"The Sahara has always intrigued me largely because it's so close to Europe, it's just the other side of the Mediterranean, and yet we know it as well as we know the surface of the moon." "So it's a mystery." "We have images of sand and palm trees, and I just wanted to find out what more there was to it." "It's the size of the United States, and I wanted to see how varied it was, and to meet the people who lived there." "There was a touch of bravado as well." "I knew it would be physically demanding, but I needed a challenge to show I haven't gone soft." "But it was mainly curiosity about a place that's so close, and a word we know so well, and yet we know little more than that." "We filmed in eight countries, in some of the biggest countries in Africa, places like Algeria and Libya." "We started in Gibraltar - you know, a little enclave of Britishness which is only about 300 miles away from the desert - and went through places like Morocco, Senegal and Mali." "So about eight countries in all." "We were away altogether about four and a half months, but it's a very difficult area to film in one go because you have a lot of bureaucracy and there are certain times of year when it's impossible to film " "during high summer for instance." "The temperature goes up to the mid-50s." "The real problems are mainly just accessibility - it's just getting out to the place where you want to film." "There are really no roads, so you have to find tracks, and go at the time of year when the sand is solid enough." "Some places, we tried to mix and match transport." "We found an iron ore train that crosses Mauritania, carrying iron ore to the coast." "People sit on the iron ore trucks and there's a little thing at the end which looks like a waste-recycling bin which is actually first class and where they take passengers." "Other areas, we just travelled with camels." "One of the problems once we were there is just blowing sand." "The wind blows all the time because the Sahara's fairly unprotected." "There was sand in the camera, in your underwear, in the food." "So keeping the camera equipment clean and making sure that all the technical material we had survived the sand and the wind was a really tough job, and the crew did brilliantly." "They've never had to work on anything so difficult before." "I found that we had very few problems with working in Islamic countries." "You have to obey a different set of rules generally, but hospitality is very important to the people who live out there." "The first thing they must do is to make you feel welcome, to share what little food they have with you..." "We went and stayed in a refugee camp, and lived in the mud buildings of the family themselves." "They had children to look after, relatives as well, but they still insisted on looking after us." "So I never felt uneasy except in areas where there were security problems, especially in Algeria where we were warned that we were very much targets as Western journalists." "We were protected there, but there was a kind of frisson of danger to go into a place like that." "Everybody was friendly." "Despite the fact that we filmed there during September 11th, there was no animosity towards us." "After September 11th, people were anxious to reassure us that they were friendly and wanted to see us out there." "Generally, people are interested if you're interested in them." "We're not doing a political, judgmental programme, we want to talk to the people who live in the Sahara about how they live, about how similar we are, and I think people respond to that." "There were one or two moments where I felt a sense of "Oh, my God!" ""Where are we?" "And how are we going to get out?"" "Generally speaking, we..." "We engaged the people to show us around who know the desert, but there were one or two moments." "We had very strong sandstorms in Mauritania, and there were one or two places where we got completely lost." "Landmarks disappeared, and even the people who knew the desert were saying, "It's over there." "No, it's over there."" "And I wondered, "What does happen if we get stuck?"" "And the other time when I got quite shaken up was when I was walking with the camel train across the Ténéré Desert - part of the Sahara that's in Niger." "It's one of the hottest parts of the Sahara." "I decided to walk with them." "The camera crew had all gone on, and I thought, "This'll be fine."" "The camels go at a regular rate, it's a fairly steady pattern." "I stopped to write in a notebook and realised that three or four camels had gone on ahead." "Later, I stopped for a swig of water, a few more had gone on." "I realised that as fast as I moved, I couldn't catch them up, and even if I caught up a little way," "I suddenly felt the intensity of the heat, and I realised I didn't know the language these people spoke." "We just sort of talked to each other - one of us spoke a bit of French - but mainly by gesture." "I couldn't see the guy at the front and I was slipping back, and I'd heard how quickly you become dehydrated once the water runs out, and people don't survive more than a day in that sun," "and I thought, "God!" "If they just go on a bit further," ""it may be too late!" It was all right, but I knew what it was like to be dehydrated and run out of water in the Sahara!" "There are a number of tribes right across the Sahara." "In fact, the country boundaries don't mean very much, especially in the centre, so we spent time with a number of small tribal groups, one group particularly called the Wodaabe." "They're nomads and every year they walk with their cattle south to where the water is and back north to where they came from when it gets cooler." "They walk enormous distances so I tried to walk with them to see what it was like to live like that, on the move." "You never spend more than six or seven days in one place." "They move everything." "We had these very natty little tents that sort of scrumple up into a tiny ball, and sleeping bags that go into a bag the size of a tea cup, but they had proper beds, even though they had to carry them" "every six or seven days." "They were lashed on top of a donkey - beds with four posts - because that was a status thing for them." "So it was interesting to work out how they lived." "Various tribes that we were with..." "There was also a tribe called the Dogon who live right down in the southern part of Mali." "They ran from the Islamic invasions and hid in the rocks and have been cut off from the world for about 600 years." "Now people are visiting them, but their way of life is wonderfully strange and different, and their idea of how the universe was created is something that really sort of shakes you." "They all laid on dances and things." "The celebration's very important." "And I remember thinking with the Dogon people," ""They've laid on a nice celebration for us." ""They're all dancing."" "Then we went back to our camp where we'd put our tents up, and we could hear them dancing for the rest of the night." "It was clearly for them and not for us." "I think after we'd gone, they got out the millet beer, and their party went on for about four or five days." "Again, that was an insight into how people relax, how they enjoy themselves, the importance of ritual." "So three or four separate tribal groups." "We were working and living with the Touareg for a week - just walking with the camels or filming the camels." "That was interesting." "They have a different language and we'd have language courses in the evening." "They'd teach me Tamahaq which is their language, so I learnt various things like "Izzot", and I taught them things like "Bottoms up"" "which they got the hang of very quickly." "Some of the great memories of the journey were really about the sense of isolation and space, and silence." "I remember one particular time in the Hoggar mountains which are about 9,000 feet up." "The Sahara has three big mountain ranges." "And the Hoggar, as I say, are 9,000 feet up, and sunrise and sunset there are absolutely magical, because the mountains themselves are so extraordinary." "They're like the cores of old volcanoes, all twisted in different directions, and there's nobody there." "You're on your own." "I suppose some of the other moments were being with the Touareg, walking with the camels, and just seeing this vast, open area where one tree becomes like a village or a house - it becomes that important." "Most of the time there's nothing, just moving along very slowly." "It's so elemental and so basic, it starts you thinking about yourself." "I can understand why Judaism, Christianity and Islam all came from the desert, because you start thinking inside yourself because outside there's nothing to see." "So there were moments like that, and I suppose the evenings we spent with the Touareg trying to teach other the language - a lot of laughter there which I'll remember very fondly." "I suppose other things were being able to go somewhere like Algeria that's very, very hard to film in." "I think we were one of the first to get permission to film there for a long while." "We went into the Casbah." "Anyone who's seen "The Battle of Algiers"" "knows about the importance of the Casbah in the Algerian Revolution against the French." "That was the heart of the resistance and it's still a hot bed of violence and revolt, so we had armed guards discreetly hidden." "I remember going in." "We were told to be very careful, you never know what might happen." "We were just about to go into the Casbah when suddenly there was this terrific noise of a vehicle coming round the corner and shouting, but it turned out to be a wedding party, and there were some people playing in the back of the van." "They were playing little pipes and drums and smiling at us." "I was told that we were probably the first Western journalists to film there for six or seven years, and I feel privileged to have done that." "I've always..." "One of the reasons why I wanted to do the Sahara was because I'd heard that it was magical and strange, and it wasn't just flat, sandy plains, and I'm glad to say that was proved to be exactly right." "Not only are there mountain ranges, there's also lakes, there are rivers." "The River Niger flows right into the centre of the desert." "It flows up to Timbuktu which we went to." "The beautiful sand dunes that you see on date packets - the sort of classic Sahara - only comprise about 15 per cent of the land area, and they are beautiful." "The sand seas where there's just the wind blowing the grains into the most beautiful shapes is wonderful to see, but deadly to cross because the sand is so soft." "Vehicles get stuck up sand dunes and almost tip over." "It's best not to touch, just to look, and it is fantastic." "A lot of it is very rocky." "There are some wonderful escarpments and volcanic cones of mountains like the Hoggar." "So it was always different." "We went quite long distances in our vehicles and every time I looked up, it looked different." "I said, "Where's that mountain gone?"" "or "Why are we in a ravine?"" "And there IS wildlife there." "You don't see much of it, but suddenly one night we were with the Touareg and they found this baby gazelle that had been born the night before." "I thought, "Gazelles in the Sahara?" "!"" "but there are wild gazelles and this baby was discovered so there are lots of surprises." "The Sahara was the hardest journey that I've ever done." "Maybe because I'm getting older, but in logistical terms it was the most difficult." "There aren't creature comforts in the Sahara, basically." "There aren't hotels where you can go and rest up while you have four or five hard days." "A lot of the time was spent camping." "More than half the journey was spent in tents and campsites." "We couldn't film in the middle of the day for about three or four hours, just because it was incredibly hot." "In fact, the hottest sequence I've ever filmed was done amongst the Dogon people who live near the rocks, so the heat is reflected off the rock." "And we did this lunchtime sequence at 12 o'clock in the open so the director could get the light in there." "Our soundman had a watch with numbers and gadgets on, and he said it was 56 degrees centigrade in the middle of that scene which is 132 degrees Fahrenheit." "So I was burning on top, and the food was very hot as well, and they kept laughing at me." "They said, "Here, it is a sign of a real man" ""if you can eat hot food!"" "I said, "Thanks very much!" "I'm not a real man today!" ""I'm a cinder on a pile of ashes!"" "So, um..." "I've never had heat like that before, and I don't think I've ever had to film only mornings and evenings because of the intensity of the heat." "And as I say, just getting there." "No roads so you're bumping across very difficult terrain, being thrown about a lot, and if you get ill as I did - just a 24-hour bug - it's awful because your body's like a Kenwood mixer," "just being thrown around." "But I survived!" "Well, probably North London for a while!" "Which is quite a dangerous area to live!" "One or two ideas." "I don't want to go to extremes any more." "I'd like somewhere in the middle, possibly nice four star hotels." "Something will come up." "At the end of every journey I do," "I say, "That's the last journey", and I'll say that for this one because I don't think we could go through this again, but the travel bug is something that once you're bitten by it," "you're infected." "After two or three weeks at home," "I start looking at the atlas, wondering where to go next." "One of the problems about making a series like this is that when we are out at somewhere like the Sahara it's difficult to get there, you're fortunate to be there, you've spent a bit of money getting there," "so you film as much as you can." "And not all of it can fit into a series." "And we've shot many, many hours for what is going to be a four-hour series." "But with the wonders of DVD, we can show you and bore you rigid with things that didn't actually make the final cut." "Here are some of the sequences which I would love to have seen in the series but didn't fit in;" "often because we had to move on or we couldn't have too much in one country and not so much in another." "But I think they're all things with value of their own." "Fez, the old capital of Morocco, was the sort of place that we could have stayed for most of the programme." "It's on our way through Morocco to the Sahara desert." "It was so fascinating because it's a still-working medieval city." "And among one of the things that we filmed but couldn't use was this wonderful market, where the skins that make the leather that Fez is famous for are traded early in the morning." "We went along to see these skins being brought out." "What are they celebrating?" "They're sort of saying that English people are coming to make, er... millions here." "So yeah..." "Just..." "Anyway" "Really? "English people are coming, get your cowhides out!"" "The big spenders are here(!" ")" "Let's see what else is going on." "(THEY SPEAK IN ARABIC)" "So there's some..." "He's just asked me if you are English tanners and if you are experts on hides." "And I said yes." "Hope he doesn't ask questions about that!" "I'm not very good on tanning!" "Look at that there." "You can see here, there doesn't seem to be many trucks or vehicles collecting." " People on donkeys, things like that." " Yeah." "Because they are taken to the medina, in the medina there are no vehicles." "The vehicle would stop here." "This will go to the medina." "Oh, that's why!" "Yes, you couldn't get the cars through there." "Right." "Yeah." "In Fez we had a very good guide called Abdulfettah, a wonderful man who's lived in England." "He did some designs for Mick Jagger's bathroom at one time!" "Erm...camera positions..." "No, no!" "Only joking." "Tiles and things like that." "Anyway, a very good English-speaking Moroccan and a craftsman." "We went back to his house...and he is married to a lady called Naomi." "Erm...and she has lived out in Morocco now for three or four years." "She's of Suffolk farming stock, so very down to earth." "And I was interested to find out from HER what it was like to readjust to being an Englishwoman living in a Moroccan city." "She gave us a very good interview." "He's one ofseventeen" "In that respect, life is easy." "Life here is very much a community thing." "You're never on your own." "You're always surrounded by family and friends, there's always people around the table, eating with you." "It's not like England at all." "Do you find sometimes you miss having a bit of peace or time to yourself?" " Do you have private time here?" " It's difficult, but yes, you have to make it, sometimes I go to the roof." "When I need to release some "agh"," "I go up there for a quiet time on my own." "What have you found out about the way life's organised here, say, between husband and wife?" "How different is it from England?" "It's very much two different worlds." "The men have their world, the women have theirs." "The women are at home, cooking, cleaning, looking after children." "That's their role." "Do you think you will ever become...of Moroccan mentality?" "I'm trying." "I'm trying." "'Cause I think it would help me in accepting a lot of things." "I think I've come so far... perhaps I can't go any further." "Sometimes I think, "Will I ever accept that?" "I don't think I will."" "But to go back to what I was in England that would be just as difficult now." "I'm sort of between the two." "This was in the sequence that we shot in the refugee camp of the Saha...wa..." "I can't say the word!" "In this you'll probably hear me trying to say it." "The Saharawi people." "They're the people who have been exiled from their country for twenty-five years." "When we were interviewing around the camp we met a lady called Metou." "I remember her because she had the..." "Arab dress on over a pair of denim jeans and Doc Martens boots." "She'd been educated part of the time in Wales." "We had a wonderful time talking about how to get from Machynlleth to Llandudno." "And other matters more relevant to Africa." "And she was a