It sounded like a rat at first. A cooking pot beside my bed scraped across the floor then a bottle of coke toppled over. It was 4am. I didn’t know this until the thief had gone. He shot out of the room and jumped off the 5 metre-high balcony before I’d barely thrown the mosquito net out of the way to  pursue him. For a brief moment I watched this dark figure run through the  sandy street below, my cries of “THIEF, THIEF” lost in the night.  Read more... (628 words, 1 image, estimated 2:31 mins reading time)

I like places with history and St Louis has plenty of it. The French have been fond of the town for over three hundred years and still are.  I rolled  onto  this  time-warped island shortly after crossing the border with Mauritania and soon realised it was somewhere worth stopping for a few days.

If you’ve been following the twitter updates you’ll know my compact camera was stolen yesterday. It was visible in the mesh-pocket of my day-sack  whilst I was out walking. A lesson quickly learnt. I still have my main SLR, the camera used to take the photos in the slide-show below,  but the theft has certainly put a dampener on my impressions of the place. Time to move on south.  Read more... (123 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

I followed a Toyata land cruiser out of Nouakchott. Sidi Ali, who’d been my excellent guide to the city, offered to escort me onto the right road towards Senegal. As we said goodbye he gave me some advice. “Make sure you tie your bicycle chain around your ankle when you get there”. How reassuring I remarked.

Bad-mouthing the people who live in your neighbouring country seems to be commonplace all over the World. Moroccans will warn you about  being kidnapped in Mauritania , just as Indians will happily tell you Pakistanis are all terrorists and the Chinese might attack the Japanese on the subject of war crimes. I’m  struggling to think of a country I’ve travelled through where someone has remarked about their neighbours “You will love it there. The people are so  kind and friendly”.  Read more... (1070 words, 7 images, estimated 4:17 mins reading time)

“In the desert, the first thing man sees when he opens his eyes in the morning is the face of his enemy – the flaming visage of the sun. The sight elicits in him a reflexive gesture of self-preservation: he reaches for water. Drink! Drink! Only by doing so can he ever so slightly improve his odds in the desert’s eternal struggle – the desperate duel with the sun.” (Rysard Kapuscinski)

 Read more... (1449 words, 11 images, estimated 5:48 mins reading time)

I’m being well looked after in Nouakchott. Teachers from an International School have put me up in surroundings far different from the wilds of the desert. I met the music teacher at the weekend who works here. He lived in Mali for eight years and plays the kamal ngoni, a traditional stringed west African instrument. I was lucky to hear him rehearsing with the group he manages – Vagabon tribe, and to record this. It’s a beautiful sound, worth  following and supporting. Have a listen here.

“Dawn and dusk – these are the most pleasant hours in Africa. The sun is either not yet scorching, or it is no longer so – it lets you be, lets you live.” (Rysard Kapuscinski)  Read more... (2889 words, 9 images, estimated 11:33 mins reading time)

The tarmac abruptly stopped beyond the Moroccan border post. Ahead lay a wasteland of abandoned vehicles and chassis – rusting victims from the land mines that litter the several kilometres of no-mans-land separating Morocco and Mauritania. I felt like I’d been thrown into an army training obstacle course as a series of corrugated piste tracks traversed this war-zone. There was little indication of which one to follow, nor anyone to ask. Cycle off in the wrong direction for 50 metres and I might have joined the unlucky souls who’ve perished here before me. It seems a ridiculous situation that neither country can agree to lay down a few kilometres of tarmac in this disputed and troubled region of the Sahara.

“I always loved the desert. It sits on a sand dune. You see nothing. You hear nothing. And yet something shines in silence.” (Antoine St Exupery)

“The desert is a true treasure for him who seeks refuge from men and the evil of men. In it is contentment. In it is death and all you seek.” (Ibrahim- al-Koni)

“Now there was a grey insect-like vegetation everywhere, a tortured scrub of hard shells and stiff hairy spines that covered the earth like an excrescence of hatred.” (Paul Bowles)

Short on time and distance to cover. If the Internet was more consistent and I didn’t have to cycle 1400km in 15 days (I have to enter Mauritania before 4^th February) I’d write more here. I could say something about the unplanned stop-over in Casablanca, the birthday weekend back on the beach in Tamraght and the great company that’s slowed my progress through Morocco. The stories will have to wait unfortunately.

I may be out of contact for a while as I pedal across that somewhat daunting expanse of land called the Sahara. Until then here are some photos from the last few weeks.  See you in Mauritania – inshallah.

There was a sizeable crowd waiting outside the embassy at 8.30am on Monday morning. Considering recent news I  expected to be the only western face who would be applying for a Mauritanian visa. Instead a colourful bunch of characters, mostly with their own vehicles,  (equally colourful) had lined the road of this Rabat address. Camper-vans, land rovers, trucks, motorbikes – is driving through Mauritania really that popular? It was a comical scene and had me thinking of a cartoon I remember watching as a child.  Read more... (324 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)