Bamako Bamako Bamako! A day of rest before some continue and some go home

Waking up we discovered how beautiful location our hotel actually has. The restaurant lies ON the river Niger. The pool has a bar and WiFi. The rooms big, comfortable and AC. Great atmosphere, good food and amazing people!

The riverbank with the hotel well situated.

Relaxing by the poolside. We reiterated the whole journey from how people changed to how much we experienced.

Lounging by the pool. Blog updating, some beers and sun. We had a very important descision to make: Is it too dangerous to continue? It was up to each individual to decide for themselves what they wanted to do. A delegation from the group was sent out to hear the latest from the police, the military and the government. After having pondered team Mirage decided to not go further. Of the 19 original members 8 wanted to go.

It was time to take farewell to our noble steed "The Beast". Mo is giving our car a huge good-bye hug.
Daniel is here sitting on the hood of their car. The four cars (Team Mirage "The Beast", Team Close Shave, Team Bluey and Team Fragile-X "Cherrie") that were not going to go on had been lined up before the potential buyers were going to come.

The sunset with our hotel in the background. In the picture is Ahmed entranced by the beautiful view.

The Sahara4x members: (Back from the left) Fergus, Liz, Vic, Mat, Eammon, Barbara, Mike, Liam, Jeremy, John, will, Daniel and Seamus
(Front form the left) Mo, Mark, Ahmed, Gus, Nick and Alex

After the group photo it was time for the "fines". Eammon had recorded peoples transgressions during the whole journey. Everyone got a fine! Some TWO :) Mo got a fine for "Dj:ing his way down Spain on the CB-radio", Daniel got a fine for "Smoking cigars" and Barbara as one out of two persons got TWO fines "She got engaged to Mike after only two beers" and "She killed a cute little blue bird while driving (We know it was blue because an explosion of feathers came in through the slide-roof, also, the bird did a few somersaults thereafter it landed on the hood two cars down the column :-D )"

Early Saturday morning the three cars from Disco Nights, The Rifles and 4x here seen leaving the hotel started on the last two legs towards Timbuktu. It was going to be a 600+200km of terrible road journey through the northern territories of Mali. Exit time: 06.30. It was a sensitive good-bye...

Kayes to Bamako: Last leg of the journey

Leaving the hotel in Kayes. It had been a pleasant stay. The air-conditioned rooms had been lovely and pleasant after days of driving under scolding sun.


Mo and Daniel are doing the thumbs up for the beast and Barbara's driving. Soon we were going to arrive in Bamako having driven 7000km and been through some of the most amazing adventures of our lives.


The nature kept on changing as we drove through different countries. These trees are very typical of the south west Mali territory.

Mo is securing our second extra tire which started coming loose.

Daniel having donned his home-made "Shemagh"

A strange view in this territory :)

The trees looked like they had been pulled up and replanted upside down.

Along the way we saw many terrible sign of animal suffering. Here a donkey left so malnourished that it could not move in the middle of a heavily trafficked round-about.

Team Mirage masquot: MIRAGE! With a magic stick from the Isle of Skye, in control of the CB-radio and looking cool in Daniel's sunglasses.

At this stop we brought out a frisbee and played with the crowd. Ahmet is here showing of his great talent.
In the middle of the frisbee game Daniel was suddenly charged by an horde of goats.

How a village along the road could look like, with huts amde of mud, straw and sticks.

Importantly we removed all our stickers before entering Bamako to avoid unnecessary attention.

Barbara and Mo piloting The Beast, as seen here through the side mirror.

Cherrie overheating (again!) and the teams strolling around enjoying the rest.

The sunsets in Africa, never disappointing!

A tired Daniel on top of the grill of The Beast. Not long time left to drive before arriving to Bamako!

Who could have known?! The G-point is located in north Bamako!! A great news for Daniel and Mo who have been looking for it their whole life :)

The arrival at our Hotel Mandé. Happy happy people!

Giving gifts!

Eamon giving "cadeaux" to the local children of one of the villages.

Nouakchott to Podor: Most stressful part of the whole journey

Along the roads there were so many sights. This is a store selling dried food stuff...

The markets could look very different depending on the territory that we drove through for the moment.