delightful person to talk to." " You've lived your life as a refugee?" " Yes, all of my life as a refugee." "Have you ever been to your country, Western Sahara, I suppose?" "Never." "I haven't been in my country, I've never seen my country." "I don't know my country...what this look like." "I hope one day to see my country." "What did your family do there?" "Where did they live?" "My family..." "I live with my mother here." "My grandmother as well." "And part of my family live in occupied territories." "In Laayoune, the capital of Western Sahara." " Do you still see your father?" " My father is one of the Saharawi people who was arrested in 1975." " He was arrested?" " Yes, erm..." "I mean...the Moroccan people arrested them in 1975." "Why did they arrest your father?" "Because my father was fighting for his rights." "He was fighting for the rights of the Saharawi people?" "Yes." "For the Saharawi people." "And the Moroccan people arrested him with 100 people." "I mean with his friends...with some people." "Have you been in contact with him?" "No." "I have no news about my father." "I have no contact with my father." "I don't know if he's alive, if he died." " That's terrible." " Yes." "It was terrible." "One ingredient to any Sahara trip are of course camels." "And very early on, a sort of baptism of fire," "I lived with people who ate camel most of the time." "So I ate not only bits of camel meat but also camel livers." "Which I recommend you avoid." "Especially when they've been around over four days." "They set me off a bit, diced camel liver, but I ate camel," "I walked with camel, but this was my introduction to camel cheese." "Nancy." "Michael Palin." "Very pleased to meet you." "Thank you for having us." "This is the first time I've had camel milk." "I've EATEN the various bits of camel." " Yes, but here's the best part." " Right!" " I'll give it a try." " The milk." "Mm." "Mmm, yes, it's lovely." "Mmm." "Mm." "Now, how does this differ from cow's milk?" " Is it more nutritious, less nutritious?" " It has the same nutrition, but less fat, less sugar." "And more minerals and vitamin C. It has more vitamin C than any other milk." "It's very good for you." "It's refreshing and it gives you strength." " Oh, good." " They say it's tonic for men." " I don't know what that means." " Tonic for men?" "Gin and tonic?" "No." "So what else does it do?" "It's just general...very good for the spirits, for the virility or whatever, they always say that, that'll sell anything." "Yes, they say it for tomatoes!" "This is our camel cheese, the only one in the world you can have today...as of today." " Camel cheese." "That'll be a first." " Yes." "Mm." "Mmm." "Yes." "It's quite mild." "It's sort of...not so creamy as Camembert." " Not yet." " Not quite as..." "Not yet?" "It'll get creamy." "Not quite as tart as chèvre, but, erm..." "Yes." "It goes creamy like a very nice French goat cheese." "This is..." "Here, you have all the explanations in English." "It's, erm, the camel is an extraordinary animal." "I feel regeneration already!" "Better leave the shop!" "Dakar really stood out as a rather sophisticated, cosmopolitan city." "Erm, and we tried to get a flavour of Dakar." "I went to a wrestling match, which is in the programme." "We went to the slave island of Gorée, just off the coast." "There are absolutely wonderful designers there and beautiful women too, and we put the two together and improvised a model show." "We had mannequins parading up and down a strange catwalk in a restaurant." "It didn't work completely, but the dresses were smashing." "The ladies were lovely." "And I was very sad to lose this." "I think it's one of the sexiest sequences in Sahara." "There wasn't much sex." "(DRUMMING PRACTICE)" "(ARABIC CHATTER OVER PA SYSTEM)" "(THEY CHAT IN FRENCH)" "(CONTINUE TO CHAT IN FRENCH)" "To smile..." "When we went to Libya, a difficult country to get into, difficult to get permission to go there..." "One reason why we could film in Libya is that we attached ourselves to a reunion party of veterans of Tobruk." "Erm..." "They were all people who had fought in the battle of Tobruk, 1940-'41." "It was the sixtieth anniversary and the last time a lot of these guys went back." "It's made a nice sequence for the programme." "There was more than we could use." "In particular, I remember wonderful shots of the graves themselves, and the way they're beautifully kept by a Libyan gardener and his wife, in very difficult circumstances, there's little water there." "It's hard to grow plants, but he keeps them immaculately." "I also remember talking to other vets." "There was a wonderful man called Ray Ellis, who was actually captured and taken to a prison camp in Italy, and he's written a book about his experiences." "And he just told a most wonderful story about his journey back to Italy." "(BAGPIPES PLAY)" "I'm 81 now." "This is probably my last trip." "But you never know, we Desert Rats seem to go on and on." "We've all reached the age where, um," "(BUGLE CALLS THE LAST POST)" "All so young, you know - twenty-one, twenty." "And very often twenty means a bride of nineteen." "And nineteen means a bride of seventeen perhaps." "And we think now of them, and they're eighty." "One thinks of that." "We will remember them." "(ALL) We will remember them." "I was taken prisoner where all these men died." "Then we were dragged across," " I say "dragged" because it's too long and too horrible a story to relate now - all the way to Tripoli." "And many men, MANY men died on the way of dysentery and starvation and all sorts of things." "(MICHAEL) Were you marched through the desert or in vehicles?" "First we marched." "We had to march for water." "And many men died on the way." "They didn't die of thirst, the Germans mercifully shot them as they fell." "They dispatched them so they didn't die of thirst." "That wasn't being cruel, it was kindness." "Erm, then we were dragged all the way to Tripoli." "Then we went across to Naples on a cargo ship, in the bottom of the hold, battened down, praying." "The most frightening journey of my life." "That we weren't sunk by the RAF or the Navy, our navy!" "We got to Naples and were taken to a town called Capua, near Naples." "And we were a dirty, lousy, filthy, unshaven, thin, begrimed group of men." "And in this way they marched us through the streets." "It was propaganda, saying "This is the British Army."" "And the population were jeering and mocking, and I hated them!" "I was full of hatred." "And then something happened which has lived with me all my life." "A girl came from the back of the crowd and ran and put a peach in my hand." "It...was fantastic!" "Erm..." "And all my life afterwards, when things have been very bad," "I've always thought, "Somewhere there is a girl with a peach."" "Someone with another idea, with another thought, who isn't following the general trend." "As I say, that girl with the peach, has lived with me all my life." "There are Libyans buried here in this cemetery, is that right?" "Er...four." "I always take them poppies." "The Libyan grave doesn't say, "Rest in peace,"" "it says, "He is forgiven."" "(MICHAEL) The graveyards here are perfectly maintained, they're absolutely immaculate." "They're maintained by a Libyan." "Can you tell me about him?" "His name is Hajji Mohammed, because he has made the Hajj to Mecca." "And he is the father of these, he calls them his boys." "I've heard him say to a grieving daughter, "Don't worry, I'll look after your dad,"" "in Arabic." "Libya is quite a strange country to be in." "Not that people aren't friendly, but it's very difficult to find them!" "It is a HUGE country, with a population about the size of Greater London." "So we went through towns that seemed almost deserted." "And to add to that, some of the most beautiful places in and around Libya are the old Classical Greek and Roman sites." "There's a place called Leptis Magna, which is just a wonderfully preserved major Roman city." "I think it's well preserved because very few people visit it." "But we were there." "And it was silent most of the time." "And suddenly children poured into the amphitheatre where we were filming, all sat in rows and began to sing." "I wasn't sure what it was all about." "But it was wonderful to suddenly have these dry, dead stones come to life through the Libyan schoolchildren." "(CHILDREN SING)" "Oh, right, yeah." "These have come from the road?" "Yeah." "They've just...just walked in from the bush, he said." "Yeah." " (MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH)" " Yeah." "Just for the (INDISTINCT)." " (BOY) Bonjour." " Bonjour." "Shall we go this way?" "(RAPID SPEECH OVER PA SYSTEM)" "So much choice!" "They've suddenly got here so much choice." "It's bewildering after what they had at home, where they would exist if they didn't have millet, if they just have milk." "So here it must be dazzling." "This strange rap, we have to find out what that is." "(FAST RAP-LIKE SPEECH)" "They're basically selling noise, I think." "Do you like this...sound?" "Is this from Agadez?" "(UNCLEAR SPEECH)" "Yes." "(CONTINUES RAP-LIKE SPEECH)" "(FEEDBACK FROM SOUND SYSTEM)" "(CHATTING IN FRENCH)" "Rice." "It's good sort of fuel this, not what I'd normally have for breakfast." "But, you know, I've got whatever it is, twelve to fifteen hours of...walking." "It'll probably be the only meal I have for about another eight or nine hours." "Hence the chomping." "The camel-like chomping is familiar." "It's thick and coarse, and quite a bit of sand in this." "(CAMEL GRUNTS LOUDLY)" "One hundred." "Twenty." "Ten." "Reverse to Route A." "(TRAFFIC CONTROL) May I have your destination?" "Hassi-Massaoud or Algiers?" "(PILOT) Algiers." "(TRAFFIC CONTROL) Yeah copied." " It will last tens of years." " Tens of years?" "Years." "Yeah." "It's very long." "We can speak easily for hundred years." "It's amazing to be here." "It's like sort of the lungs of the country." "The gas pumping out." "Is any of this going to Great Britain?" " Sorry?" " Is any of this going to the UK?" " Not through this pipeline." " Not through that." "I just thought I could send a message, you know, to our gas cooker!" " OK!" " Probably be another month's time!" " Coming through!" " Even you can go, it's forty-eight inches." " All right, I'll go through!" " It's a colossal way!" "Those are some of the big moments, the larger scenes that never made it." "There are lots more little moments which never made it." "And I do regret that a lot of them aren't there." "But Alex, our genius editor, has put a few together." "(INDISTINCT)" " Can we look at this." " Thank you very much. (INDISTINCT)" "Big church." "Very good." "Very happy." "You know, chaplain this one, from America." "(INDISTINCT) Four years been here." "A service!" "Thank you very much." "After the service, told me, "Mustapha, goodbye."" "Thank you very much." "Remember." "My name be here." "Can you speak?" "Yes, "Reverend John Hind on the first visit to Tangiers, Palm Sunday 1995."" " "By Mustafa Chergui."" "(CORRECTS PRONUNCIATION) Thank you very much." ""Mustafa Chergui, Sexton."" ""Photo by Lancelot Taylor, Church Warden."" " Thank you very much." " Splendid." " Yes, ME, picture!" " That's you." "There you are!" " A little bit younger." " Thank you very much." "You work very hard!" "The chaplains come and go, but Mustapha goes on forever!" " Thank you very much." " Thank YOU very much." "Agh-h-h!" "Oof!" "(LAUGHTER)" "Yeah!" "That's OK(!" ") That just blast right across my face." "It's OK." "I know how you feel now." " Ooh!" " Well, it worked." "I preferred it when it wasn't working." "(LAUGHTER)" " Are you all right?" " Yes." "I got that right across the face." "It's OK." "Should've kept the spectacles on." "It's OK." "I can still wink." "(MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)" " (MICHAEL) It's all right." " It's OK." "Just take a bit of the...shrapnel out there." "(INDISTINCT CHAT)" "(MICHAEL LAUGHS)" "Ah, get rid of the wrinkles." "That's all right." "A bullet hole's rather a nice cosmetic..." " You want medicine?" " OK." " I think this is OK." " It's not in my eye." " It's not in your eyes, not in your eyes." " Yeah." "Yeah. (SPEAKS IN FRENCH)" "(HUMS TO HIMSELF)" "(TAP GURGLES AND SPLUTTERS)" "I want to buck the trend, reverse the process, to see where people have come from, not where they are going to." "I want to..." "I want..." "I want..." "Nyah." "I want to go back to see where people came from, not where they're going to." "I want to escape...oh-h!" "Beyond those mountains today is the Sahara desert, which is about..." "Erm..." "Three thousand miles across." "I ran out of things to say." "I want to reverse the trend, go the other way." "I want to go..." "Oh-h." "Buck the trend..." "Throughout recent history people have wanted to leave the desert..." "People have escaped the desert..." "Sorry!" "Throughout recent history people have tried to escape the desert." "From the Arabs who came here thirteen centuries ago to thousands of Africans who risk their lives, who..." "I want to reverse the trend." "I want to go back...(SIGHS)" "I want to reverse the process, buck the trend." "I'm more interested not where people have come from..." "I'm standing on top of the Rock of Gibraltar." "Fifteen miles across the water are the mountains of Morocco." "That mountain in Africa and this mountain here were known to the Greeks and Romans as the Pillars of Hercules." "They were the end of the civilised world." "Beyond that, complete darkness." "Beyond those mountains, less than 300 miles from where I'm standing now, is the Sahara desert." "As unexplored a place as anywhere." "And that's where my new journey is taking me." "And I'm so excited, I wet myself(!" ")" "That's the start of the journey." "The Sahara journey day two, the first thing we have to do is leave Europe behind." "That is the last of Europe, the rock of Gibraltar," "Spain beyond it." "We're on the Straits of Gibraltar, between Europe and Africa." "It's only a few more miles to the African coast, and it's just an amazing location, one of the great focal points of world history between this rock and the rock on the other side which we'll try and get a picture of later." "For the Romans and the Greeks, this was the end of the world, the end of the known world." "Beyond that, it was terra incognita, and for me, too." "Where I'm going to, places like Mauritania, Mali, they're just names" " I know nothing about them at all." "So for me, it's a journey into terra incognita as well." "There we are, there goes Gibraltar, the rock, the last of Britain only 200 miles from the Sahara Desert!" "Farewell." "See you when I see you!" "(ROARING WIND) And that, if you can hear me, is where we're going." "That's Africa!" "That's the other side of the Straits." "Morocco and beyond the Atlas mountains," "Sahara, sand, sea, fun!" "Well, sand, anyway!" "That's it." "That's Africa, right across the Straits from Gibraltar." "The two rocks, known as the Pillars of Hercules, and the end of the known world 2,000 years ago." "So a real feeling of adventure at this point!" "And wind and noise!" "The noises you can hear in the background are the everyday life of the family of Bachir who are looking after us here in the Polisario refugee camp in south-western Algeria, on the western edge of the Sahara Desert." "Around this camp, which has only been built in the last 25 years, is just desert." "(CHILDREN GIGGLE)" "And we're not staying at some hotel." "There aren't hotels." "Bachir has allowed us to come and stay in his own house, and welcomed us to the house." "There's Siddi, most of the boys are called Siddi." "That's Siddi two." "Siddi one's somewhere, and there's Salma." "Come along, Hadi!" "Say hello!" "There we are." "Say hello." "Hello, world!" "Hello." "This is Hadi." "(SPEAKS SPANISH)" "They speak Spanish here as well as Arabic, and so you're...dieciocho." "Dieciocho." "Which for all you Spanish speakers out there is 18." "Isn't it extraordinary?" "There are seven of us travelling with all our bags." "If we turned up at someone's house for two or three days, a house as small as this..." "This is the courtyard." "There's a very small kitchen, and one small lavatory which is just a hole in the ground, and it's a squat toilet so you just squat over it." "Washing comes from water which is brought from 25 miles away." "It ends up here in these big sort of drums, and we pour water in there and wash our hands from there." "That's the water they live on." "It's a very, very different world." "It's Arabic so there's no drinking, no alcohol." "None of us have had alcohol for a bit." "And when you eat..." "It's a kind of nomadic world here." "People only carry around things they can take with them." "This is still the way it is." "They have a tent, carpets, cushions, you don't have heavy tableware, you don't have anything that you can't carry with you." "So when you eat, you sit cross-legged and... ..and you sort of lie rather languidly at the table in there." "And people just naturally lie down here." "It's a different way of life, and life begins really when the light comes up." "There is some light here." "There's a solar panel which brings in electricity or rather creates electricity." "It charges that battery, and there is no electricity brought into this camp which is called Smara and contains 40,000 people." "It's all solar heated, so everything's quite dim." "Everyone's very jolly." "They're all amazingly friendly and welcoming." "They probably should be at school!" "The buildings are made of what you see around you, basically sand - sand and clay." "Sand and water." "They make building bricks and they put a rendering on." "This presumably survives because it doesn't rain here very often." "It hasn't rained here for two and a half years." "This is our home for a while, and you're very, very kind!" "Oh, thank you!" "You made this." "This is a..." "There we go." "Look at that!" "Thank you." "There - it means we're friends." "I'll probably have to pay about 3,000 pesetas!" "That's lovely." "Thank you." "Muchas gracias." " De nada." " Muchas gracias." "Me llamo Michael y buenas