It's been 10 years since I started cycling around the world and I have no plans to change my means of transportation, but if I had to choose a motorised mode in which I'm not in charge of driving, I would definitely choose the train. Unlike all the others, the train, with its smooth ride, facilitates surrender to contemplation. It was the main mode I used in my first big backpacking trip to get to every corner of Europe. And the travelling by train bits were without exception one of the central experience in all, or at least a large part of each of my trips to India. Today, once again, I am at a ‘train station’. Now, standing with my bicycle next to the tracks in the middle of the Sahara desert. I am waiting for one of the moments that I have dreamed of for years: the arrival of the longest train in the world. My goal is to board it to return to the coast of the continent from where I will continue my route north.
It is no ordinary train. It is an iron serpent that has crossed the desert since the 1960s transporting iron ore from the Zouérat mines, in the heart of the Mauritanian desert, to the port of Nouadhibou on the Atlantic coast. However, its role goes far beyond serving the country's mining industry. The train is the vital means of transportation for thousands of people who live scattered throughout vast expanses of desert. It is the only reliable way that the inhabitants of the Sahara have to get to the commercial hubs of the country to sell their goods and livestock, visit relatives and return with some cash in their pockets.
It is late afternoon in Choum. The last rays of sun filter through a row of railcars parked at the loading station. Its reflection highlights the metal of the tracks perfectly polished by the passage of the train. Around me, a handful of people wait, entertained, chatting with their neighbours and relatives. Without the train, Choum would simply have no reason to exist. This is the point where the 700 km rail route rotates its course 90º from south to west (or from east to north coming in the opposite direction) respecting the official border line between Mauritania and Western Sahara.
The moment the tracks begin to vibrate, women, men and children start to mobilise getting their bags, packages and goats ready to load, while I begin to unhook the panniers from my bike. Shortly after, I look up and far on the horizon I see the 2.4 km-long vertebrate slowly slithering over the desert sands. It will take no less than 20 more minutes until finally the figure of not one, but three locomotives in a row, is clearly defined right in front of my eyes. Their combined energy generates the power needed to haul a 210-car convoy carrying up to 20,000 tons of iron ore. When I'm pedalling on the bike, I'm usually the one who advances the kilometers. Now, standing by the edge of the tracks, stunned beyond words, an iron wall on wheels parades before me with the slow, stern pace of an iron mastodon looking for a place to stop for a break. The sun behind, already stepping on the horizon, reveals the silhouette of the train carriages with their tops loaded with iron ore, but also with people and herds of goats on top of them.
As we watch it pass by from below, advancing at a hypnotic pace, punctuated like a metronome by the sound of wooden planks dislocating under the rails, we all eagerly await the moment when the serpent stops so we can join the journey. With the passing of the minutes, carriage after carriage passes until the brakes exert their final pressure on the wheels, making them squeal to the point of tormenting the eardrums. After a while, the last three vertebrae of this creaking metallic snake stop in front of us. At the very moment that the wheels stop squeaking, people begin to throw themselves on top of it and with the help of others load their belongings. The fact is, we have no time to lose, I was already warned that we only have 5 minutes of grace to complete the entire boarding operation. The same three men who had helped me position myself in the right place to wait for the train now help me load my panniers and the bike. They tell me that we are lucky because today they have added the flat carriages, which are easier to get on to. I had the intention of traveling in the carriages that carry the iron ore, but the fear of not making it to the top on time due to the notable added difficulty of their height, leads me to opt for the safe thing and stick to the flat carriages. A minute later, when we haven't even finished settling in, the decision proves to have been wise when 3km ahead of us, the locomotive announces the departure with a resounding honk that fills up the emptiness of the desert. The wheels start moving once more with the same punctuality with which they had stopped 5 minutes ago. We are finally up and running. Adrenaline flows through my veins and pours out of my pores.
