Part 8. Timbuktu.

It has to be said, and it frequently is, that Timbuktu is not the most pleasant place on earth. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, except for the large numbers of hawkers and 'guides' who have obvioulsy been spolied by all the rich tourists and don't understand that not everyone wants to be interrupted every five minutes by people trying to sell identical bracelets. There are several interesting mosques - in the same Sahel style as the one at Djenné - and there's the desert. But even that is not as nice looking as the desert by Chinguetti in Mauritania. I ended up staying for a day - I'd have left earlier if the bush taxis didn't all leave at 6am, and I'd been able to find some postcards a bit quicker. For somewhere as iconic as Timbuktu, postcards were oddly hard to find.

I left the city in an old Land Cruiser bush taxi. On the ferry across the river I got talking to a Britsh couple who were on a two week package tour of Mali, as they were in a privately hired 4x4 they ended up seeing a lot more of the country that I did in less time. The bush taxi stopped at the main cross country road and I took a local minibus from there. Despite being only 180km to Sevaré, this took about six hours. At every small settlement we stopped to pick up and drop off passengers and merchandise for the market in a village just outside of Sevaré. We also frequently stopped to top the radiator with water, the engine with oil, and to do running repairs as is the norm for sub-Saharan public transport.

After a night in Sevaré I took the bus to Bobo-Dioulasso ('Bobo'), officially the second city of Burkina Faso. But in reality an overgrown village with pleasantly tree-lined and traffic-free roads and a population of themost relaxed and friendly people I've ever come across.