noches!" "Here is the solar panel." "The source of all the light and energy at night." "Here is the battery which is being charged." "When they cook, the cooking is in here." "This is the kitchen." "(CHILDREN CHATTER)" "We'll fight our way through." "This is the kitchen." "Can you see in here, there's a...?" "There's Salma." "How are you doing?" "Salma say hello to the camera." "There we are." "Hold on." "Hola!" "Hola!" "No, no!" "There's Mrs Krikita." "(CHILD) Hola." "(PALIN) Hola." " Krikita?" "Kri-kita?" " Kri-kiba." "Kri-kiba, you see?" "We're learning!" "Mrs Kri-kiba." "She does all the cooking out of this one little room here." "There's a stove down there." "Oh, she doesn't want us to see that." "(BOY) Siddi." "(PALIN) Siddi uno." "What's this, Bachir?" "(BACHIR) This is brazier." "(PALIN) That's charcoal brazier." "(BACHIR) Charcoal from acacia wood." "Acacias are about the only trees that grow here." "Yes, this is the only tree which grows in this part of the desert." "That's charcoal from acacia wood, and this is Calor gas?" "(BACHIR) Yes, but in general, for preparing food, we prefer to use the brazier of acacia rather than the gas." "Because it has a pleasant smell and cooks better?" "Yes, and the fire is softer." "The heat is softer than the gas." "It's softer." "That's interesting, yeah." "So, as you have said yesterday, no?" "For a good tea, we need unsalty water and charcoal." "That's easier said than done because unsalty water comes from about 50 kilometres away." "And the best acacia wood, so tea is so important here." "Thank you." "There's Siddi going off there." "Now, into the tent." "Take my shoes off." "We take our shoes off when we go into the tent." "And, er... (BACHIR) You can sit wherever you like." "I'm going to show you this is where we would eat." "You sit like that." "Cross-legged and you'd have bowls like that." "And when you've had enough, you have a little lie down." "That's how we want to relax." "Like that, yeah." "That's the way you relax, is it?" "I was saying, it's probably to do with being nomads - having to take things you can carry with you, so you don't have great heavy chairs." "(BACHIR) Just very light things." "(PALIN) Lovely!" "That's the life!" "That's the life!" "It's not all as easy as this!" "And they're not all as friendly as Bachir!" "(BACHIR) Thank you!" " Good hospitality!" "It's just unbelievable because here we are in this tent, surrounded by friends, and outside, miles and miles of desert about as far as the eye can see." "Anyway... ..that's it." "Tea is about to be made." "They're very hospitable here." "And we all sleep, not together, but in these two rooms... ..rather comfortably." "And I feel much better after a really awful day yesterday when something hit my system, some nasty, violent, evil thing went through my system." "It made me feel very ill." "Coming out of both ends, I was, so I feel much better tonight." "I'm quite looking forward to crossing the border tomorrow to Mauritania and finding a hotel that has hot water in the rooms, and somewhere to get a shave and just clean up, and sort out the gear which has been covered in sand five days in a row." "Otherwise, moral is high, isn't it?" "(NO ONE RESPONDS)" "Isn't it?" "Oui!" "Shoukran!" "OK..." "Goodnight!" "If you're not careful, I'll show you the toilet facilities!" "Well, you asked for it." "I threatened I'd show you the toilet facilities here." "It's called Mejeg or Mejik." "It's a very southern part of Western Sahara." "A tiny little desert town." "There's not much here at all." "This is the grand de luxe bathroom." "This is really quite clean." "Get a bucket of water and just flush it down there." "And around here, we'll find the washroom." "It's just as well this isn't smell-a-vision, actually!" "A little bit of bath water in there... which I think is a bit..." "I'm not sure whether it's bath water or washing up water, but it's slightly warm." "I hope I don't have to see these facilities as often as I did last night in the other army barracks." "I had to rush out in the night, the wind blowing, toilet paper flapping." "This is what happens when you travel." "You eat one wrong mouthful of camel stew, or a fork that hasn't been cleaned, and then for 24 hours, your system's hell." "But as I say, I'm fine today, and I'm drinking the tea - this is very special tea that the Saharawis, the people who live in Western Sahara - they've now been exiled to one side of the border " "but they make this lovely tea and have been very good to us." "So a drink to the Western Sahara people, the Saharawis!" "Ace!" "I'd just like to say a few words about Michael, because he's too modest to say that he's been extremely ill on this leg of the journey." "For one whole day, he was vomiting one, two, three, four times." "He got weaker and weaker, and by the end he could hardly stand up." "There are very few hospitals around, but at the mention of the word "hospital", he would have nothing to do with it, so we think he's been a very brave boy." "He's been a real trouper, and he'll probably hate me for telling the world how ill he's been and how he's coped with it in very wild and inhospitable places." "I can't speak too highly of..." "What shall we call it?" "The professionalism - the do or die bulldog spirit!" "(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)" "(MAN) Does Michael want to keep any of his small bags?" "No, I think everything's out here." "(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)" "It's the sort of travelling light that we do (!" ")" "We need all these." "Believe it or not, we need all these." "I personally need my stock of 42 socks, 16 linen suits, dinner jacket and... ..medals." "But this is... ..really the end of a section which has taken us across our first real stretch of desert from Morocco down here to..." "..central southern Mauritania." "Behind me the fort from the French Foreign Legion!" "It really was a French Foreign Legion fort." "You see this extraordinary... ..wall decoration." "It looks as though people have served tennis balls very fast and repeatedly into the walls." "OK... (MAN) Are you ready?" "Trouble strikes in Bandiagara in Mali, 50 miles south-east of..." "..Mopti on our way to Dogon country." "It's a kind of bumpy, bouncy road, a couple of springs have broken, so the repair is being done." "They've just gone into town and got a bit of rubber to strengthen the springs, so what do we do?" "We get food!" "Ah, my mango has arrived!" "Thank you." "This is our director." "What's the way to do it?" "Sorry, mango calls." "Mr Meakin, the camera man." "Don't take it away again." "No, go on." "All the crew must eat in quieter moments like this." "There they all are." "A mango moment." "Mangoes and bananas... ..taste different in Africa." "It was worth a detour just for the mangoes." "It's worth breaking down every now and then." " Where did you get these?" " At a police stop." "We had to stop on the way to Bandiagara." "There were red and white striped cans right across the road." " We had to pay some tax." " Mmm." "Poll tax." "It seemed to be a bit of a contentious issue." " Well, it's..." " Who levies the tax?" "It's the local bandits, basically." "They just say, "This bit of road is ours," ""and you have to pay to cross it." It's like a motorway toll." "They had no actual uniform or badge of authority." "Meanwhile, while you're doing that, someone creeps up the side and sells you mangoes!" "They sell you everything all the time here." "That was the wife of the man taking the fine." "I'm being pampered!" "So what's the problem?" "How does this affect our progress?" "Well, we've lost half a day probably, but we'll just sit here and eat mangoes until they've fixed it." "It's not the first time that we've had vehicle trouble." " It is a problem." " It is a problem, but it's kind of par for the course." "(MAN) OK." "Um, it's... ..the beginning of the second week of March now here in Mali, the centre of Africa, and it's beginning to get very hot." "You notice it." "It's ten to nine now but the sun's beating down, and everybody who knows anything tries to find the shade." "You find whatever you can which is the shade of this big tree." "They're setting up their stalls now." "There's never a shortage of a salesman in Africa." "I suppose that's what they live off - these things they've made and the tourists that come by." "I'd say there aren't that many." "So today is going to be a day on the river, I hope." "I see these people setting up the stall," "I think I'll set up my own stall." "People often ask what I carry in this bag of mine." "It is quite important because everything is vital." "Firstly, the major thing being water." "Water... ..absolutely vital." "You're supposed to drink about six to eight litres a day, and we probably do." "It draws the moisture out of you here, and every hour, half hour, you have to reinvigorate your system by having a slug." "So, there's the water down there." "I'll make my own little stall." "Notebook." "There we are." "Aldwych notebook." "Wonderful." "All weather." "Hand-stitched seam." "The only notebook that really survives a journey like this where it gets a lot of use." "I keep notes of the day." "And when we're bouncing along in a vehicle, and I can't write," "I use this little tape recorder." ""Hello, on the banks of the Bani River in Mopti," ""day 436."" "(TAPE REWINDS)" "(TAPE) Hello, on the banks of the Bani River in Mopti, day 436." "Oh, it works." "Il marche!" "So there's that which I'll put down there, the notebook...there..." "What else?" "Glasses." "I suppose my reading eyesight started to go just after I'd done Round the World in 80 Days, so now I do need these to read the small print, but because the sun is so bright in Africa," "I need them far less than I do in murky London town." "And then a pair of shades for when it gets very dark... ..or I want to look exceedingly cool." "So that's the cool look." "There's a couple of those." "All absolutely necessary." "Now, what's in the side pockets?" "Sun lotion, sun very strong." "Probably up to 45 degrees this afternoon." "A little thermometer which will tell me what the temperature is." "Sweet, isn't it, really?" "It was the only one I could find." "It's now..." "In the shade, it's about 32 in the shade at half-past eight." "Mozzy repellant... ..to squirt around me." "It's very essential for the riverside here, although... ..this part of Africa is too dry for the really nasty mosquitoes." "You have to go further south, the jungle area." "So that was the "medicament" section." "And here, tissues - nose for the blowing of, scraping sand out of your ears, cleaning your hands after you've eaten." "Hairbrush for a quick bit of vanity." "That is actually the entire make-up effort on this production - just get the hairbrush!" "And, er..." "Those are rather useful." "Little... ..toothpick." "Very, very necessary, because people have been eating sheep the last few days, and before that, in the Western Sahara, I was eating camel." "This gets rid of those bits of sheep and camel that lurk." "So, nearly finished now." "There's a sort of antiseptic swab if you get cut anywhere, which I often do." "And that's about it, I think." "There's probably something for the throat." "Just throat sweets - it gets very sandy here." "So that's what I carry in the bag." "Well, we're not working at the moment, because of the extreme heat, isn't that right?" "You'd normally whip us, flog us out there into the desert." "The temperature is now 129 Fahrenheit." "Yeah, that's in the shade, so it's probably going to be 135, 140 in the sun." "Can you do a conversion to centigrade for us?" "OK, for those who are metric, we're gonna go metric." "We're metric, aren't we, in Britain?" "There is metric." "Centigrade's coming up." "It's working on it." "It's flashing a lot, but nothing's happening yet." " Talk amongst yourselves." " It's about as hot as it gets." "53 centigrade, and behind me is a hot lunch being prepared!" "We like a hot lunch in the heat!" "The main trick that I've learnt is to keep the water in the sun, and then you put a tea bag in it." "It's a very cunning idea." "We don't waste our time." "This is a patent tea-making method, discovered when we were going in one of the vehicles." "The water starts vaguely frozen, and just gets hotter." "We had this brilliant idea of putting some peppermint tea bags in it, putting it on the dashboard, and it was a boiling hot cup of tea by the end!" "So what becomes a negative, you turn into a positive, which is really the nature of filming, isn't it?" "Yeah." "I think we've got to work this out between us." "(GRUNTS OF EFFORT)" "(LABOURED BREATHING)" "Headquarter Company, the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, will fire a Royal gun salute on the occasion of the birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second." "Fire!" "Number one gun..." "Fire!" "Number two gun..." "Fire!" "I always have bad dreams before a new journey." "Dreams of being late, forgetting to pack my underwear or... being shot at." "What do I need?" "Maps." "Boots." "Mosquito net..." "Mosquito net!" "Stay calm." "Read the newspaper." "It might be the last you'll see for a while." "My destination isn't that far away now." "From here, you can almost see it." "It all seems so easy - last lunch on British soil whilst looking out across the Straits of Gibraltar to Africa." "What terrors can the Sahara hold when it's only 300 miles from a British Home Stores, or a bobby, or a pint of warm beer?" "Setting off's like getting up on Monday morning." "I know I've got to do it, but I'm putting it off till the very last minute." "There are no more last minutes." "It's time to go." "The Sahara Desert is huge - the size of the United States - with the population of Norfolk." "It's as alien and hostile as anywhere on the planet." "It's also completely unknown territory for me." "I'm ready to be tested again - if necessary, to the very limits of endurance." "Ooh, good heavens." "It's like going up a lift shaft, 15 floors at a time." "Well, I'm not in the desert yet, but I'm on a camel on the sand." "You may laugh - this is the sand of Tangier beach, but it's a good place to practise camel riding." "It doesn't come naturally to me." "I get vertigo on top of these things." "We're going to have a go." "OK, Mohammed." "Imagine the dunes around." "Forget the hotel blocks." "There won't be girls walking around the Sahara either." "The beach at Tangier is only 12 miles from Gibraltar, but it feels unmistakably African." "Thank you, Fatima." "It's a friendly place." "There's always a game of football on." "I haven't played for years, which soon becomes obvious." "Ow!" "I've done the splits." "Ah!" "Screwed my leg up." "Injury, injury." "It really does hurt." "I shouldn't have done it." "Never play when you're over 57." "That's the time to stop!" "Injuring yourself on camera is a good thing." "Doing it on day one, not so good." "But this is the Arab world and treatment is close at hand." "The oriental steam bath - the hammam - is not just about cleanliness, it's also about meeting new people, doing interesting things." "OK." "Yeah." "Stretching my groin." "Ooh." "That's good." "Feels good." "Ah...that's OK." "It's amazing how quickly you make friends here!" "Before this, we hardly knew each other." "Yeah." "That's OK." "It's good." "Within half an hour, I feel completely cured." "From the 1920s to the 1950s, Tangier was a free port in which Europeans and Americans built elegant villas, seduced by blue skies and relaxed morals." "(STIRRING ORIENTAL MUSIC)" "Today, it's part of Morocco." "The morals are less relaxed, but the streets that drew the likes of Oscar Wilde," "Ronnie Kray and Errol Flynn, are largely unchanged." "This innocent-looking square, the Petit Socco, was once described as "the sinkhole of iniquity."" "I asked a present-day resident, writer Jonathan Dawson, if this wasn't a bit strong." " Was it ever that?" " Yes, it really was that." "When you say, "Is it still?", it's not obviously here, but, everything is there if you want it." ""Seek and ye shall find."" "You can have boys or girls or cockerels or anything you want." "Hashish." "It's a national pastime to smoke kif for the Moroccans." "It's not legal, but it's sort of slightly not illegal." "I don't encourage it." "To find out what brings people to Tangier today," "Jonathan recommends I go to church on Sunday - if I can only find it." "Ah!" "The Anglican Church of St Andrew." " Hello." " Hello." " I'm Michael." " Oh, good." "I'm Mustafa Chergui." " Mustafa..?" " Chergui." " Church cantica..." " Church catholic?" "Excellent." " I wanted to see the church." " I've been here 38 years." " 38 years?" " 13-8 years." "I'm really happy for English church being here." " Can I see the church?" " Thank you." "109 years in the church." "Thank you very much." " 109 years old." " Yes." "Thank you." "Thanks to Mr Chergui, the church and its gardens are immaculate - a rich mix of Arab and Anglo." "(PRIEST) And to share with one another the sign of peace..." "The congregation is a pretty rich mix too." "(MOBILE PHONE RINGS)" "(SOFT SINGING)" "(DIFFERENT RING TONE)" "(ANOTHER RING TONE)" "The ex-pats of St Andrew's are outnumbered by Nigerians, who've crossed the Sahara on their way north." "Do they have particular problems?" "I suppose they're trying to move on into Europe." "What's life like for them here?" "Well, very precarious." "Quite a lot get arrested and shunted across to Algeria." "The Moroccan and the Algerian governments tend to play a game of putting their undesirables across each other's borders." "(MOBILE TONE)" "Half the congregation is Nigerian." "Well, it was about 200 people with perhaps seven old hands and about 200..." "But they're wonderful people." "Did you hear the phones ringing in the service?" "Yes, I did." "There were quite interesting themes." "At Christmas, they all rang with Jingle Bells." "We had a great laugh then." " You must come and meet Birdie." " I'd love to." " Tomorrow, if you're free?" " Yes, sure." "I think we are." "People have been very friendly." "Lots of invitations." " So what