Kayes

Sure enough lots of locals gathered at the appropriate time for the train, and it arrived bang on time. But the police would not let us ride on it (EDs note, it was a goods train, it had no carriages but wagons) or, in theory, anyone else, but when it left it was heaving with locals. The police man explained that iif a Mali man fell off and died, no one cared but if one of us had fallen off there would be BIG trouble. Consequently we had to spend a very uncomfortable day + night in the "station", a small hut about 10x8 (our bit of verandah) that we shared with wasps, lizards and mosquitos x 10, and occafionally the village mad woman, a young woman with a small child and another on the way, who changed her clothes every hour (occasionally going for the no clothes option), never slept, and who took to holding my hand or stroking my hair when i wasn't watching (eg asleep) - I think I pulled.

Lived on coke and bread for 24 hours but managed to find a 'meat' sandwich, the meat of which had been cooked, but only waved near a fire at best.

Eventually boarded the Bamako express at 00.30 and found a bit of space on the floor of the first class compartment, from which, after various arguments and about 3 hours we were evicted to second class - for which it turned out we had tickets.

Absolutely packed solid, and no one particularly keen to give up any space. I selected a comfy looking spot on the filthy floor, propped against the rucksacs, which had the drawback that i got trodden on when anyone wanted to walk down the train.

Meanwhile Seb and Jan had secured places by waking someone up and arguing until until enough people had been awakened to join the conflab, amd filling a space as soon as it was available. About dawn, after a few extremely uncomfortable and fitful hours i spotted a space and went for it. The space system was all a bit but for us and we never quite mastered it. Everytime you stood up someone would fill the seat immediately, but when we tried the same tactic it invariably caused a row, and Jan had a real barnstormer at one chap and his wife , shouting at the top of her voice, which prompted several people to tap the sides of their heads and roll their eyes.

As the morning wore on and it seemed forever to reach Bamako, an enormous tupperware party broke out, eceryone on the train had piles of plastic buckets, mugs, pots etc and would sell them out of the window of hte train whenever it stopped, and salt was passing hands too, although for some reason more suureptitiously- perhaps it is illegal? We had come ill prepared without food or water so by the time we reached Bamako we were very tired, dirty, hungry, thirsty and pissed off.Read more