![]() It's possible to take a boat down the Niger or you can take a bus, a trip that lasts a full day of traveling the 350 miles over mostly dirt roads, and what with the State department saying that some Toregs have decided that holding Americans for ransom is a responsible career opportunity-flying is the only option. The only way you can get there, if you aren't a fabulously wealthy rock star or industrialist and can travel by helicopter, is to take a 4x4 or jeep from Timbuktu, which has an airport, and just for the festival, Air Mali adds a couple of flights to their twice a week schedule to Mali's capitol of Bamako, via the nicer city of Mopti, just for the festival. What it is, is a cross between 'Lollapalooza' and 'Burning Man' festivals, taking place not in Timbuktu, but in a spot on the desert about a 60 miles to the northwest called Essakane, which is truly the middle of nowhere. ![]() They've been in decline and would drown their sorrows with music at events called "Takoubelt".Ībout ten years ago this became more formalized, and thus, around the turn of this century, the Festival of the Desert was born. The rice feeds the local population, and the price of salt isn't what it used to be and the Toregs, the tribe indigenous to the area has lost most of their camel's drought and disease, not to mention a rebellion against what was then a dictatorial government a few decades back, The dictatorship fell but the rebellion didn't until the early '90s, when they finally gave up. The true treasures of Timbuktu are the ancient manuscripts that the locals have preserved since the demise of the great University centuries before, and there is, of course, the river, without which, the town could not exist, and yes, the salt which is brought in trucks and not on camels, and the river irrigates vast rice paddies, which from the air looks extremely strange, a green finger reaching into the desert. The glorious city of treasure was a myth, or so it seemed to the west. The caravans from the salt mines brought the valuable edible rocks to the boats waiting on the river in exchange for other goods. It wasn't even a city, just a largish town with the great river Niger on the one side and the great Sahara desert on the other. Then there was the great disappointment the golden city in the middle of nowhere turned out to be made of adobe and dust. That is until the turn of the 19th century, when French and British explorers finally set foot in the place. Timbuktu was one of those places of legend that it was impossible to get to.
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