time?" " Eleven, if you want to." "Mid morning." "Excellent." " OK." " Great." "Just as I'm thinking how dreadfully British this is," "Mr Chergui has someone he wants me to meet." " Lovely." "Thank you." " This is a pretty courtyard." "Very nice." "Lovely tiles." " Hello." " Oh, hello." " La cusina." " Yes, yes, yes." "Come and say hello." "We're all from London." "Very nice to see you." "He has been very good to us today." "He's shown me round." " Very good." " Thank you very much." "(SPEAKS ARABIC)" "Ah, 40 years." "There must be something right." "She say before, "Oh, Mustafa!"" "We're going to leave you to your Sunday lunch." "Next day, I arrive at Jonathan's apartment, eager to meet Birdie, whoever Birdie is." "In these sorts of circles, it could be his wife, auntie, maybe an old golfing chum." "I'm completely wrong." "Birdie is a bird." " Jonathan." " Yes." "It's a bit of an unusual pet." "Well, I thought he was a hen and would lay me eggs for breakfast." "It was in the market, passing out in a box in the sun," "I thought I'd grow him for a breakfast..." "Stop it, Birdie." " A bit of nerves." " He's nervous." "I thought he'd be good for..." "I quite like the odd boiled egg." "But he turned into a fella, which was a shock." "Tangier is one of those places where it's hard to tell who's a fella!" "I think he's trying to sum me up a bit." " So you bought an egg." " He's going to crow." "(LOUD CROWING)" " How did you know that?" " I know if he's going to crow." "It's four o'clock in the afternoon." "When he doesn't stop at one, you need ear plugs." "It is completely abnormal for a bird to be sitting on a sofa in a library." " Yes." " He's not reading a book." "He is a dog with feathers." "I love that bird." "I'm sorry to say that, but I do." "There's no way of reaching the Sahara without crossing the Atlas Mountains - a series of long, steep ranges that stretch across Morocco." "In amongst them are some of the oldest cities in North Africa." "Fez is thought by many to be the most perfect medieval city in the Islamic world." "Is this the point where the cars stop and the donkeys take over?" "(MUEZZIN CALLS)" "Once inside its walls, you might as well be in a maze, but it's one that delights the senses - sight, sound and smell." "If you shop at Sainsbury's, it'll not make much sense, which is why I need my indispensable guide " "Abdul Fettah, a local artist - to guide me through this labyrinth of souks and sweatshops." "Busy everywhere, isn't it?" "Yes." "Those pots are for cooking preserved meat." "Preserved meat?" "Which lasts for the whole winter." "Like all the best guides, Abdul wants to end on a high note." "Ah, good heavens." "That is amazing." "It's exactly how it looked in medieval times." "It's extraordinary." "First, from the narrow passageways there's suddenly so much space." "But also this..." "I've never seen anything like that anywhere." "That's incredible." "So what's going on here?" "Obviously, dyeing and tanning." "All the different colours." "Talk me through it, as they say." "It's different stages of treatment of the hides." "There's a washing machine there, then they get the hide into the holes with some lime and pigeon poo." " Pigeon poo?" "Pigeon droppings?" " Yeah." "Is that good for stripping..." "Yes." "It's got some sort of acid in it and it also feeds the hide." "Yes." "Because it's quite a pungent smell." "It's quite high." "Then?" "After that, they get them into these vats where they are going to take the final colour." "Either yellow for baboushes... or red for pouffes or other uses." "How old are these vats?" "How old is this system here?" "It's actually as old as Fez." "Fez started by producing hides and selling them into the open markets, sometimes in Europe." "So it's a really very old..." "A thousand years old." "Something like this?" "Twelve centuries, with no exaggeration." "It is the most extraordinary sight." "It's like a great paintbox." "When I was young, I had a paintbox." "I opened it up and it was just like that." "Yes." "It's a nice comparison." "Fez is a magical city and I have to leave it far too soon, but I suspect it won't be the last temptation that lies between me and the Sahara." "If Fez was a little reserved, then Marrakech is wide open." "If you've got it, you flaunt it - whatever it is and whatever it costs." "It's a very nice shoe, but I can't go as high as 350." "It's good quality." "How much can you pay?" " 150." " Yes. 150 each." "150 each!" "(LIVELY PIPE MUSIC)" "I'm not good at maths, but that equals 300." "350 for both." " No, I can't..." " For one, 350." "One's not really enough, is it, really?" " You need two." " Two. 300." "Two for 300." "Ah, you're coming down." " How about 200?" "200." " 280." " 220 for two?" " 250." " No." "Sorry about that." " 240." " How much your last price?" " 220, that's it." "Sorry." "Anyway, yellow isn't really my colour." "(INDISTINCT)" "No, it's slippers I'm after." "From Marrakech, it's all uphill to the Sahara, passing first of all through the land of the Berber people, one of whom is my companion, Amina, though she's spent so much time in America," "her accent is more Mafia than Moroccan." " Are we in the Berber...?" " Yes, we are." "We are in the Berber villages." "They were the original inhabitants of Morocco" " before the Arabs came through." " Yes, absolutely." "We don't quite know the origins, but they sure were here before the Arabs, yeah." "Sorry to go on, but what are the characteristics of the Berbers?" "Warm people." "Very ambitious, hard-working." "You're a New Yorker really!" "Not really." "I'm a Casaoui, as they say." " Casaoui?" " Casaoui." "From Casablanca." "Casaoui." "That's good." "I like that." "Casaoui." "I'm from Sheffield!" "I'm a Sheffielder-oui." "Talking of that, I must go and find the toilet." "Here we transfer to a more rugged form of transport - the luxury pick-up we've been promised." " Yeah." " OK." "Let's go." " Shokran." " Thank you." "Shokran." "It may look like we're doing this to save the BBC money, but out of the village, you can see why they don't encourage cars." " How are you feeling?" " I feel great." "That rush of blood that comes with nature..." "Yeah." "The air is fresher." " Yeah." " How do you feel?" "Yeah." "It's fantastic." "We're so suddenly out of the valley and the trees and cherry orchards and walnut trees, and now there's nothing." "Just bare rock." "I can't believe there's a village up ahead." " Yes." " They're not fooling us?" "No, they're not." "I hope they're not!" "I'm sure they're not." " He's laughing, so we're OK." " Is there a restaurant?" "The Berber village of Aremd, 8,000 feet up in the Atlas, is so well camouflaged you could easily miss it." "It looks cold and inhospitable, but we're in for a surprise." "OK." "We're not the only ones eating here." "We have to share." "Is this the national dish, the tagine, of Morocco?" " Let me see." " The national dish." " That's the tagine." " And in there..." "Oh, wow." "It's meat, potatoes..." "Olives." "Are those beans or are those olives?" "Beans...no, olives." "(LIVELY BELLS AND DRUMS)" "The Berbers are a minority in a predominantly Arab Morocco." "A dance like this is celebrating more than just a betrothal." "It's celebrating the survival of their own culture." "A coach service connects up the last towns and villages of the Atlas Mountains." "It should take me to the end of Morocco, where the road runs out and the desert begins." "The sound of the Koran fills the bus, ensuring that Allah will protect us on our journey." "(CHANTING OVER TANNOY)" "At the village of Tademt, we pull in at a motorway service station." "If it's fast food you're after, the signs are not encouraging." " Just deux." " Deux?" "With a little help from a friend, I negotiate for a kebab." "You have to watch what they put in it." "(SPEAKS FRENCH)" "Brochette seulement." "Dear Delia, I've just eaten a bit of sheep's head." "Would this be best with white wine sauce or a roulade?" "Merci." "When Muslims talk about making a journey, they always add "inshallah"" " God willing." "It seems appropriate as we climb the highest pass on the Atlas mountains." "Inshallah." "Now we've crossed the High Atlas we are, for the first time in this journey, on the edge of desert, yet this village is one of the most familiar on the planet." "If you've seen Gladiator, you've seen it." "Or if you've seen Lawrence of Arabia, Romancing the Stone, or The Four Feathers, you've seen it." "If you've seen Sodom and Gomorra, which I saw as a "treat", you've seen it." "Ait Benhaddou is one of the great film sets of the world." "The towers of Ait Benhaddou are beautiful." "but it's hard to tell which are made of red desert earth and which are made of four by two plasterboard." "In this Moroccan Hollywood, illusion and reality play strange tricks." "From now on, signs of life are few and far between." "The last river sinks into the sand." "The last salesmen make their pitch." "Quinze?" "We have a vingt, we have a quinze." " Quinze?" " Oui." "How about dix?" "Tomorrow, I'll be in the Sahara at last." "(ALARM CHANTS)" "So this is it." "The last hotel for a while, but to be honest, I feel pretty good." "Glad to be alive." "I'm glad that I'll no longer have to ask anyone else what the Sahara Desert looks like." "The comforts of Morocco are now well behind us." "We've come beyond the protective arm of the Atlas mountains." "Ahead of us is a thousand miles of sand and stone." "Unlike Morocco, the Sahara is not welcoming." "It's hard and it's hostile and from now on, it gets serious." "OK." "South and west of Morocco lies the disputed territory of Western Sahara." "It was once a Spanish colony, but when they left in 1975, the Moroccans moved in." "Those inhabitants who didn't want to be Moroccan had to flee." "They were given land near Tindouf in Algeria for four temporary refugee camps, which is where they still are a quarter of a century later." "Their military and political organisation is called the Polisario Front." "Their job is to keep the flag flying, make sure the world doesn't forget their plight and ensure that nearly 200,000 people are fed and watered in one of the most inhospitable corners of the Sahara." "The nearest water supply is 16 miles away from the camp." "Over centuries, this water has filtered down from the mountains to fill huge underground reservoirs." "Because the water is impure, bleach has to be added." "Where does it come from?" "My host Bachir has been a refugee for half his life." "Well-educated and travelled, he lived for a while in Leeds." "That water is for everything they need - for cooking, washing, bathing?" "Yes." "For everything except for tea." "Because this is a little bit salty - relatively salty - so it's very good for cooking, washing, for everything, but not for tea because tea needs very good water." " And it needs unsalty water." " Unsalty water." "Where does the tea water come from?" "From another well which is very, very far from here" " and you can't see it." " How far?" "It's about er..." "Something like about 50 miles." " 50 miles for a cup of tea!" " Yeah." "The tankers shuttle back and forth across the desert, day in and day out." "Without them, Smara Camp would die of thirst." "How many people are there in Smara, in this camp?" "In this camp...it's the second largest camp of refugees and we have here something like 40,000 people." "40,000." "Do people have to pay for their houses here?" " Do they pay rent?" " No." "Absolutely nothing." "But education is free?" "Education is free." "Health is free." " Water?" " Water." "Transportation." "Each house has a tent, I notice." "Yeah." "Yeah." "It's er..." "The fact that we keep the tents here is very symbolic." "It shows that we always have the desire to go back to our country." "This is not our definitive land or homeland or something." "Despite Bachir's unquenchable optimism, there are more of his people each year for whom the time to return home has already run out." "It's sad, isn't it?" "A lot of people here..." "I don't know how many are in this area, but they must be people who've died outside their own country." "These are all exiles." "(BASHIR) They have fled from their old country and they have come to live here in these very hard conditions while they were waiting to go back to their country." "But unfortunately, they died here." "So this is the main market of Smara Camp." "This is where the main shops are?" "Where the main shops are and they are very recent." " All this since '94 or '95." " What did you have before that?" "(MICHAEL) A shopping mall, however basic, would have been unthinkable in Smara Camp ten years ago." "Recently, the Spanish government agreed to pay pensions to those who'd once served in its army." "This has given some refugees the money to start a business." "I need two bottles of water and some dates." "Which kind of dates do you like?" "Have you got any British dates?" "No, no, no." "The best." "I'll take a recommendation." " Some Sheffield dates." " Sheffield dates!" "You know about those, having been to Leeds." "The only meat I've eaten for the last three days is camel." "I suppose this is where it comes from." "How much is a camel's head?" "400 Algerian dinars." "400 Algerian dinars." "How much is that in...?" " In pounds?" "Four pounds." " Four pounds?" "That's not bad." " Do you boil it?" " Yeah." "You boil it." "But it takes a lot of time." "Three or four hours to cook." "Because it's not the best part of the camel." "Before my next camel dinner," "I retire to the bathroom for a shower whilst Bachir's wife, Krikiba, conjures up another meal for us." "Sadly, the hot water isn't working." "Ooh!" "We're moving on tomorrow, on around the Sahara, and one thing I remember about Smara here - apart from the way you've looked after us and the hospitality - is that it's a very well-organised, well-run town." "I keep forgetting it's not a town it's a refugee camp." "You are, to all intents and purposes, refugees." "Your children have never seen the country you were born in." "I wonder what the future is." "I mean, how do you see the future developing?" "For us, the future is very clear." "We will fight." "We will continue this fight until the end." "(WHISTLES AND DRUMS)" "At a school in the desert, these children are rehearsing for a parade to mark the anniversary of the founding of Polisario." "With Spanish and Cuban teachers, they are among the best-educated children in Africa." "But where they go from here is by no means certain." "For us, it's time to hit the road, or rather, the sand, as Bachir escorts us through the flat, treeless wastes along the borders of Western Sahara." "And when, at last, they do find a tree, they chop it down." "Well, not all of it." "Just enough to get a campfire going." "While the stew's cooking," "I test one of the advantages of flat, treeless wastes - terrific telephone reception." "Hello?" "Hello." "You'll never guess where I am." "Oh, you did." "Sahara, yes, but what bit?" "We're just in Western Sahara." "We've just come in from Algeria." "The desert's fantastic." "It seems the same, but it changes all the while." "We're just having a lunch." "They chopped down some wood, making a fire." "We'll probably be having camel again." "Yes." "I've had over the last few days a lot of camel." "Most of the bits of the camel, yes." "Just to say that we're here and I'm fine." "Any messages?" "What?" "I've won the Lottery, yes, and...?" "Pat's in to paint the sitting room." "Fantastic." "Listen.." "No, tell him I don't want that." "Not that buttermilk we had before." "Can we have it lilac with a purple stripe rising up and the dado in brown, OK?" "Yeah." "No, no, it's much better." "No, it's better." "We all get athlete's foot at some time." "No, it is better." "I am putting the ointment on." "OK." "Bye, love." "Bye from the Sahara." "A hundred miles further south, I'm with an armed guard climbing a ridge incredibly rich in fossils - a reminder that the Sahara was once under the ocean." "It looks out over a valley where a wall and a minefield mark one of the least-known armed confrontations in the world." "I'm feeling a bit jumpy up here because only a mile away there's a wall built by the Moroccans to keep the Polisario out of what they see as their homeland." "The wall runs for 1,600 miles." "There are 160,000 Moroccan troops patrolling it - some are probably looking at us now." "The situation is more tense since the Polisario, who weren't asked if the Paris-Dakar rally could enter their territory, abandoned the ceasefire." "So it's all a bit dangerous." "I'll stick to fossil hunting." "The Polisario may have abandoned their ceasefire with Morocco, but the army detachment I met up with near the wall looks ill-equipped to back up any sabre-rattling." " .." "Against tanks." " Against tanks, yeah." "They have very basic equipment - a few anti-aircraft guns and Russian tanks, third-hand from the Algerians." "There's no doubting their courage, but it seems clear that if these defiant exiles are to win their land back, it'll have to be with the ballot box, not the gun." "We spent last night at an old Spanish fort." "This morning, there's a sandstorm brewing as a convoy arrives to take us over the border to Mauritania - a country, I confess, that I've barely heard of before." "But that's what travel's all about - learning something new, and, of course, constantly having to say goodbye." "Bye, guys." "Thank you." "We never got to play our game together." "Bye." