On the day of my deliverance to Timbuktu, a quasi-religious pilgrimage for an Africaphile like me, the Harmattan wind had whipped the Sahara into a frenzy. Like a giant Hoover, the tempest had sucked the surface of the desert high into the sky. In a world turned uniformly beige, Timbuktu had disappeared.
I heard Timbuktu before I saw it. A camel, tethered to a house on the outskirts of town, let out a hoarse honk as loud as a foghorn, louder even than the clatter of our Land Rover's ancient engine and the roar of the Harmattan.
The most famous oasis in the world revealed itself gradually. Like icebergs appearing out of a dense sea fog, Timbuktu's windowless mud houses and nomad tents crept out of the sandstorm. Young children with already-leathery skin scampered across the rutted, sandy streets, followed by mothers balancing laundry on their heads. They all fought to stay upright in the vicious wind.
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| Most LRs in Africa date from the '50s - modern computer-managed Defenders too complex to be fixed |
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There is still a camel train to Timbuktu and a river boat up the mighty River Niger. For the impatient and mildly insane there are unpredictable flights into Timbuktu airstrip, thoroughfare to more scorpions than passengers. But to lurch into Timbuktu in an automotive legacy of the colonial era seemed appropriate. They might be sold in every nation bar Libya and Iraq, but nowhere does the Land Rover feel more at home than in Africa.
"For the large majority of Africans, the first vehicle they ever saw in their lives was a Land Rover," claimed South African explorer Kingsley Holgate, who's travelled to almost every country on the continent, on expeditions that included tracing the footsteps of Livingstone and circumnavigating the 25,000-mile African coast line. "Now there are more and more Japanese four-wheel drives being sold than Land Rovers, but I have not been to a village in Africa where there was not at least one Land Rover - dead or alive."
In Timbuktu Land Rovers are everywhere. Most, like that of my guide Djtteye Dramane Koro, date from the 1960s. Peppered by almost five decades of Saharan sand, baked in the 60-degree oven of the Malian summer and driven more miles than a London taxi, none of them are in pristine condition. Some have been decommissioned, left by the roadside to fill with the desert and opportunistic wildlife. But for a Land Rover to actually be allowed to die in Africa is seen as a failing on behalf of the owner, not the vehicle.
"Every garage, every blacksmith has or can make parts for Land Rovers," says Djtteye. "We all know how to fix them. But if we needed to get parts from wherever they make Land Rovers, or get a special mechanic to fix them, then people would not bother. Also, you cannot break a Land Rover. If the engine in some of the Japanese vehicles gets too hot it will damage the engine so much you cannot fix it. In the desert that is not good."
