaching this fabled city, tucked away in a desolate place between the desert and the Niger river? Well, centuries past it was the rumour of the gold which was said to pave the streets of Timbuktu which drove explorers and adventurers to their deaths in great numbers, as they met their destiny at the hands of hostile tribesmen; succumbed to disease or died of thirst on their way. But their cruel fates only seemed to spur others on in their quest to reach this goal, excited by the lure of the seemingly unobtainable, like the ill-fated suitors of the cruel Princess Turandot.
Today the journey to Timbuktu continues to be fraught with
seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but these for the rather less exotic
reasons of bureaucratic mismanagement and sloppy customer service. I started
two and a half months ago, just after my last trip had finished, to arrange
this one for my three collegues and myself, and until this morning it was still
unsure whether we had a place on the aircraft or not.
But here we are, once more on our way north- Father Columba, left above with Dima Bondarev and I, with the documentary film maker Jeremy Bristow, who will
be filming us in the libraries.
The Niger snakes its way north, still narrow, but increasing
in width daily. The earth is still the sandy colour of the Sahel north of
Mopti: the rains have only just begun here and the river vessel
Modibo Keita which brought me to Timbuktu last year has not yet begun its commuting between Mopti and
Timbuktu. Some of the villages below us are winking at us, reflecting the sun
from their few corrugated iron rooves, but most are entirely the colour of the
surrounding earth from which they are built, with not a solar panel or a satellite disc in sight.
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