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thanks very much." "Hey, my driver." "My man." "Best driver." "Best driver in the Sahara." "Goodbye." "The chef." "The chef man." "The cook." "I'm very sad to be leaving Bachir, who shows his British connection by apologising for the weather." "Sometimes we don't have this kind of sandstorms." "You've given us a little of everything." "We get to disappear into a cloud of dust." "You've laid this on." " I hope you find your way back." " We will find it for sure." "Left at Coventry and take the spur road!" "As you find your way through the fog, we'll find our way through the sand." "I hope to see you all again." "OK, Bachir." "Bon voyage." "Bon voyage." "Merci." "Merci." "(HORNS HOOT)" "Thank you." "As the conditions worsen," "I fear we might miss the Mauritanian border altogether." "But suddenly we're upon it, bouncing out of the sands onto - luxury of luxuries!" " a tarmac road, the first we've seen for over a week." "Oh, bliss!" "Even in a sandstorm, the usual formalities have to be observed." "Or in this case, rather, unusual formalities." "Bonjour." "Mauritani?" "Ah, merci." "Un passeport." "(METAL RATTLES)" "Quel bruit!" "What a noise." "Things like that can spark a conversation." "Sometimes." "C'est finis?" "Merci." "Merci bien." "Au revoir." "The hotel may not be four star, but it does have things I haven't seen for a while - hot water, a flushing lavatory, and, unfortunately, a mirror." "Oh, my God." "Aah." "Merci." "Dear Delia, can't get sheep's head for love or money." "Can I do with warthog soup?" "Out on the streets, the weather is getting worse." "A ferocious wind is whipping in the sand, stinging the face and blinding the eyes." "The locals, of course, know how to deal with this." "This is the first time I've worn the howli, as they call it in Arabic, or turban, as we know it." "This is not cosmetic." "This is essential." "If you've ever had to tie someone else's tie, you'll understand why most of Mauritania has turned out to help me." "I can't, as yet, tie it myself." "There we go." "The howli, as it's called in Arabic." "The turban, as we know it." "Thank you." "I see 6.1, 5.1...7.3." "It's a good score." "Zouerat is a company town." "Rich iron ore deposits have turned this corner of the Sahara into a multi-million dollar asset." "Iron ore makes up almost half of Mauritania's foreign earnings." "Production goes on round the clock to fill the huge trains." "Despite the presence of the mine," "Zouerat has pockets of great poverty." "Here, everything is recycled." "An oil drum becomes not only the side of a house, but the roof and the doors and the garden wall." "Five years ago, this family were farmers till drought forced them into the town." "The wall of their tent is made from material once used to wrap mining explosive." "I wanted to know how they stayed so happy." "Qu'est-ce que...que faites vous... (HALTING FRENCH)" "Que sorts de celebration ou parti?" "What makes you so happy?" "The country... (INDISTINCT)" "The country, the calm and the beautiful house." "Very good." "My beautiful house." "Every day, seven days a week, iron ore trains more than two kilometres long leave Zouerat." "And, unlikely as it may seem, some of them carry passengers." "After a week in back-breaking vehicles, the chance to cross the desert by rail is not one I can ignore." "I've got a ticket, but I'm not quite sure what for." "The railway officials aren't over-helpful." "Their primary role appears to be to stop anyone getting on." "I don't think he's very keen to let us on." "Thank goodness I got a reservation." "They're getting in now." "Shall we try down there?" "Come on." "Let's go." "There's one last hope - the recycling bin at the back of the train." "C'est le première?" "C'est le première classe ici?" "Ce voiture?" "I'm very confused, but I'm told this is first-class." "Though you'd be forgiven for thinking it was rubbish-class." "The iron ore express may take a while to get going, but then it is the longest train in the world - probably." "It may look a bit like climbing into a bottle bank, but, actually, once you get in, this is première classe on the iron ore train in Mauritania, and people get onto their bunks and people talk." "The unlucky ones, the people who travel with nothing at all, just scramble on the wagons with the iron ore or the rubble, and they can sit there for nothing." "I'm going on this train down south." "This goes to Nouâdhibou - takes all the iron ore to the coast." "We're going to be getting off before that." "After that, I'm prepared for rush hour anywhere in the world." "We've got six hours now to settle down." "Read a newspaper, join the frequent traveller's club." "Whatever." "It's not bad." "Très intéressant." "The iron ore goes on its way to the coast and we turn inland to a classic Saharan town and an even more classic relic of French colonial days - the fort, now hotel, Saganne." "(VINTAGE RECORDING OF FRENCH FEMALE SINGER)" "Fort Saganne seems to represent something quintessential about the French empire in Africa - the Foreign Legion." "The glory of France, but largely a German force." "But the image persists." "This place was used by Gerard Depardieu in a film called Fort Saganne." "What I like up here is the amazing view." "You have to one side Chinguetti - seventh holiest city of Islam - and on the other side, the sort of sand dunes you only see on the front of date packets." "This is my first sight of a sand sea - a landscape as beautiful as any on Earth, created only by grains of sand and the force of the wind." "So intense is the midday heat - well over 40 degrees - that Chinguetti only comes to life in the hours before dark." "Then the streets become meeting places, playgrounds, and sports pitches." "One of the great desert sports of Mauritania is Dhaemon - a game rather like draughts." "All you need to play it are some sticks and a lot of camel droppings." "This is the local grandmaster and before I know it," "I'm given some jobbies and told to take him on." "Merci pour votre assistance." "You're going to lose me this." "Do it for himself." "Doucement, doucement, they say." "Carefully." "My whole reputation's..." "Bon." "He comes in and grabs that." "Now I'm..." "Don't move my shit." "My bits." "With a combination of luck and assistance from just about every man in Chinguetti," "I get him into a bit of a corner." "Next thing I know, I'm the champion." "Thank you." "Beginner's luck!" "Beginner's luck." "I'm just a natural-born player." "I've got to work out the strategy." "Merci." "Thank you, grand master." "He's not taking it very well." "Doesn't look me in the eye." "Early next morning, I walk out across the sand sea before the heat becomes intolerable." "The desert looks wonderful, but somehow it doesn't sound right." "(LOW ENGINE ROAR)" "If that's a mirage, it's moving awfully quickly." "Oh, my God!" "(UPBEAT MUSIC)" "No." "It's not a dream." "It's the 24th Paris-Dakar Rally." "320 vehicles attempting to be the fastest to drive from France to Senegal." "And this is just a press call." "For one day, the local airport becomes a media city as live coverage is beamed across the world." "No one complains, because without TV rights these competitors would never get the chance to do something as pointless as racing across the Sahara Desert." "At the furthest, least comfortable end of the airport, is the only British team left in the race " "Dave Hammond, the motorcyclist - sponsored not by Mitsubishi or Mercedes, but by Webb's Garages of Cirencester." "Dave's technical team is Martin." "52 bikes have already crashed out and this David is in with a chance against the Goliaths." "But I'm more interested in what he thinks of the Sahara." "Do you get any feeling of the country you go through?" "Have you any sense of Mauritania?" "No." "Not at all, I'm afraid." "I know we're going south because it's getting hotter." "What are conditions like?" "You're at the edge of the airfield, tent on the rubble." "What's it like?" "Have you got showers, rest facilities?" "Very little really." "Sleeping bags and roll mats for sleeping on." "Showers hanging off the back of the van." "It is sparse, there's no doubt about it, but it's all part of being on the Dakar Rally." "I've scribbled a good luck message on Dave's bike." "As he lines up next morning, he's lying 21st out of the 166 bikes that started." "There are only six stages left, but with loops and time trials, that's still 2,000 more miles to go till the finishing line." "This is Atâr airport the morning after the rally and the circus is packing up and leaving town." "They're heading remorselessly for Dakar, which is where I'm going too." "Dave Hammond had moved up to 12th place with two stages left when he fell into a chasm on the blind side of a sand dune." "He was rushed to hospital and is making a slow recovery." "(GRUNTS OF EFFORT)" "(LABOURED BREATHING)" "Welcome to the 3 o'clock ferry from Mauritania to Senegal." "We're crossing one of the great rivers of the Sahara, the Senegal River, which is 1,000 miles long." "It's not just a border between Mauritania, which we just left, and Senegal, on which we're about to set foot, it's the demarcation of the two sides of the Sahara - the Arab north and the black south." "From now on we're in black Africa." "(AFRICAN POP MUSIC)" "(TRADITIONAL MUSIC)" "Just before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean, the Senegal River swells into a wide estuary." "Suddenly everything is very different." "Where there was sand - water;" "where tents - warehouses, where only camel meat, there's fresh smoked fish everywhere." "This is St Louis in Senegal, founded by the French over 350 years ago." "It was the cornerstone of their African empire." "Even today, it's like stepping into provincial France." "It's amazing how little we know of other countries' heroes." "In the 1920s and 30s, the French were captivated by the exploits of the daring young pilots who used to fly enormous distances, solo, by day and night, to bring the mail from France to West Africa and on to South America." "One of the most famous was Jean Mermoz, who disappeared in the Atlantic in December 1936, aged 36." "The whole of France mourned." "Mermoz spent his last night here in the Hôtel de la Poste in St Louis." "Senegal has been independent since 1960." "It seems in no hurry to shake off the French connection." "Combien est Le Monde, s'il vous plaît." "Neuf?" "Today's headlines mark the death of another French hero, the singer Charles Trenet." "Merci." "Charles Trenet est mort." "# La mer...da da da dee da da da da da dum #" "There's no shortage of guides to show you round the town, but a pony and trap can become a pony and tourist trap and I want to look beyond the colonial picturesque for a glimpse of life in modern Senegal." "I go to the home of Jacob Yakouba, one of Senegal's best-known artists." "Jacob's particular genre is the lightly-clad female." "Preferably quite young." "His greatest inspiration is his glamorous wife, Marie Madeleine, an actress and star of Senegal's most popular TV soap." "Over a communal platter of fish balls and spicy stew," "I ask her about her role." " À la télévision?" " Oui." "(SPEAKS FRENCH)" "Ah, yes." "A religious problem discussed in the... (SPEAKS FRENCH)" "It's a soap opera." "The great Senegalese "EastEnders", of which Marie Madeleine is the star." "She marries a man who has an affair then divorces her." "She wants to remarry him and does, three times, I think." "That's the maximum you can divorce and remarry." "Then she wants...the man asks her to marry his best friend... something like that!" "(CONTINUES IN FRENCH)" " The submissive wife." " Oui, mais moi..." "You are a liberated woman in...for the television?" " Femme libéré, oui?" " Femme libéré." "Jacob doesn't seem quite so sure about this." "I enquire if polygamy is common in Senegal." " Il y a beaucoup..." " There is a lot of polygamy." "(FRENCH)" "You've chosen monogamy, a-ah." "..by good example." " I'm afraid!" " Oh, you're afraid." "Afraid?" "Oh, wow!" "Look at you." " Would you..." " She's my commander." "Would Marie Madeleine allow Jacob to have another wife?" " Jamais, never!" " We've got that clear." "160 miles south of St Louis is a small island which because of safe moorings and easy defences became the most successful trading centre in West Africa." "It's called Gorée." "Gorée is still prosperous and attractive, but it hides an ugly past." "The island could be any tourist trap on the French Riviera, but it owes its popularity to its infamous reputation as a departure point for millions of slaves taken from the interior of Africa, from Central Africa, the Sahara area, and shipped out to the plantations in America" "by the English, French and Portuguese." "(CRACK OF WHIP)" "No one knows how many slaves the Europeans bought from the African traders and shipped out of Gorée." "At the old Governor's mansion, they rehearse a dance which commemorates the sufferings of many millions." "(HAUNTING MODERN AFRICAN MUSIC)" "This and other dances like it will be performed for thousands of Afro-Americans who come to Gorée each year in search of evidence, explanations, and, if possible, comfort from seeing where their ancestors had their last sight of Africa." "It's time to turn away from the sea and back into Africa." "First stop, the Senegalese capital of Dakar, a city of inexhaustible energy." "(DRUMBEAT)" "Wrestling is the most popular sport in Senegal, and tonight a crowd hails the Pan-African champion, Morf Adan." "Stars like him can fill huge stadiums, but tonight he's in his own back yard inspiring the locals." "I catch up with the great man and some sheep in his courtyard." "He makes money from wrestling, but spends most of it on his entourage." "Shepherds probably!" "Outside, the champions of the future are giving it their all." "You need only get the opponents' shoulders on the ground." "So a bout can last from five seconds to...maybe seven!" "(WHISTLE-BLOWING AND CHEERING)" "With such a crowd of competitors it could go on all night, so I make my apologies and slip away...easier said than done!" "(LAUGHTER AND CHEERS)" "Wrestling is not the only alternative to an early night." "Dakar has a booming music scene, and, at a jazz club by the fish market, the band includes locals and an American ex-pat, Tom Val." "The clubs here, they're kinda..." "they're kinda, you know... not sure they want to hire a band that doesn't play the local music." " You need some?" " Do I need some?" "You think I need some." "Well, thank you." " You're welcome." " Thank you." "He knew something I didn't know." "Ah, the manager." "How long have you run this club?" "Three months...and 21 days." "Will it be different from your other clubs?" " Yeah." " Why?" "How different?" " Because they were rectangular." " Oh, right!" " Wasn't the answer I expected." " I need space." " Space, yeah." " I'm Lebou, from my own origin." " I need to see the sea." " Lebou is a fishing caste." " From fishing...people, right." " I'm kind of fisherman." " Were you a fisherman once?" " I don't catch any fishes." "I can throw it back, nothing is coming, man." "It's a great evening, thank you very much indeed." " It's great." " Good luck with everything." " According to my age..." " What is your age?" " 38?" " No, no." "Are you crazy?" " Yes, I'm crazy." " I'm 60 years old, man." " 60. 6-0." " Just about my age, really." " I'm older than you." " You're very well preserved." "You're in good shape." "How do you stay in shape?" "(INAUDIBLE)" " Well, I try to." " No, you cannot say." " You don't say." " I won't say, certainly not." "Every single night he...gets some exercise!" "Next morning, I get myself and my remaining brain cells away from the fleshpots of Dakar." "Conveniently, the French built a railway to connect the coast with the centre of their African empire." "This is the Bamako Express, one of only two trains a week between Dakar and the capital of Mali." "There's a nasty rumour that it might leave on time!" "Having followed the desert to its western limits on the Atlantic and tasted the forbidden delights of city life in Dakar, we're going to explore the desert to the east, through the city which is more synonymous with the Sahara" "than any other, the city of Timbuktu." "The roads are lousy, so we'll take a train to Bamako in Mali." "It's about 36 hours, a mere 36 hours, if it's on time." "We'll rely on the railway to take us nearly 1,000 miles into the interior." "After that, a steam ferry service up the Niger River to our destination, Timbuktu." "Sheep...absolutely everywhere." "They seem to have totally overrun the city." "Either they're very fond of sheep or there's a sheep convention, but everywhere...here are some more coming up." "Rather well-fed, rather well looked after, there they are, nuzzling round the old container." "I've never seen so many sheep in one place in my life." "I'm a bit of a sheep man!" "Well, I like them...just eh... ..in an aesthetic way." "Lovely little fluffy tails..." "the...mummy bits!" "The city sprawls on." "Over two million people cram into Dakar and its suburbs." "Many have come in from the countryside, preferring safety in numbers to the hardships of wind and drought." "Amazing." "The most extraordinary shopping mall in the world." "It runs for about a mile and everything is here." "There's production over there, people making the things, wholesale and retail down here." "It's like a huge store." "Handbags, ladies underwear... (LOCALS SHOUTING OUT)" "Fantastic." "The train never goes above a stately 30 miles per hour, allowing time to admire the ubiquitous baobab trees, whose branches look so much like roots, legend has it the devil shoved them in the ground upside down." "(PASSENGERS CHATTERING)" "The train is packed, largely it seems with women, all decked out in striking West African style." "I get talking to one of them, an English teacher called Dadé, on the perennial topic of husbands and wives and how many of each." "Before Islam, polygamy existed in society." "They said, "OK, a man can marry up to four wives" ""so they can work in the fields, help each other."" "That was the idea, you see." "Then the law of Islam entered Africa." "Men said that the Koran said that, since we are Muslim, we can marry up to four wives." "What do you think?" "Do you approve?" "Let me tell you something - I am against that." " Thought you might be." " I am against that." "That is my opinion." "I am against..." "I know why." "Why?" "First of all I'm jealous." "I don't want to share my husband." "And second, in every polygamist house there is always trouble, because co-wives, you know, are jealous." "Sometimes they finish before the judge." "Every day, either in Senegal or Mali, because most of the time the husband has one house and all four wives