Adventure

Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure

Timbuktu - "the furtherest place on earth." My quest was to travel from Tangier, the gateway to Europe, to the legendary city of Timbuktu following the ancient salt roads. I went with a film crew from Tern TV, to make a series for BBC2. We followed in the footsteps of the medieval trans-Saharan traders, who braved the dangers of the desert with their cargoes of gold, salt and slaves. The book of the series, Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure, is available in paperback and on kindle from Amazon.

This adventure was not just about the physical journey of getting from Tangier to Timbuktu, it was about immersing myself in the life lived by traders five hundred years ago. I I explored the lost city of Sijilmassa, mined for gold in Mali and ate some very crunchy goat trachea.

The traders would cross from the heart of Africa up to Europe and back again with cargoes of gold, slaves, and salt. Like them, I rode on camel back through the Sahara, slept in medieval caravanserai, and crossed the Atlas Mountains made treacherous by snow.

The book of the series Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure is available on Amazon.

Dangers

The traders of old were faced with danger at every turn. They might die of thirst in the Sahara or fall to their deaths on an ice-covered pass in the Atlas Mountains while bandits waited in secluded river valleys to rob and murder them. For us, the dangers were of a more modern kind, as we faced closed borders and the ongoing threat of jihadists

Facts