At several stops when the crowds had gathered the Coyle Brothers a.k.a. Stewarttown Rifles brought out a set of golfclubs and a carton of golfballs. The chief of this village took to the sport with great affection. As we sped on he was given the club together with a collection of balls.

One of the villagers being "amused" by the village chief's swings, a cutie!

After 4 hours of chaos we finally got on the ferry from Mauritania to Senegal only to become harassed by the Senegalese border officials. The ferry had actually broken down a while before we arrived to the crossing making us having to wait for the repair on top of the customs being the usual "pain-in-the-asses". Most often though every negative side of the journey also brought with it some amazing sight or fantastic experience.

Having taken immensively long at the border there was just not enough time to get into Dakar and find our hotel. The route was changed and instead of doing a long drive through Senegal we took the shorter northern road to get as close to the Mali border as possible. We had not expected the crazily bad shape of the roads though. There were pot-holes every few metres and many times half the road had been washed away in the last heavy rainfall. We made only about half the pace we had intended resulting in having to find a decent place to spend the night. Barbara's french background proved itself to be invaluable and she had in her own words "her toughest part through the whole time". After much stress and many tries we finally found a place 40km away from the main road that proved itself to be one of the places with most character of all places we saw or visited.

Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,

Podor in Senegal to Kayes in Mali: Doing the north run of Senegal

The entrance to our stay for the night.

Another early morning. We slept 5 persons per room in bunk beds covered by mosquito nets.

Barbara and Elizabeth were more lucky with their room. They got the De Luxe En Suite!

We had a breakfast á la Rurale.

Mo is doing the morning check-up on "The Beast".

We crossed the river Senegal to get back to our northern route towards the Mali border.

Local transport.
The interesting thing about the driving apart from too many holes was that the convoy often had to slow down to give way to goats, donkeys and cows. Hearing the CB radio warnings sent from Dirty Debbie (car number 1) such as "Be aware! Donkeys crossing!" always put a smile on my face.


Early in the trip a decision been made to have a fine system whereby Ahmed from car number 2 was in charge of registering the fines and Eammon from the riffles (car number 3) was the executer of the punishments (which we all had no idea what it would be). So, quite quickly Mo managed to be fined for abusing the CB radio system cause he thought he was a DJ. However, he got his act together and got scared of being fined again and started to behave. Half way through the journey Gus (car number 2) came up with a plot that included everyone even Barbara and Daniel to drive Mo crazy and push Mo to abuse the CB radio again. The plot was to pretend that no one could hear any transmission from our car's CB radio and also that Gus (car number 2) would come up with an alternative route to Kadiera (Senegalese borders with Mali) passing by a 350 kilometers of dirt road!! So, Gus has announced the new route and every car in the convoy has agreed the route while Mo was jumping up and down on his driving seat because he couldn't express his views that it is maddness to go into that route........ A great moment of fun!

Different ways of transport. Balance and strength, an amazing sight.

The villages are beautiful and very special. There is NO garbage disposal system so there is smelly waste littering the sides just outside all of them.

Being an arid climate with a low food supply animals find different ways of getting their needs filled. This goat like many others had ways of half climbing up the trees to reach the good stuff :)

At one of our many stops we brought out a food football and played with the curious villagers. The organizer for the whole adventure Gus is here showing his talents and impressive flexibility.

Daniel in the lack of football juggling talent is observing the spectacle from safe distance.

Barbara and Mo are talking with the children. Mo tfelt great as there were many wearing Chelsea T-shirts among them.

After a long day behind the wheels we finally arrived in Kadira, the bordertown of Senegal to Mali. It is a smelly, bustling little big town. The streets have no roads but red dusty tracks which when the cars passed threw up dust clouds behind them. In these conditions we had to criss-cross around to attain all the right car documents. Painful is the word, the word is painful..

With all papers signed and stamped we crossed the river Senegal, as this happy chap, only to fall into the hands of the Mali border control, which was one of the absolut lowest points on the whole journey (For the whole (and long) story on that you will have to buy our biography soon to be published :).

Ahmet posing during our loooong wait for the correct customs stamps, something that they seldom get right. This makes border crossing process drag out and your supposedly day behind the wheels turns into a very warm, boring wait constantly being harressed by bullish hawkers.

Good night Sahara4x Followers, wherever you are,