live in the same house." "You can't imagine that." "A wife can go to the marabou and do some ju-ju." " The marabou is what?" " He's a kind of priest." "He is a seer, he can see, he can predict the future and he can make some ju-ju sometimes." "Every wife would like the man to love her better, so they put some powder in the food or in the water." "Or sometimes if one of the wives is sick, for example, they say, "That's my co-wife." "She's a witch."" "Superstition, ju-ju and black magic remain powerful forces." "Qu'est-ce que le plus longtemps?" "At supper, I return to the mundane, like when the train may arrive." "I ask my businessman friend if it's often late." "Diplomatically, he explains that its being on time is rare." "Very rare..." "like the cutlery!" "Well...yes...ooh." "Next morning, we crossed into Mali." "Borders aren't taken seriously here." "Tribal groups are spread across several countries." "The landscape is different." "Flat Senegal gives way to the rocky escarpments of Mali." "The heat builds, making concentration difficult." "Time drags on." "As we climb, we seem to be going slower than ever." "We've completed 33 hours of the supposedly 35-hour journey, but we're still becalmed at some station on the way and still 10 hours away from Bamako." "We stopped for this train, which was occupying the single-track line." "Our progress is a matter of chance." "Whether we get there in 10 hours or 15 or 20, I just don't know." "In the lap of the gods." "Hello." "How are you?" "Bye-bye." "It's a good sign that we're moving, very encouraging." "There's a cloud of dust." "I can't quite see the engine." "We're on the move, heading for Bamako and only 10 hours late." "I think that calls for some sort of celebration." "Une bière, s'il vous plaît." "Merci." "500 back, so that's about 50p for a beer." "Not bad." "I can't understand in an Islamic country whether they allow bars, but obviously on this train." "It's typical of the tolerance" "I've found in Mauritania, Senegal and now Mali." "They're not fierce about rules." "If you want a beer, have a beer." "After a second, unscheduled night on the train, during which water and most other supplies fail, we finally pull into Bamako just before dawn." "I love travel, the promise of new places and new faces, but I admit on Bamako station this morning, my mask of optimism was as travel-worn as anything else." "The only good thing is that we got to Bamako." "It's five in the morning, I'm dazed and confused, but there are a lot of people to help me." " Yeah." "Au revoir." " Where you come from?" "Oh, I don't know." "I've not a ...ing clue!" "A shower, a shave and a change of underwear later," "I feel the joie de vivre slowly return." "Just as well, as the streets of Bamako are not for the faint-hearted." "I take refuge at a local café." "The proprietor will fix me the nearest thing to a double espresso." "I feel better for the shave, clean shirt and all that." "There's the station." "We arrived in the dead of night." "Next to the station is the Hôtel de la Gare, where the Rail Band used to meet." "The Rail Band was pioneered by Toumani Diabaté, a Malian musician whose album I've been playing for three months." "It's wonderful music, a fusion between traditional African and contemporary music." "He lives and works in Bamako." "I'm hoping to be able see him while I'm here, see how he makes the music." "Tumali is not just a musician, he's also a producer." "I track him to the club where he's watching his new rap act." "The message of their latest track is getting kids to go to school." "(RAPPING IN LOCAL DIALECT)" "Later, Toumani takes to the stage with his own band." "(TRADITIONAL SINGING)" "The rhythms and instruments are solidly traditional, featuring the lute-like ngoni," "the harp-like kora...and the balafon." "Music like this has put Mali on the world map and has enabled Toumani to show me round his home city in style." "On the way to his home, we pass the great city centre mosque." "Then, in the market, a fetish stall of shrunken animal heads shows that Islam still has to exist with voodoo." "The great treat of the day is a masterclass with the man himself." "When did you start mixing the traditional instrument with the more contemporary instruments like the guitar?" "First of all is to start with traditional songs." "From there, to listen to James Brown's music, to Otis Redding's, to Jimi Hendrix," "to Johnny Halliday, Salif Cater." "So I said the kora must be..." "I have to open a new door for the kora," " a universal door." " Did your father approve?" "At first he said, "The children, they are changing everything."" ""They are developing," I told him." "We had a nice meeting about that." "I said, "I'm not changing the kora." ""I'm just developing the kora."" "(GENTLE HARP-LIKE MUSIC)" "Kora playing, like so much else in Malian life, is rich in history." "Toumani's family have been kora players for 72 generations." "400 miles from Bamako lives one of the most extraordinary African tribes." "This is Tirelli, one of the villages of the Dogon people." "600 years ago, they retreated here from the Islamic invasions and remained, until recently, cut off from the outside world." "Today, the head man of the village welcomes us." "Thank you for letting us into your home." "(SPEAKS IN DIALECT)" "He says you are welcome and to make yourself at home." "How many wives and children does the chief have?" "(TRANSLATION IN DIALECT)" " Two wives and ten children." " Wow." "That's a handful." "The Dogon culture looks like it hasn't changed for centuries." "Is it changing now the outside world is taking an interest?" "Amadou, my guide, translates for the village chief." ""Being cut off for so long," ""we had our own way of looking at the universe."" "Using the carvings on one of his granary doors, he explains how the Dogon believe the world was created." ""The god Amma first created the sun, moon and stars." ""Then the Earth in the shape of a woman," ""an ant hole for her vagina, a termite mound for her clitoris." ""He tried to make love to her," ""but the termite mound blocked his path, so he removed it." ""He tried again and this time twins were born." ""They were half-man, half-snake and lived in the heavens." ""Amma then made a human couple who had eight ancestors," ""from whom all of us are made."" "I'm trying to get my head round this when Amadou says the Dogon weren't the first to colonise the escarpment." "Before them were the Tellem, who lived on the cliff face itself." "(AMADOU) This place become now a tomb." "A grave where they bury the people if someone dies." " Where, up on the cliff?" " Yes, up there." "The Tellem clearly preferred high-rise living, relying on ropes to get in and out of their homes." "It's incredible people fought to live in such a bleak place, till you remember that 500 years ago the area was covered in forest." "An echo of those more fertile times is the status Dogon society still affords to the hunter." "(GREETING IN DIALECT)" "Terrific greeting." "You go through the entire family." "You have to ask for everyone, one by one, since someone once asked, "How are your donkey?"" "It is funny, but this is polite you have to ask everything." "Tell him I don't know any Dogon." "I'll just say, "Ça va?"" "What do they hunt here?" "Here they hunt monkeys, wild rat and dog." " Do you eat much meat here?" " Oh, yes, yes." "When they hunt and kill animals they eat a lot of meat." "If they don't find animals, they will kill a sheep or goat." " Rat?" "Rat tart now and again?" " Yes." "They find sometimes rats." "The rats they hunt are up on the rocks, and the monkeys and the dogs and antelope." "Does he shoot them or..." "This is what he has to kill the monkeys." "The monkeys have seen better days." " This is a monkey's head." " Right." "Can he show me?" "(SPEAKS IN DIALECT)" " I see...gunpowder...made here?" " Yes." " Local gunpowder." " What is it?" "I think it's a....it's a local gunpowder." "(SPEAKS DIALECT)" "Well away from them, well away." "(CLICK)" "(CLICK)" "The monkey is cheering up!" "Right!" "(LOUD EXPLOSION)" " It's OK." " He's OK?" "I got the blast right across my face, it's OK." "I know how you feel now!" "It worked." "I think I preferred it when it wasn't working." "Having survived the hunter," "I now have to survive a lunch of goat, millet and baobab leaf." "OK, so just grab in?" "Oh, it's hot!" " Hot, yeah, very hot." " Slowly, slowly." " Hot, very hot." " Mm, yeah." " You cannot be a strong man..." " I'm past all that now!" "You have to eat..." "you have to eat very hot." " Hot?" " Yeah." "The sauce is really good, but it's very hot on the ends of the fingers." "I don't know how they can eat it!" "Tender, artistic little digits!" "It's not just the food itself that's hot, it's the temperature outside, 56 centigrade at midday." "That's 134 Fahrenheit." "It's the hottest meal of my life." "The straw-capped granaries that dot the village contain the millet on which Dogon diet depends." "Equally important are weapons, door latches and assorted ironmongery produced by the blacksmith, with the help of his seven-year-old daughter." "The blacksmith is one of the most important men here." "In Dogon folklore, the first blacksmith was the man who stole the fire from God." "His duties extend beyond simply making things, as Amadou explains." "So now, another importance of the blacksmith, they must do the circumcision in the village." " Circumcision?" " Yes, circumcision." "The blacksmith uses his knife to cut the sex of the boys." "The blacksmith actually does the circumcision?" "Yes, and the blacksmith's woman does it for the girls." "Is female circumcision still common here?" "Yes, they still partake." "They do it in every village." "Most girls in this village will have been circumcised?" "All of the girls...all of the girls." "So... the termite mound..." "I'm not the first to try to make sense of all this." "There's a joke - how many are there in a Dogon family?" "Five." "Two parents, two children and one French anthropologist." "(RHYTHMIC DRUMMING)" "In Dogon country, nothing is as you expect it to be." "This manically joyful dance is celebrating a funeral." "It's a cliché to say you've found somewhere different from the world, but here in Tirelli in Dogon country, it's absolutely true." "The way of life here and the reason for the way of life is quite unlike anything I've seen before." "I will never see anywhere like this again." "They've been very, very good friends and very good hosts." "Don't tell anyone." "The ancient town of Djenne, circled by the waters of the Bani River, is our next stop on the road to Timbuktu." "I've hired a mobilette to drive around what many consider the most beautiful city of the Sahara." "The mosque at Djenne is an architectural marvel, the largest mud-built structure in the world." "The streets are fine examples of mud as an art form, graceful and stylish - qualities in Mali which are not confined to the buildings." "(GENTLE MELODIC SONG)" "Djenne doubles its size on market days." "I'm shown around by Amadou Cisse, known to the world as Pygmy." " What people are you from?" " Fulani." " Half Fulani." " What's the other half?" "The other half?" "Sonderai..." " Oh, the Sonderai Empire." " Yeah." " I remember that." " Yeah." "(SPEAK LOCAL DIALECT)" "You know an awful lot..." "you know a lot of ladies." "It's my city." "It's OK to know them." "Are the women in Mali quite friendly and open?" "They don't mind you saying hello even though you are married?" "No." "It's OK." "I've known them since I was young, it's my city." "I heard you met your wife in the market." "Is that true?" "I met...yeah, I met her on the market." "If you want for the first time...she's Fulani." " And you're Fulani." " Yes, but... for me it wasn't necessary to be Fulani or not." "For me she was..." "she was very nice for me." "Every time I come she'd bring milkshake for me, she sell milk." "For me every time when she come, I see her, she was pretty, young, nice and for me," "I was always happy to be with her." "At first I only went to buy milk." "I was like..." "You only went to buy milk, you were a customer, a punter." "Getting a pint of milk and you fell in love!" "What's special about Fulani women that makes them so distinctive?" "Can you tell a Fulani women here?" "OK, she's a Fulani woman." "OK, she's a Fulani girl." "This one is the cousin of my wife." "Right, cousin of your wife." "Just happened to find her here." "You see around the mouth?" "That's a tattoo and that's a family sign on her face." " Those marks there?" " Yeah." "(SPEAK IN DIALECT)" "Family problems, family problems." " Family problems, yes." " We don't need to know." "I feel that Pygmy is the man to enlighten me on the question that's been on my mind since we left Dakar." "Sheep!" "Sheep everywhere, all the way through Mali." "What's it about?" "What's the reason?" "It will be like Tabaski..." "Tabaski is a major Islamic festival in which the head of the household sacrifices a sheep." "It commemorates the time God spared Isaac, son of Abraham, an event common to Muslim, Jew and Christian." "Are only male sheep killed?" "The sheep are all to be complete." "But they're all men, not females?" "Men, men, not females." " All to be men." " And complete, meaning what?" "Not with one eyes or one legs, something like that." "Pygmy's left it late - like turkeys the day before Christmas, it's a sellers' market." "(HAGGLES IN DIALECT)" "He says 40,000 and..." "I need to discuss." "£40." "You haggle down a bit?" "What's it down to?" "37." "But you're dealing with two-three people." "This man is the manager who knows the best sheep." "I think he gets something from the owner, he says I should pay!" "He gets a bit of a bung, trousers a few!" "Doesn't happen like this at Sainsburys!" "OK." "You get the boys to take it back for you?" "Always when you buy a sheep... (SPEAKS IN DIALECT)" "Malian women always look sensational, but for Tabaski they make a special effort." "At Pygmy's house, the wife he met over milkshakes is having her feet hennaed by an older woman, who suggests there was more to the relationship than buying milk." "(SPEAKS IN DIALECT)" "I think there is a much more interesting side to this story." " You know what she said?" " What, tell me?" "If you fall in love with a girl and you try one time and it's nice, you can't live very long, you will follow her everywhere." "It's not true." "For a Malian man and woman, before you get married, are you allowed to have time together, can you..." " sleep together?" " Me, her, since the day I get married I never knew her before." "Like loving or sleep together, I never do that before." "I never do that, never." "But for the villages people, it was strange, because they don't believe I never make love." "I like Pygmy and that he overcame his parents' objections to marry the woman he wanted." "On Tabaski morning, the mosque isn't big enough for everyone and they gather to worship on open ground at the edge of town." "What actually happens now at this ceremony?" "Normally we would pray during the daytime." "Normally we would pray after lunch and on the afternoon." "Because this is a special ceremony, people will pray around 9 and 10 o'clock, as it is special to us." "First the imam will make the sacrifice, kill his sheep, in front of the religious, then people go home to make the same thing, to kill a living sacrifice." "(PRAYING)" "The sheep's looking nervous, like an actor on his first night...and last night!" "Devotions done, the sheep's taken to the imam to be slaughtered." "Once he's made his sacrifice, everyone goes home to celebrate." "(SPEAK IN DIALECT)" " Should I?" "What's the greeting?" " Sambé, sambé." "Sambé, sambé." "(SPEAK IN DIALECT)" " Sambé, sambé." " It's good." "It's getting better." "I know two words..." "no, one word twice." "Sambé, sambé." "It's good that you do." "As we approach his house, I sense for the first time" "Pygmy's ebullience is beginning to fade as the moment comes for him to do his duty." "One sheep has already been dispatched by his father, now it's Pygmy's turn." "As Auntie looks sternly on, he's instructed in the importance of a swift, humane technique." "The important thing is the cut must be clean and the sheep mustn't suffer." "The blood flows out into the gutters, the knife is washed, and within half an hour everything that can be eaten is ready for the pot." "In the finest traditions of African and Muslim hospitality," "I'm asked to share the feast with them." "(PYGMY) He's never on time to eat." "(MICHAEL) It's all gone!" "Prèsque fini!" "Thank you." "Thank you." "Mm, well..." "You say...you give thanks?" "Mustn't eat with the wrong hand!" "Never eat with the left hand." "I know." "Terrible gaffe!" "(SPEAK DIALECT)" " They laugh because you're..." " I know, I'm not used to it." "You've got to try something new." "Find out how..." "how people...how people live." " Is all of the sheep eaten?" " No." "We eat a part of the sheep then we give it to poor people." "We distribute it out amongst them." "The boys of the village get the testicles, do they?" "Yeah..." "That's the good luck." "To make them clever." "(THRUUP!" ")" "Djenne's days of greatness ended when the River Bani silted up and trade moved to the nearby port of Mopti." "It's to Mopti I've come, to look for the Timbuktu ferry." "The harbour's full of people but worryingly low on water, leaving raw sewage exposed on the banks." "No one but me is worried." "Squalor and beauty co-exist happily on the Mopti waterfront." "I'm relieved to find the Timbuktu ferries are in port, but they're not exactly waiting for the starting gun." "When I eventually find one of the pilots, I get a shock." " Bonjour." " Bonjour." "Quand est le prochain bateau pour Timbuktu, s'il vous plaît?" " Juillet." " Juillet?" "Juillet?" "!" "Alors." "Juillet." "Mars, Juin...that's three months!" " Trois mois?" " Oui." "C'est fini?" "Á ce moment les bateaux pas marche?" " Pourquoi?" " Pas assez de l'eau." "Ah, pas de l'eau - not enough water." "Fair enough." "The river isn't deep enough this time of year for the steamboats." "I'll have to look for an alternative." "Bonjour, bonjour." "Je