However, it is an unusual start. That is, the distance between the three locomotives and the last car is so long and the cargo so heavy that it takes more than a minute for the entire convoy to get moving. From first to last, each of the 210 carriages receives the starting pull. The successive impact, carriage by carriage, between the metallic joints, upon coming into tension, shakes all the vertebrae, generating a domino-like noise that rumbles in space. From start to finish, the intensity of each jolt moves in-crescendo down the spine like a chill. By the time the pull reaches the second-to-last car where I'm sitting next to the other free riders, the accumulated pull is so strong that it jolts us all out of place. It's like a rug has suddenly been pulled out from under our feet. The force is such that I fear being pulled uncontrollably to the point of falling off the moving train. My traveling companions burst out laughing when they see the scare that this unexpected shock gives me, although at the same time they make sure to hold me so that nothing happens to me. As I rearrange myself, they explain to me that this is common and that is why I must hold all my things. It gives me peace of mind to be surrounded by these three fellow travellers because with this first jolt alone I can now understand why people die every year when they fall off the moving train, just from falling asleep.
Shortly after departure, the remaining glare of the sun, already well below the horizon, is the only light that lingers for a while to illuminate the sky. I try to place myself in the center of the carriage as precisely as possible, with my back straight and my eyes forward, trying to immerse myself in the pictorial space that forms around me. From there, the straight line of the train cutting through the desert forms a vanishing point perspective that takes me on a journey through time and space. I am in an abstract experience, at times two-dimensional. The silhouette of rock formations with ambitions of being hills to my left fades into a horizon clouded by the millions of sand particles floating in the air. Above is the moon, glowing like an incandescent bulb in a vast gradient of blue hues. The twinkling stars populate it little by little as the sky darkens. Seen from above, I imagine myself to be no more than a mere geometric element adding one more point of tension to a Kandinsky painting. The desert as a plane, the line outlined by the extension of the train, and the point, embodied in me, and all the rest of us who are sitting there.
The temperature begins to drop precipitously as night falls. One by one, each small group of people in and around my carriage burrows under several layers of blankets. Until no more than several minutes ago, I had a hard time understanding why people had brought them. Now, while I try to keep my balance with the train moving forward but at the same time constantly oscillating from side to side, I take out one by one all the pieces of clothing that I have in my panniers. Still, I'm cold. Not just a little, but very cold, and since the temperature continues to plummet, and the wind generated by the movement makes it even worse, soon I find myself shivering with all my clothes on. Considering that the night has only just begun and I can’t stop shivering, it doesn't take long for me to conclude that if I don't get my sleeping bag out I'll die of hypothermia before dawn. In complete disbelief, I need at least 10 minutes fully inside it to warm up. It is incomprehensible to me to think that I had been pedalling all day under a scorching sun above 30 degrees and now, in the middle of this Saharan night, I find myself buried in my sleeping bag designed to protect me from extreme temperatures of up to -31C. So I lie on my back, looking up at the stars like a caterpillar before metamorphosis, with. my body warm and my face freezing.
Part of me doesn't want to fall asleep. I'm living an experience so intense and so radically different from everything I've been living that I don't want to miss anything. On the other hand, the sudden swaying of the carriages does not allow me to relax enough for fear of accidentally falling. Even so, the tiredness and the comfort of the warmth inside my sleeping bag end up beating me until I finally fall asleep. However, I think it doesn’t take too long until suddenly an abrupt jolt wakes me up. As a result of a combination between the extension and the weight of the train, the margin of freedom of movement between the joints, the speed and the irregularities of the terrain, the carriages collide between themselves from time to time. And every time they collide, the impact is so strong that inertia shakes me abruptly out of my sleep. Still, with the sleeping power of a hibernating bear, I drift back to sleep again and again between collisions with the rocking magic of movement.
In one of the many times that I wake up during the night, everything is eerily quiet beyond the whispers of some of my companions. I estimate that several hours of travel must have already passed and by the time I manage to regain full consciousness, I realise that we are stopped in the middle of nowhere. Now, the incandescent whiteness of the moon illuminates everything, revealing the shapes of the desert under unusual cold tones befitting the freezing weather that chills us to the bone. In the deathly silence, you can hear even the slightest movement of the people who now take the opportunity to rearrange themselves. Some even dare to get off to pee, and to my surprise, others have lit a fire on top of the carriage. I haven't the faintest idea why we've stopped here, much less why we're spending so much time standing around, but wrapped up in my sleeping bag like a caterpillar I see no reason to worry. Seeing others act completely normal, as if nothing exceptional was happening, comforts me. In fact, I fall asleep again looking at the stars despite the intense light of the moon, although I will wake up again soon with yet another jolt. This trip is fabulous but it is much, much less comfortable than I imagined. I mean, I certainly didn't imagine it to be comfortable, but I could have never predicted how incredibly unbearable these internal collisions would become.
