Zinder to Agadez, via Lake Chad.....

So, the long message id just written got wiped off the face of internet...Arg! So much for technology and wierdo keyboards where you end up pressing random buttons by mistake. We were not amused!

En fin....we finally made it north..... Agadez - phew! Didnt think we were ever going to get here. I never realised quite how in the middle of nowhere this place really is. 8 hot, dusty hours from zinder doesnt sound like much but when its across a continously shifting desert landscape....oops, excuse me, that should be, technically speaking, North Sahelian landscape but you could have fooled me, there seemed to be a LOT of sand out there! - a continual sand storm in progress; in a bus with no windows - it certainly feels like its at the end of the known world.

Indeed you could stamp "Hereafter there be Dragons" on the map north of it, although I guess its modern day equivalent would be more like "Hereafter there be a Uranium extraction plant and Algerian militants".

2 odd hours from the Algerian border we rolled into town looking like dust-covered extras from 'The Mummy'.

Agadez, Agadez, Agadez.....one of the great Saharan trading posts, the sight of its mud mineret enough to bring a little tear of joy to the weary eyes of cameleers tired after months of oceans of sand.....OOOOooooo yeah! and arent they still trading on it.

So much for my romantic medieval musings, what I found is an extended, FLAT, mud village which gears up into Tuareg-Disney-World-mode when the tourist bandwagon rolls into town from Oct to March. Charming.

After the 'normal' cities of the south (for normal, read cities that would exist whether a tourist pitched up or not) it came as a bit of a shock. Dozens of cutsy adobe hotels crammed into an area the size of a postage stamp jostle with offices of tour operatours who promise the ultimate Sahara experience.

The tea is all 'The Toureg' and the jewellry all 'Bijoux Touareg'. I suspect that all this says more about how we, the tourist, imagine the desert and want to experience it than any facet of its actual reality...although clearly, where there is smoke theres some fire too.

The few nomadic families we had the fortune to stay with in the East or meet left me with an impression more of awe at the sheer difficulty of the environment and living in it. Its a daily struggle where in 4 years a family can go from owning 800 head of camels to 200 and 200 head of cattle to 15. Where another can go from over 200 cattle to just 3 goats and a couple of chickens.

It seems grotesque to reduce it to a bottled 'desert experience' available in formulas of a couple of days to several weeks bombing across the sands in a fuel-guzzling 4x4 and ending it with a stay in a 'typical toureg-like' adobe hotel, sleeping on toureg-style beds, under a calabash lamp (tuareg, of course...), chilled beer in one hand, guide book in the other......which incidently is where we find ourselves at the moment...so there you go, look whose preaching! But there is something discomfitting and deeply uncomfortable about it.

However, despite the whole Touareg-cutsy bandwagon thing they have going, in the current torpid climate its more dead than alive and I havent seen another white face in town except for the odd expat who lives here and the Federation of the Red Cross people, but more of that later.

Having said all the above there is a certain sleepy charm about it, with its narrow red mud streets and flat-topped houses. But what has really saved the day is Ioussoufu, a friend of the sister of Timothy. One of the french Trio we met in Niamey and travelled with a bit. Ioussoufu was with them at the time and we met him there. He told us to give him a bell when we got here and so we did.

We had already booked into a small 'typical Touareg style adobe-type' hotel when we did but he had set a room aside and it was all ready and waiting for us. Still, hes spent a lot of time with us and has been very welcoming and hospitable. Its made a difference to be shown around town by someone who lives here and seems to know everyone and everyone him. Its also been fun to meet the family and be invited to several dinners and lunches at their various houses (half the town appears to be family). He is a silversmith who exports his and his associations work to Europe each year, which is how he met Timothys sister in the first place and it been interesting to be shown the workshops and how they work and have the designs explained to us. What beautiful workmanship and how much patience and time. All the above has made the stay both interesting and lot less stressful, as, as we are the only tourists dumb enough to pitch up in the middle of the Sahara in the middle of the hottest time of the year, the touts are out en force. Although if you are stupid enough to go out in the middle of the day they are knocked for a loop by the heat too and you can pass almost un-noticed.

We had come up here hoping to go the Air and the Mts Belgazane but is appears that unfortunately the Touareg rebellion is heating up again and we've been advised against it (hence the place crawling with federation people after a couple of rebel attacks), so it looks like it will be Niamey next afterall. I guess its a good excuse to come back in tourist season, to see Disney in full flow, to visit Ioussoufu again and benefit from tempatures hopefully under the mid 40's.

But I get ahead of myself.....the last three weeks have been full of activity and at the same time a lot of waiting...waiting for transport, waiting of information, waiting for a cooler time of the day to move. From Zinder we left in the direction of NGuigmi, near the border with Chad and supposedly its lake. I say supposedly because when we got there we were told that the rains had been so poor last year that 'the lake had not come back' and indeed had run in the other direction dragging all the fishing villages dependent on it in its wake. Behind it it has left a string of deserted settlements and a wide, barren salt plane in no-mans land, perfect for holding up cross-border vehicles Highwayman style.

After a several reported robberies we decided to forgo a viewing of the ex-shores of the ex-lake Chad and contented ourselves with NGuigmi's giant camel market and post market branding - (horrible beasts! You will never be able to convince me otherwise), the towns tiny winding streets and glinting grey mud houses, the salt crystals in their wall twinkling in the sun and visiting with the local expats - 6 charming nuns some of whom had been there over 35 years and one of who was a fellow compatriot of mine and made us a mean expresso. Clearly you never know what youll find where! After almost two months of nasty Nescafe, it was ..... beyond description. We also found our way out to the snow white dunes of the Tal for the night, with the help of a contact given us by someone in Zinder.