cherche une pinasse pour Timbuktu." "The harbour master is sympathetic and appreciates I can't hang around for three months." "He asks the captains of the wood-hulled cargo boats - the pinasse." "After some negotiation, he finds one that will take us - the Pagou Manpagu." "It leaves tomorrow." "Day of departure." "Time for Englishman in silly hat to take on last-minute provisions." "Combien?" "Cent?" "Oui." "Trois cents." "Trois cents, c'est très cher, n'est-ce-pas?" "Très belle." "Merci, merci." "Look, we have some bananas." "The river is busy." "It looks as though we'll be leaving in rush hour." "I squelch through the mud and filth for I hope the last time and sling my bag on deck." "Unfortunately, there is no deck, just an open hull below and a small farm up on the bridge." "There's no denying the sense of anticipation as we get underway, past my stranded ferry boat and out to join the Sahara's most famous river." "I am now at last on the Niger River, which runs in a curve from the hills of Djenne out to the desert and back to Nigeria." "About 200 years ago, no westerner had really seen it." "Suddenly, they decided they had to find out about this part of Africa and the wealth carried on the river." "This man, Mungo Park, who left behind his "Travels into the Interior of Africa", was the first westerner to see this river, in 1796." "Then the race was on to try to get to Timbuktu, the famous legendary city on the river." "Mungo Park never made it there but others did." "I hope we will, if the wind doesn't strengthen any more." "There is no restaurant on board but food is always available from the kitchen, which is..." "well...just about anywhere." "At one stop, Kristin, a Norwegian, comes aboard." "She's been living in Mali for several years, studying Fulani women and their customs." "I've heard that male and female circumcision still goes on." "Is that true in your experience in this society?" "It is very hard to resist and fight against circumcision." "To be a woman here you should be circumcised." "Do you...the European view would be it's barbaric and cruel and...ruins the pleasure of sex for women and all that." "Do you think that's true?" "It doesn't sound like it." "What is sexual pleasure here and in Europe is quite different." "We have a way of thinking that sexual pleasure is impossible for a woman who has been circumcised." "I don't share that opinion." "What a man finds attractive in Africa does not correspond with what is attracting a man in Europe." "In Europe a woman should be skinny, but here they should be fat." " Yes, I've noticed." " That is very contradictory." "She's also a part-time Christian missionary, not an easy thing to be in a Muslim country." "Isn't it hard to convert a Muslim to Christianity?" "I have never considered evangelism or the biblical message in numbers...counting." "What is the heart...the most important is to love each other, so if people see me and see me acting, and are asking me questions, I will to respond to them." "If we go into a dialogue, we'll be fine." " I think we've run aground." " Run aground." "This is the hazard of going up the Niger River." "It looks very wide but it is very shallow." "Exceedingly shallow at this point, don't you think?" "Obviously hit a sandbank." " It's very common." " Is it?" "So they're going to push us off with those big poles." " Do you travel the Niger a lot?" " Yes." "I love it." "It gives me a great satisfaction." " It's so quarm." " Calm?" " Calm." " Very tranquil at the moment!" "As the mighty River Niger is revealed as barely waist deep, there's not much to do but find out more about each other." "Have you any idea of the number of converts to Protestantism?" "I know...that there are people who have been converted." " From Islam..." " From Islam to Christianity." "We have been working in Mali for 15 years, just to...determini...what do you call it?" " Determine." " Determine the number." "It's unproper, I don't think... 100?" "1,000?" "It's not a good question." "It's not what it is about at all." "The numbers." "Even though it was 100 or 1,000 or even one." "It is the same thing." "The most important is to be present, and to act in society, to get people to see what we are doing." "I don't count in souls or converts." "..roughly, whether you knew if it was thousands, hundreds or ones and twos." "Then I can say a number of people have converted in Mali." "But I don't know the numbers and you're not telling me." "I think it's a ridiculous question." "After another day and a half on the river I'll ask you again." "Perhaps not surprisingly, Kristin jumped ship to avoid more questions and goes ashore on a local fishing boat." "It's probably just as well, as there's only one hammock." "That's about 6.35, night falling over Africa, and we're still on the same sandbank, we're stuck on it, from when I was talking to Kristin." "So...um..." "I don't know how long it's going to be, but it's very comfortable in hammock class." "No one ever said getting to Timbuktu would be easy." "What more can an Englishman do but lie back and think of Africa?" "(GROANS OF EFFORT)" "(LABOURED BREATHING)" "The Niger River has brought me to the heart of the Sahara, and can take me no further." "From here on, the only ships I'm likely to see are ships of the desert, and where better to get acquainted with them than the legendary city of Timbuktu?" "(CAMEL BRAYS)" "Well, I've reached Timbuktu." "(CAMEL GRUNTS) I said I've reached Timbuktu!" "(CAMEL GRUNTS) I said I've reached Timbuktu!" "I can't say it again!" "And back in the Sahara, the first time in the land of the Touareg, the Saharan nomad traders who founded Timbuktu about 800 years ago as a trading post for that most precious commodity in the Sahara, the salt," "and the extraordinary thing is, that still today, the salt is brought down on camels in these great tablets, as it was all those years ago, from the mines 800ks up into the desert." "So nothing's really changed, has it?" "You've changed, but, basically, you look the same as the original camel herds, don't you?" "How is it, lugging all that salt around?" "It must be sheer hell!" "Is it nice now it's finished?" "(CAMEL GRUNTS) Yeah!" "But things HAVE changed." "In Timbuktu today, the Touareg are camped against the walls, sheltering from the desert rather than crossing it, and the walls are not what they used to be." "Once inside the crumbling ramparts, it's hard to tell what it is about this desert city that has enthralled travellers for so long, and why it is that so many risked their lives to reach streets like these." "This mosque is evidence of the golden age of Timbuktu." "El-Saheli, the man said to have invented mudbrick architecture, designed and built it for Mansa Musa, the immensely rich emperor, at a time when Mali was the greatest empire in Africa." "It's a great mosque here in Timbuktu." "It's an extraordinarily powerful and quietly affecting building." "It's built on almost 100 columns, and it creates a sort of forest of coolness in the cauldron of heat outside." "It was originally constructed in 1325, and just the sheer scale of the place is testimony to the power of the Islamic presence here in the Middle Ages." "(MAN CHANTS)" "(MAN SPEAKS IN ARABIC OVER TANNOY)" "It's Friday in Timbuktu, the holiest day of the week for Muslims, and after prayers, the imam invites me back to his house." "The 16th century..." "Alors, la lune, le soleil, on explique tout ça ici." "The imam has scientific texts that show the planets circling the sun." "They date back hundreds of years, preserved, I assume, by the dry desert air." "It's convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than those in Europe." "In 15th-century Timbuktu, the mathematicians knew about the rotation of the planets and about the eclipse." "They knew things which we had to wait almost 200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and Copernicus came up with these same calculations..." "..and were given a very hard time for it!" "(CHILDREN CHANT)" "In his house, the imam runs a school where local children learn the Koran." "(IMAM) On est en train de lutter afin que Timbuktu retrouve son visage d'avant." "He explained that he hopes that Timbuktu can regain some of its former glory, and become once again the great centre of scholarship." "(CHILDREN CHANT)" "After the Middle Ages, Timbuktu slid into decline, but its mystique grew, stoked by the fact that no one could get to it." "Then, in 1826, a Scotsman, Alexander Laing, rediscovered Timbuktu." "His house is for sale if you fancy a weekend hideaway!" "Over a period of about 350 years, 43 people tried to get to Timbuktu, only four succeeded, of which Laing was the first." "When he got here, it looked pretty much like this." "He wasn't greatly impressed." "It wasn't the fabled city of wealth that he'd expected." "Anyway, they were very hospitable, and as he went home, he fell out with the people who were taking him back across the Sahara." "He refused to convert to Islam so they cut his head off at the age of 33." "That was the end of Laing, but his house is remembered here." "I can see myself festering here, gazing mournfully at the past, but the desert beckons!" "East of Timbuktu, the Sahara is virtually inaccessible to all but the nomads who move their cattle across it." "Once a year they get together at Ingal in the Republic of Niger." "These are the Wodaabe, a tall, elegant people thought to originate from Ethiopia." "They walk and ride hundreds of miles every year, seeking pasture for their cattle." "They move camp every six or seven days, so all they own must be portable." "Recent rains have brought food and water, and they must take every advantage of these conditions to fatten their cattle." "The Wodaabe grow no food, so without the animals they would not survive." "The fattening of the animals on the salt grass is celebrated at an annual festival called Cure Salée - the Salt Cure." "This great gathering of the nomadic clans is only days away." "One of their spokesmen - they don't have chiefs - is Doulla." "Tous les gens de la même famille?" " Le père et la mère." " Ah, oui, oui." "Using French and English, he says that everyone in the group comes from the same family line." " Perri!" " Ah, Perri." "Je te présente Perri." " Ah, Perri." " Oui." "He introduces me to Perri, who sports a heavy-duty pair of Austrian sunglasses which I never see him remove." "Though Perri looks like the Godfather," "Doulla assures me he's only the brother-in-law." "Ah, yes." "The obvious non-family member is a French student, Celine, who's been living with the group and working with the women." "She shares everything, including medicine, which is much in demand." "What are the relationships like between the men and the women?" "I know that some of them have three or four wives." "Are there problems there?" "It's a free life here." "The woman is..." "Well, I can't say free, but more or less free, like all around the world, a free woman." " So she can..." " She is with her husband, but if she wants, she can leave him." "She can go to..." "She can go with another man." "They're quite liberated sexually." "More or less, yes." "(MICHAEL) It's important for them to look beautiful?" "(CELINE) Yes, very important." "When a man chooses a woman or a woman chooses a man, the first thing they look for is the beauty of the person." "(MEN CHANT)" "This is the most extraordinary beauty contest I've ever seen!" "This is the gerewol - a Wodaabe equivalent of the high school hop." "The young men go to enormous lengths to make themselves irresistible." "This means plenty of make-up, exotic hairdressing, the ability to repeat the same song and movement for hours, and some fancy eye work!" "How long do they dance for?" " They dance for seven days." " Seven days?" " Yes." " Seven days?" "Now it's the girls' turn." "Once decked out in all their finery by doting mothers, aunts and grannies, they will parade in front of the boys and choose their partner." "They look very beautiful, very young and rather frightened." "(SINGING CONTINUES)" "Now comes the time for the girls to play their part in the ceremony." "(SINGING CONTINUES)" " Do they come forward?" " Yes." "People like the women want to swear this." "Though the girls have the right to choose - it looks more like an ordeal than a privilege - their choice must be made for everyone to see." "Nerves are beginning to show." "(SINGING CONTINUES)" "(MICHAEL) Do the girls choose one boy?" "(DOULLA) Yes." "They go up and put their hand on them?" "Yes, maybe one woman, maybe two." "Guided by the mistress of ceremonies, each girl walks the line until contact is made and the choice announced in the traditional way." "(SHRILL WHOOP)" "Now, the worst is over." "Her chosen one will meet up with her later." "He's hers for the night." "Next morning, I meet a boy and a girl who got together at last year's gerewol." "Rainey, tucking into millet porridge, was chosen by Gooday, and they now have to decide if they want to get married." "This is not a marriage for the parents." "Non, ce n'est pas un mariage pour les parents." " So they love each other and..." " Voilà, voilà." "C'est le mariage pour l'amour." "Doulla explains that although they've been lovers for a year," "Gooday wants to go to Cure Salée and see how Rainey shapes up in the big gerewol dance." "..qu'il danse bien..." "If he dances well, sings well and looks good, she'll very likely decide to be his wife." "..et après ils vont faire le mariage." "Then they can claim the family bed, the most important of all Wodaabe status symbols." "But until Cure Salée's over," "Gooday's keeping everyone guessing." "Well, we're on our way." "The great Wodaabe family outing has begun to Cure Salée, an enormous festival where all the nomads come together for this great once-yearly event." "I'm not quite sure what goes on, but all sorts of festivities - dancing, whatever." "It's just a bit of a long walk!" "Coming!" "(INAUDIBLE)" "The town where Cure Salée is celebrated is 60 miles from the camp, and no, I don't walk the whole way." "I ride to Ingal in a bush taxi with 15 Wodaabe crammed on board, reducing their travelling time from two days to two hours." "We've now reached..." "Foma!" "Foma." "That means hello in Wodaabe." "We've finally reached the big city - it isn't a big city at all." "This is Ingal and it's quite small." "It's where Cure Salée takes place, and after where we were, it's a big shock." "Suddenly, there's walls, cars and police." "There are people looking to rent out property." "They've got this courtyard here probably at a bit of a high rent!" "It doesn't feel totally comfortable here." "You know, country boys come to the big city." "There are lots of their families out there, but they haven't found them yet and are making a base here." "There's a slightly hostile, cautious feeling." "Hello." "Foma!" "Foma!" "How are you?" "They're so lovely!" "They just walk at this very gentle pace, and out there is complete mayhem!" "Cure Salée is everything - a grand party, trade fair, highland games, sports day and agricultural show." "For one week a year, this little backwater is filled to bursting as thousands of nomads come to eat and drink, buy and sell, see and be seen, race their camels, and celebrate the joys of living" "in a land without boundaries." "(THEY WHOOP)" "For Doulla and Perri, it's also a chance to catch up on the shopping." "(THEY GREET EACH OTHER)" "I don't know all the rest!" "I only know the start!" "There are 17 different things we have to say!" "So what are we going to buy?" " I want to buy the sucre." " Sugar." "Sucre." "(MICHAEL) For quatre-vingt personnes." "So that's 80 people we're getting the provisions for." "Will you stay four days here?" "I don't know." "I want to dancing, I want to see many people... ..from my family." "(MICHAEL) Are you going to buy new clothes?" "(DOULLA) Yes, I want to see this man." "Perri's a bit of a dude, isn't he?" "He always looks rather dashing!" " Is this new, too?" " Oui." "(DOULLA) This is very old." "That's old, yeah." "Oh, yes, look at that." "The clothes are so much more interesting than mine!" "These trousers, they are in beige (!" ")" " But I like these." " Me, too." " You like that?" " Every people like these." "(MAN) Bonjour!" "Qu'est-ce que ces choses ici?" "Ça c'est..." "C'est du sel." "Oh, that's salt!" " Ça c'est du sel." " It looks like solid rock." "Ça vient de Bilma." "This is salt from Bilma." "Where the caravans go." "The salt trade is the oldest in the Sahara, but Cure Salée is not stuck in the past." "If you've a new idea, flaunt it!" "It's a bit hot for skiing!" "(INDISTINCT)" " Do you ski on sand?" " Yeah." "Ski from desert." " Do you sink into the sand?" " It's very good, yes." "I have picture for this ski." " Have you got one?" "All right." " Let me show you first." "These are European skis, the same as snow skis?" "Yes." " Comment tu t'appelles?" "Mon nom c'est Abdul Khadir Danger." "Abdul Khadir Danger, as in danger?" " Yeah." " Abdul Khadir Danger!" "(MAN) I've been to Joe magazine, too." "Ah, yes, a very good French magazine for travellers." " I have picture in there." " Abdul Danger!" "I'm not sure that gives me confidence!" " That's right." " I am Michael Cowardly!" " Michael Cowardly?" " Yes, Michael Highly Cowardly." " Michael Howly Cowardly." " Yes." "Oh, well, let's think about it." "It's just so amazing!" "Two African masks and a course of skiing lessons, please!" "(MEN SING)" "As evening approaches, crowds gather to watch one of the day's highlights - a mass gerewol." "Back at base, Rainey and the other Wodaabe prepare to join the dance." "(MEN SING)" "They'll be facing some strong competition." "Rainey and the boys make final checks in the hand mirrors that every self-respecting Wodaabe lad carries with him." "With ostrich headdresses rounding off the outfit, they're ready for the big time." "(THEY SING AND CHANT)" "Rainey's already looking around, maybe wondering where Gooday is or on the lookout for some action himself." "This is what Cure Salée is all about - the one time in a hard year when tribes who live on the move can stop in the same place at the same time to exchange contacts, advice, and, of course, widen the waters of the gene pool." "I've benefited from Cure Salée as well - a group of Touareg have agreed to take us on a salt caravan leaving from a nearby village." "The journey will take us across an arid furnace of desert, but then the unbelievable happens." "(THUNDERCLAP)" "There IS water in the Sahara!" "When the rainy season hits, it's pretty dramatic." "This morning, this would have just been like a beach anywhere." "This has happened within one day." "This will continue to grow." "Rains have fallen somewhere, I don't know quite where." "This will come up to my waist, and in a week, it will be dry again." "At the oasis of Tabelot, this precious water stays close enough to the surface to create a minor miracle." "This is like the Garden of Eden, Omar!" "And this is Omar, the man who will soon be leading me and the camel train across the burning sands." " Ça c'est le puits?" " Oui, c'est le puits." "All the water has to be brought up from below." "This well is some 50 feet deep." "A camel works the wooden winch, and a goatskin bag spills the water into a network of irrigation channels." "It's a method as old as the Bible, probably older." "(WARBLING BIRDCALL)" "And it works." "The fields are rich in onions, carrots, maize and millet, whilst the trees provide orange, fig, pomegranate, and, of course, dates, which when ripe are wrapped in bags to keep the birds off them." "(MICHAEL) Quelle est la plus grande?" " C'est vingt metres." " Vingt metres. 