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Mali travel stories

 
  1. MESSY MATTER... TO GET THE TRAIN IN KAYES!

  2. AIR MALI SUCKS!

  3. LOVE YOUR LIFE ? AVOID AFRICA TOUR BUS COMPANY

  4. CRAZY AFRICAN DRIVER OUT OF ROAD

 

MESSY MATTER... TO GET THE TRAIN IN KAYES!

Arrived in Kayes, because of the floody roads, there was no other mean of transport unless the train. Getting the tickets and the train, it has definetely been my toughest travel experience. Rumors said there was just one daily train in the morning, and it was necessary to buy the tickets at 6 a.m. at the station.
I woke up at 5 a.m. and reached the stations in the darkeness. I found lot of people who slept queueing since the day before. I stood at the end of the queue despite people were watching at me suspiciously because I was the only one white. After few minutes some blacks came to me wanting me to let them buy my tickets. When I  declined, knowing about the extra I would have had to pay, they got really angry and started yelling to everybody about the fact that I had swindled them and bla bla bla....they were really really freaked out!
I didn't know what to do, I waited praying I could get out of that place safely. Suddenly the "ticket office" (a grided small dark window) opened and then it was caos. I mean people pushing, beating, yelling to get that bloody tickets. The police arrived and they started pushing not to stop the mess, but to get their own tickets and then leaving as nothing was happening. Seldom in my life I saw so much anger on the faces as that mornig. I asked to a nice guy from Gambia to fight also for my ticket, and at the end he managed to get this yellow  piece of paper just with an handwrited number on it. 
It was 8.30 a.m., I was happy, "just a matter of few hours and I'll get the train", I thought. I went to the station every two hours and no clue about the train. Nobody knew, "it would be somewhere, it leaves after has arrived" they answered me. In fact the train arrived at 23.30 p.m.,  with 12 hours of delay. It was dark and I had to pay a guy with a flash lamp to show the way in the dark wagon. It was so humid that I was soaked by the sweating.
At last the train left, but my happines lasted till it started rain. I mean a heavy tropical rain and in a no window train that's a huge problem. All the people laid over the floor stood because it was fllody. I took my umbrella and tried to shelter but I couldn't win the wind, so I surrended at the thunderstorm. In the vagon nobody was complaining about the situation, as awared of an unchangeble reality.
AIR MALI SUCKS!

Leaving back from Bamako (Mali) to Dakar (Senegal) I decided to fly to skipp the endless, tiring, shocking travel by land I had in the opposite way. First of all which is the air company who runs this service? AIR MALI....uhm...should I trust? no choise I've to. One entire morning to buy the tickets and then ready for flying. The plane was an old airbus, not that bad, I've travelled on worse stuffs.
After one hour during  the descend to Dakar, suddenly, maybe for a loss of pression in the cabin, the oxigens masks fell down and it was panic! I wore my mask and started breathing into, but it didn't work, the shitty plastic ballon in front of it didn't inflate. Everybody seemed not really aware of it and went on breathing in it. The most thrown into confusion was the stuart who was frozen by the panic and was trying to breath into a passenger mask, instead of taking his oxigen cylinder and help children.
After one minutes I realised it was possible breathing without mask and then.....I started  getting pictures of the funny scene, don't miss them in the photos section. In ten minutes the plane landed at Dakar airport and the crew announced it had been an exercise!

LOVE YOUR LIFE ? AVOID AFRICA TOUR BUS COMPANY

I was just entered in Mali when, meeting a french couple getting out in the opposite way, I asked them some suggestions for my trip. They had jus one advice:" whatever it'll happen never take AFRICA TOUR BUS COMPANY!!!!!!!!" I don't know why, but after a bunch of days my butt was sat on one AFRICA TOUR BUS.
The travel was a 10 hours night travel from Bamako to Mopti, that turned to be  an hell. I didn't know about the bus schedule; they told me: "just after finishing loading". It took hours to load every sort of stuff  on the roof and then they started calling people. I don't think the term overload could be appropriate to define the bus. I think on the bus there were more than the double of the people necessary to fill up a bus that in Europe would've been defined full! There was no room for the legs and my girlfriend had to keep them up. The humidity was unbearable: I was totally soaked, as much as getting out from a hot shower. I turned happy when the bus left and the opened door let a breeze to flow in. But my happyness lasted till the first stop...uhm...more or less 2 minutes after. Then half of the people got off. I waited, I didn't understand why, and then again, everybody on and 4 minutes after stopping again.
I think the first hour was just leaving, stopping, waiting. But suddenly started raining and dripping on my girlfriend head. I thought: "Oh my God, it's the first bus I've ever seen with the shower, and it's even warm water!!"

CRAZY AFRICAN DRIVER OUT OF ROAD

It was the last of three walking days in the Dogon area, sleeping on the roofs, when our dogon guide got lost and I looked for each other till evening. Then he had to rent a jeep to go back in Bandiagara but the driver didn't ask the permission to the owner of the jeep so he was really in hurry to take it back and pocket the money.
Obviously he was driving crazly when went out of the road and the jeep got stuck tilted. I tried to push it out for one hour when I surrended and started argueing with the driver. I was in the middle of nothing covered with mud and dead tired. I lit a fire while the driver went on working like a crazy to move the jeep.
He called people from a villagge who unusefully tried to help him. It was 2 a. m. when I decided to sleep over a flat hot rock near the fire, hoping the driver couldn't manage to get it out at least till the morning. After one hour a truck passed (shitty truck!!:-) ) and towed the jeep out! the driver was so happy, run to wake us up. I was so pissed off, I wanted to sleep, but no way to convince him to wait till the morning: he wanted to go.
He reached Bandiagara and dropped us off in the middle of the night.

 

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