Tombouctou
Who hasn’t dreamed about the distant and unreachable black Africa?
The discoveries of Livingstone, the adventures, the dangers, the unknown, the myths, stories, etcetera….
Tombouctou is such a place: everybody has heard of it, but few have been there.
The reason Tombouctou can be found in many travel and adventure stories as an unreachable place, is because of all the travelers who wanted to visit it in the past, but never came back!
Our Group of motorbike friends, have stood in front of the famous sign: “52 days to Tombouctou” many times.
Of course the number of days is necessary 
when riding a camel, but is it also possible to reach by bike?
The 2007 Paris-Dakar rally could have been the
answer to this question. There would be a stage from Nema (Mauritania) to Tombouctou (Mali) and back. For me (Bram) this would be great, because I was a Dakar participant. And my friends Jan, Herman and Yves would follow me on their own during the rally. Finally we would get to see Tombouctou.
But still, Tombouctou proved to be as unreachable as was told in the stories, because the Dakar organization decided to cancel this stage due to the dangerous circumstances.
Disappointed, we decided as friends to definitely visit this place in the future.
Eventually, we stuck our heads together and discussed about the time and place of our trip.
From October 29th until November 18th, we will embark upon this great adventure with 6 motorbikes and 1 jeep.
We will be sleeping in tents and cook our own dinner (goat or camel could be on the menu)
We will start at the Western Sahara in Morocco at a town called Dakhla and then pass the border to Mauritania at Nouadhibou.
From there the hardest part of our journey will start. Mauritania is all sand, dunes and solid rock parts. Together with the real possibility of a shortage of fuel, this will make for a serious start of the rally.
When we get to Nema, which we will be our last place to stop before we reach Tombouctou, there will be two days of travel with absolutely nothing on our way. No towns, no people, no fuel….nothing!
Maybe that’s what makes it so unreachable.
In Tombouctou we will have an extra day to spend experiencing the culture and get our gear in order for the rest of the journey.
We will ride all the way through Mali, where we will spend one night with the Dogon people, who have the oldest rituals of Mali, and to Bukina Faso.
From there the surroundings will start to get greener and via Ouagadougou we will cross the border to Ghana. In Ghana, we will travel through Mole National Park to have our own safari, spotting the moneys and elephants from the comfort seat of our bikes.
From Mole to the border of the Ivory Coast and Abidjan, where we will be shipping everything back home.
In all, we should be able to finish our trip in 18 days.