A few hours later, we stop again, but this time instead of darkness and silence there’s light and bustle all around. Although I don't have a watch or any notion of time to guess where we are, it's still night so this definitely can't be Nouadhibou. The high beams of some pick-up trucks parked next to the train give me a glimpse of a scene similar to Choum's, with people getting on the train and loading things. Nonetheless, I feel confused because I must admit that I had no idea that there would be more towns along the way. I can't even determine whether we're actually in a town because the light spilling to the sides of the pick-ups only allows me to see nothing more than a few simple wooden stalls buried in the sand. In fact, I don't see any streets or anything resembling them either. To be no more than this little agglomeration of stalls, I'm surprised we are spending more time here than the 5 minutes the train took in Choum.
In all the time that has passed since we left, I have lost count of how many times I have been jolted awake by the abrupt internal collisions of the train. I also believe that we have stopped at least 5 times during the night, both in the middle of nowhere itself and in Saharan villages in forsaken corners of that same middle of nowhere, and we keep on going. At this point, I am slowly and intermittently opening my eyes as the first light of day begins to reveal the shapes of the desert once again. Buried deep in my sleeping bag I can feel the cold cool my face. I open my eyes and see the sky purple, I close them. I open them and see it pink, I close them. When I finally wake up, everything around me vibrates in amber colour as if the desert has been smeared with honey. As the minutes pass by, I see the sky turning back to the lighter blue tones while the dunes are constantly changing hue, veering towards white. Around me, all my traveling companions are still hidden under a the thick layer of multiple blankets. Looking up past them, all I see once again is the serpent I’m riding on slithering its way across the ocean of sand contorting each of its vertebrae to make its way through the dunes. Particles in the air continue to blur the transition between the earth and the sky from white to light blue. The image is sublime beyond words.
Nearing 15 hours of travel already, now with the sun high up in the sky my body begins to warm up to humane temperature. The sand blowing and the incandescent white reflection bouncing off the dunes blind my eyes forcing me to squint. The serpent begins to turn its course 90 degrees to the south, entering the final stretch of the journey along the thin peninsula called ‘Ras Nouadhibou’, or ‘Cabo Blanco ‘, depending on whether you are east or west of the border between Mauritania and Western Sahara. Having lost all sense of time several hours ago, I’m thrilled when I hear the wheels screech again. The metallic cacophony that had left me deaf in the silence of the desert is now somehow minimised by the noisy urban environment of the outskirts of the city. I get off even more tired than I was when I boarded at Choum yesterday but the memories I take with me from this journey will be etched in my memory forever. It would have been ideal to be able to get off the train right before it makes the big turn to the south so I could be closer to the border crossing to Western Sahara. However, right at that point and despite having stopped multiple times during the night, it did not stop. Consequently, I have to cycle about 60 km to get back to the border but It's okay. It’s relatively early, I’m not in a hurry and I'll take this opportunity to ride across Nouadhibou and enjoy my last kilometers in Mauritania.
Goodbye Mauritania
In Mauritania, I have had some of the most intense and memorable desert experiences to date. Having cycled along the eastern side of the Sahara more than two years ago, and more recently along its left of center half, now I can appreciate more clearly the massive variation in the culture along this massive patch of sand that extends throughout the entire north of the African continent. From east to west, while it is evident that there are some common traits that unite all the cultures across the Sahara, the truth is that each region is very different. There are both subtle and noticeable variations in the way people dress, what they eat, where they live, how they decorate their bodies and more. From what I have written in every story to date and from the photos I have taken, it becomes clear that there are definite differences separating the culture of Sudan, Egypt and those of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Mauritania. In that sense, this country gave me one more piece to add to this immensely diverse mosaic that makes up the culture of this desert. On another note, while I have had wonderful experiences with the people here, I must say that one of the most notable differences is that the Tuaregs and the Mauritanians in general are decidedly tougher people than the inhabitants of the Sudanese Sahara. On several occasions, I have even noticed them being greedier in circumstances where, for example, any of their Sudanese counterparts would not have hesitated for a second to simply be selflessly generous. Comparisons are always odious and I try to avoid them as much, but it is perhaps due to the sum of many of these small details that the Mauritanians in general have not really made me fall in love with them. Nonetheless, I decide to stick to the many incredible memories I did have in this amazing country and its people, so without a doubt I would return in the blink of an eye.