The Tal is a huge dune of sparkling white sand, and in an area where the sand is laid out in bands of beige, ochre and brown it stands out in swirling ridges like a rich blob of whipped cream. Walking along the top of the ridges at sunset with the wind chasing the grains aross the dunes is like walking in a surreal hot snowscape......

Naturally, we got sandstormed in the night and woke up well-encrusted. Im telling you, this sandstorm buisness is becoming a feature!

From NGuigmi we backtracked to Goure, where we spent the evening with a family of extremely hospitable ozzie missionaries...tucked into a suprise PIZZA, PIZZA and salad for dinner and slept like babies under the comforting drone of the central cooler. The next day saw us up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to try and find transport to Kelle, a town at the foot of the Koutous Hills.

6 hours wait by the roadside found us a lift in the back of a pickup. 26 of us and 2 squalling babies squashed into the back. Not the most comfortable ride of my life but I came out tops. About halfway through the trip I discovered that I could burrow down under the knees and make quite a comfortable, well-ventilate nest between the bags and knapsacks. Eric lost out and spent the trip perched on the rail, dodging acacia trees at a specific cry. Acacia watch was kept up by a man at the back and every so often he would let out a holler. The whole truck would collectively dodge the tree preforming interesting twists and contortions.

Kelle was pure Mungo Park style. In Zinder we had been given the contact of the Sultan of Kelle and told to go see him.

We pitched up in town quite late and nobbled a kid to show us his house. There we entered through several dusty courtyards, the wooden ceilings hung with forests of charms to ward off the evil eyes and visitors with nefarious intentions. We finally popped out into a neat little living room, painted kermet-the-frog green, lined with overstuffed velour chairs in contrasting swirls of gold and something. A plastic clock in the shape of the Haram A-Sharif in Mecca hung lop-sided on the wall over a 70's TV set, coyly covered in a crochet doiley that would have gladdened the heart of many a south coast granny.

After a little wait we were graciously received by the Sultan of Kelle who put us under the care of his son and sent us to stay in an guest house of his. Amazing...a fawlty-toweresque four star hotel at the foot of the koutous hills...all the ameneties in place: light fixtures, fans, AC but alas....no electricity, fine showers and toilet...but no water (it did come back later though)...and all covered in a fine but inpenetrable layer of dust. It was so hot though that sleeping outside was the best option in anycase and when the shower regained its water, it was perfect.

The Sultan's son and the town of Kelle (town is a big word here), hosted us during our stay. We were not allowed to cook or purchase any of our meals, their hospitality was discreet and incredibly generous. Pots of food put in sudden and unexpected appearances and in such quantities that the little puppy we shared out luxury accomodation with was extremely happy and fast became a firm friend. We were provided with a guide and donkeys and were able to set out the next day for the hills.

They are not really hills but more like a series of plateaus. Not really that hight but the combination of rock, sand and dazzling blue sky was wonderful. Our guide was extremely patient and had a bit of a resigned look of a nanny whose taken the kids out to play as we rushed around bolting up and down the escarpments and scrambling up the rockfaces. By 12 though we took up station under the nearest tree, our nearest neighbour being a very dead goat stuck half way up the next door tree...?!? and proceed to sleep off the afternoon heat...or at least try to.

In the evening, to the cry of wolves in the surrounding hills (mystery of the dead goat in the tree solved...) we wandered around a bit more before stopping to set up camp in the compound of a little old man who had grown tired of the "urban life" in Kelle and had taken to the bush with his 6 chickens, 3 sheep and supercilious camel. An extremely modest compound made of a small conical grass hut, another one for the chickens, a small granary and some rudimentary wooden fences around his livestock. We, the aliens in head torches and a mosquito dome landed in the middle of it like creatures from outer space.

Not soon after our arrival the pots began to appear - a pot of cool water to drink, a pot of rice and sauce to snack on, a pot of camel milk, a pot of millet paste and sugar and then straw for our donkeys, water to water them with.....his hospitality was overwhelming. We cooked later on and invited him to eat with us, he wouldnt, preferring to take a bit in his bowl for the morning, but no sooner had we started cooking than he stuck his hand in his granary and brought out a fat onion for us and some strips of peppery dried meat.

The next morning we left our generous host and headed back towards Kelle where in the evening we were met by Mohammed and Ahmed with a car we had organised in Zinder to take us to Termite Massif, a mountain chain out in the Sahara which is, alas, only accessable by private transport. Its a dramatic semi-lunear landscape of scraggy black outcrops and deep ochre sands overlooking the lighter plains and dunes of the desert beyond. We only spent an evening and early morning there but it was impressive. We saw gazelles out in the hills and came across the most amazing star-trek ants. They were silvery pink and glinted in the sunlight.

In the evening the elders of the local campments of toubou nomads came to visit. Through Ahmed we had an interesting conversation in which i think they felt a bit cross-questioned. It seemed only fair to ask them if they had anything they wished to ask us...after several moments silence the head look at Ahmed and said: "Ask them, there are many tourists who come here, and now they have come here. WHY? What is there to see???"

Its a feeling I have a lot in Niger. People seemed pleased to see you, happy to show you around and completely mystified as to why you might have left your comfortable existence to come and see where they live a life which they say they are used to but which is undeniably hard. Its a tough question to answer, its true that there are many beautiful and interesting things to see in this country. But a bit like Agadez perhaps a lot of the things we come to see and do are more to do with what we want to see or imagine than the reality as Nigeriennes see it. However, in the end after over a month here I have to say that it is a country I would definately come back to. Not just for the country but for the pleasure of travelling round it and for the Nigeriennes themselves. Try to explain that to a Nigerienne. It comepletely foxes them!