60 feet up." " Il monte vingt metres?" " Il monte, oui." "So he gets up 60 feet to get the...dates." "He's dropped his load." "I only wanted three!" "(MICHAEL) Mmm..." "Ah, oui..." "Merci!" "Merci beaucoup!" "Omar's home is in the centre of the village, a mile or so away from the well." "He's taking me to meet his family." "They speak only Arabic or Tamahaq, the language of the Touareg, but Omar has French which is a lot better than mine." "He tells me he has four wives and 15 children." " 15 children?" " Oui." "Ooh, tu es riche!" "Non - en enfants, oui!" "C'est un problème d'avoir quatre femmes?" "Although he smiles easily enough, things are clearly not as rosy as they look." "He has a problem finding enough money to buy food and medicine for all the children, particularly the little ones who cannot work." " C'est un peu dur." " Yeah." "Il y a des enfants, il y a des petits enfants." " So..." "C'est difficile?" " C'est très difficile." "His wives seem to be of all different ages, and I ask him if there are problems having all four under the same roof at the same time." " Beaucoup de problèmes." " They agree!" "Yes, he says, there are many, many problems." "They all seem to boil down to the same thing - jealousy." "(OMAR) Jalousie." "(MICHAEL) Jealousy, you say?" "(MICHAEL) Peut-être, um... ..si vous...si tu as..." ""Wouldn't it be easier", I ask in my impertinent Western way," ""to have just one wife?"" "With one woman, it's not difficult." "One wife, pas difficile!" "Mais avec quatre femmes c'est très difficile!" "(MICHAEL) Pourquoi..." "Pourquoi..." "Omar agrees that it would be much easier, but then, as he puts it, he wants lots of children so he needs lots of wives." "Je veux beaucoup d'enfants." "I think in his own modest way," "Omar rather likes the idea of starting a dynasty." "(WOMEN SING AND ULLULATE)" "The night before the camel train leaves for the salt pans of Bilma, there's a big party." "The dancing gets wilder and wilder as the men strut every step they know to impress the women, and there's no sitting it out!" "(BEATING DRUMS AND WOMEN SINGING)" "The local boys are tireless, happy to raise the sand all night long, but for us oldies, it's time for bed." "There's a long hard journey ahead." "Early morning in Tabelot, and the day of departure has arrived." "These are the men and the beasts with whom I'll share the most desolate corners of the Sahara." "(MICHAEL) Sur le chameau?" "Oui, oui." "Merci." "They've got more important things to put on first." "This is straw in here." "I asked if it's for the camel to eat, he said, "No, no!"" "It's for us (!" ") You don't get much to eat, mate." "I'm sorry." "We have nine chameliers or cameleers, and 30 camels." "Most are of the white docile variety beloved by the Touareg of the Aïr mountains." "(CAMEL BRAYS)" "My camel, I notice, is neither white nor docile, but brown and rather stroppy!" "It's so excited to have my bag on board, it's going to make off with it!" " Il a un nom?" " Oui." "Est Ekowik." " Ekowik?" " Est Ekowik." "Ekowik." "Ekowik, I think means, "He who takes foreigners" (!" ")" "(OMAR) Est Ekowik." "(MICHAEL) Ekowik." "(MICHAEL) Est Ekowik." "We're ready to go." "Everything we need for the journey has to be carried on the backs of the camels, except, of course, fresh food - which walks alongside." "Well, here we go." "Not quite sure about me yet." "Come on." "Well, this is it." "It's not quite what I expected - camel rides on the beach or once round the pyramids - this is the real thing, the start of the train." "I've failed already!" "I got him a few yards anyway." "So we leave Tabelot." "A modest caravan compared to the one which left here in 1922, observed by one Captain Buchanan who estimated it to be six miles long." "Come on, Ekowik!" "It's 350 miles across the desert to Bilma, but I shall be leaving before that and branching north towards the Algerian border." "As we pass out of the mountains," "Omar shows me some of the extraordinary rock art that covers this part of the Sahara." " Il a quel age?" " Vers six mille." " Hmm?" " Six mille." "Six mille. 6,000 years." "6,000 years old?" "Some say they're men from outer space, others believe they're ancestors of the Wodaabe, but the wild animals they depict are taken as proof that not that long ago the Sahara was a green and fertile place." "Since the last Ice Age ended, the Sahara and its wildlife have borne the brunt of the long process of global warming." "Now the camel, introduced from Arabia about the time of Christ, has this parched wilderness almost to itself." "It looks rather pleasant and gentle, this pace, ambling through the sand, but it's very deceptive, because this is really stark desert." "This is killer landscape because there is no water here, there's no shelter anywhere around." "And so you go slowly because it's the only way to survive, and if you didn't have water and friends with you, that would be it within 24 hours." "The camel - or dromedary as the single-humped animals are called - is a marvellous desert machine." "Their weight is so finely distributed that they leave barely a mark in the sand." "Provided they have somewhere to graze, they can last two weeks without water, and can carry loads of up to 500lbs over enormous distances." "Camels changed the history of the Sahara." "Without them, 2,000 years of trade, war, expansion and exploration would never have happened." "It's midday, the peak of heat, and we're seeking a tree." "You just have to keep drinking lots and lots of water." "The other thing that's nice about it is that the camels dictate the pace, but also the mood." "It's a sort of continuous, sort of unchanging rhythm which is the way I think you survive this sort of thing." "Once you keep stopping and starting, that's more difficult." "I know you've got to have shelter and all that, but the camels are reassuring presences because they just keep going." "Oh, you don't want to be patted." "But, you know, there are good things about it!" "There are no flies!" "You can't get bitten by anything, and there's no undergrowth to catch your clothing on!" "But there's very little scope for action - more scope for imagination - so you think a lot like why did they even suggest doing this in the first place?" "!" "Just a joke!" "Oh, a tree!" " Omar, un arbre!" " C'est un arbre." " Un arbre pour nous?" " Oui." "(MICHAEL CHEERS)" "This is where we're going to stop next." "It's two-star, I think." "No lifts, no swimming pool." "No room service." "No roof." "No stairs, and no room, actually, but it sounds jolly good!" "How much is in the water?" "Merci." "Merci." "Merci, Omar!" "(CAMELS BRAY)" "It's lovely the way they go down and sort of fold up like... ..collapsible tables." "This is what they actually eat off the acacia tree." "To get at the greenery, which I suppose they want, there are these amazingly long, very sharp thorns." "That's a couple of inches long." "Incredibly sharp." "They chomp that off." "What must go on between their tongue and the side of the mouth and the gullet?" "I wouldn't eat this!" "Not even in a sandwich!" "Well, possibly a sandwich." "I'd eat anything at the moment!" "OK." " C'est bon." " C'est bon?" "The midday temperatures peak at around 56 Celsius, and only in late afternoon when it begins to cool off is it safe to set out again." "The heat dictates everything." "Because of it," "Omar and his men sometimes leave at four in the morning, but despite it, they still aim to walk 14 or 15 hours a day." "(MAN WHOOPS AND SINGS)" "I don't know about the camels, but I find walking in this soft sand is the most tiring of all." "But Izambar Mohammed, the camel singer, keeps a beady eye out for flagging spirits." "(IZAMBAR SINGS)" "There's a tree over there." "Your expectations on this become so low that one tree becomes a wonderful luxury object." "You can understand what coming to an oasis means to these people." "Everything's just pared down." "You have very minimal expectations." "(HE SINGS)" "The main social event of the day is the evening meal, usually bread, dates and cheese, but tonight, in my honour, there'll be a stew as well." "Everyone has a job to do." "(RASPING CRY)" "Omar and Izambar slaughter the sheep," "Osman bakes bread in a sand oven and Moussa plaits fresh twine to secure the camel loads." "I'm still recovering." "There's nowhere to sit." "That's what I really miss most." "I mean, I can sit here, but this is actually their bedding and food for the animals." "I can't sit here for long." "They don't believe in chairs." "I do find that at the end of a long walk, it would be nice to just flop down on a chaise longue." "That's what I'd bring if I had a camel train of my own " "I'd just have a camel stacked with chairs of various kinds, reading lamps and perhaps a television, possibly a small bar and a fridge, a front doorbell, some stairs, maybe a couple of friends..." "It's very thick and coarse and heavy and..." "Tagilla." "Tagilla." " Terwa?" " Tagilla." " Gogowan?" " Tagilla." " Ça c'est le Tagilla." " Tagoola." " Tergulla?" " Tagilla." "It's more like cake really." "It's like a chunk of cake we used to have at school." "A nice hard crispy outside." "Very good." " Tagil-la." " Tagil-la!" "You have to get the emphasis right." "Tagoo-la probably means buttock!" "Tagil-la!" "It means this lovely cake." "(MICHAEL) Tergulla." "(MAN) "Tergulla" (!" ")" "You're a great audience!" "I think I'm doing something wrong here because they seem to be breaking up the Tagilla... ..le Tagilla into the bowl, so I suppose they'll put sauce on it, but you're popping a bit in your mouth at the same time," "so I'll do a bit of that." "(MAN) Un peu Tagilla." "(MICHAEL) Un peu tadula." "(MICHAEL) Un peu tadula." "Tagilla." " Tagilla." " Dogoola." "They're probably teaching me all the wrong words!" "I'm probably saying..." "Tagilla." "Tagilla." "Tagilla." "(THEY LAUGH)" "It's a minimalist joke but it's serving me well." "Ah, this looks like the... ..the meat." "It's odd to be eating one of the creatures I've got to know quite well as we walk along." "The camels are up there, and the two little sheep and the goat we've walked with are rather sweet." "They get kicked about and no one seems to care and I rather identify with them." "One of them has now been dispatched, and the others are swinging on the bush, and the other two are sort of looking around, obviously sort of, "Look what happened to Bert!"" "They don't seem too concerned." "I think he laid down his life for a good cause." "This is for Touaregs, a banquet because they very rarely have meat on a journey." "I think they just have couscous." "There'll be a lot of sand in it, especially with the wind blowing." "It gets everywhere." "For me?" "Ah, thank you!" "(THEY LAUGH)" " Izzot?" " Izzot!" "It's very 'ot!" "It's good!" "It's lovely!" " Mmm!" "It's 'ot!" " Izzot!" "(CAMEL BRAYS)" "This is much more sensible... ..than any hat you could buy... ..because...it's really cool." "You have to tie it securely 'cause walking loosens it, but it keeps the dust off." "You pull it right over?" " Après." " Après, yes." "Sorry." "My dresser and general looker-after..." "I'd like to be able to see out a bit, or else I might walk into a camel." "That's it, see?" "Brilliant!" "And this can go up..." "Voilà!" " Et tu fais ça..." " Thank you." " Ça va?" " Merci." "Merci." "(THEY LAUGH)" "There!" "Ready for the route!" "Dust..." "And it's very, very cool." "It's just excellent, yeah." "Merci." "One thing I've really got rather used to now about the camels is the strange rumblings that go round the camp whenever they're being loaded up or being put down." "(CAMEL BRAYS) It's like a sort of language, and I'm not sure what it is when they're going to start off." "Is it anger?" "Is it protest?" "Or is it, "Here we go again - another day at the office!"" "Some sort of communication goes on like "We're not meant to do this!" ""We're not meant to be beasts of burden!"" "I shall develop a noise of my own, I think, to go with it." "Let's try one." "Nee-ert!" "Noi-oy-oy!" "(LAUGHTER) Good!" "It works!" "We're now into what my French guidebook calls "désert absolu", absolute desert, the earth stripped clean, as bare as a glacier, as featureless as the sea." "The outside world is so far away as to be almost irrelevant." "I can understand why so many religions were born in the desert." "The outside is so hostile, you have to look inside." "Just as I achieve a little spiritual harmony with this great emptiness," "I'm reminded that in the 21st century, the outside world is always closer than you think." "We don't have the desert to ourselves after all." "(WHINING MOTOR)" "A French paraglider swoops down over us, an all-seeing video camera at the ready." "I feel he's intruding on our space, but deep down, I'm probably just jealous!" "You've been to many deserts in the world." "Do you have a favourite, one place that is most rewarding?" "I've been, yes, to different places." "I like this because the Sahara, there is an authentic life here." "It's still alive." "(MICHAEL) Well, it's a great machine." "Can you do some work with us?" "Just get up in the air and we have our boys walking along?" "Is that all right to have another camera, Nigel?" "Oh, sorry!" "A few sweeties, something like that, and he'll be all right!" "(MUSIC)" "This might be just a streak of Yorkshire puritanism, but I don't want the Sahara to become an adventure playground, and after all the excitement," "I'm glad to be back with the people who live here." "(CAMELS BRAY)" "It seems a bit bizarre having a fire in the Sahara after it's been 132 degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon " "56 centigrade - but it gets quite cold at night." "It goes down to about..." "It can get as low as the high 80s... ..you know, sort of 40 degrees, well, 38 degrees at night, and, oddly enough, it seems cold!" "Anyway, it's just nice to have a fire - very friendly, companionable." "And I can make my joke about..." "It's 'ot!" "(MEN) Izzot!" "(MICHAEL) Goes down a bomb!" "(MICHAEL) It's 'ot!" "(MEN) Izzot!" " Le thé." " Oh, pour moi?" "Merci!" "Oh, this is a bit of the cheese." " Mmm..." " Tacoma." " Mmm!" " Tacoma." " Mmm! "Goma."" " Tacoma." "You're going to teach me another word, aren't you?" "!" " Tacoma." " Tacoma." " A la vôtre!" " A la vôtre!" " Sha-hee!" " Sha-hee!" "(MEN LAUGH) They're teaching me rude words!" "(LAUGHTER CONTINUES)" "Ah!" "These little Touareg soirées (!" ")" "Mmm!" "Cheese is nice!" "Cheers!" "En anglais, nous disons "Cheers!"" "Cheers!" "Down the hatch!" "Bottoms up!" "Bottoms...up." "(MICHAEL) Bottoms up?" "Bottoms..." " Bottom." "(MICHAEL) Bottoms..." " Bottoms... (MICHAEL) Up." " Up." "Yeah!" "Great!" "Bottoms up!" " Bottoms up." "(MICHAEL) Bottoms up." "(THEY LAUGH)" "Very good." "(MICHAEL) Bottoms up." " Bottoms up." " Sha-hee." "(MICHAEL) Sha-hee." " Izzot!" " It's 'ot!" " A la vôtre." "(MICHAEL) A la vôtre." " Tacoma!" "(MICHAEL) Tacoma!" "(THEY LAUGH)" "Tacoma!" "Tacoma!" "(MICHAEL) Not again!" "Tacoma." " A la vôtre." " A la vôtre." " Sha-hee." " Sha-hee." " Izzot!" "(MICHAEL) It's 'ot!" "(THEY LAUGH)" "(MICHAEL) Bottoms up!" " Bottoms up!" "God bless Her Majesty!" "(THEY LAUGH)" " Bottoms up." " Bottoms up." "(CAMELS BRAY)" "Omar helps me load up for the last time." "Later today, our ways will part, and already they've got someone new to look after." "This little gazelle was found abandoned at the camp site, and they're going to keep it and look after it." "This will be a pet." "It's not for the pot." "There are gazelles in the Sahara Desert!" "It's amazing!" "I know there are camels, and smaller animals, but there are gazelles as well." "Even in the depths of desert there's life." "And this one will, hopefully, survive." "Amazing ears!" "Yes... ..they'll look after you, won't they?" "It's always the way, isn't it?" "Just as I'm learning how to cope, it's time to move on." "I shall miss all this - the regular rhythm of the day, the reassuring pattern of life on the move." "I shall miss Omar and Izambar, and all the team who've looked after me, even Ekowik and the camels, though they won't miss me." "I've learnt a lot, maybe not enough to start a religion, but certainly a clearer view of basic truths - if you don't respect your environment, then you die." "It's as simple as that." "Omar will doubtless be delighted to see the back of us!" "Once we've gone, he can get back to the serious business of bringing the salt back from Bilma." "Au revoir!" "Merci." "Merci, Omar, pour tout!" "Bon voyage." "Hey, bye." "Merci!" "Merci!" "Merci!" "Merci!" "Merci!" "Merci pour tout." "Hey, hey!" "You like my shirt, don't you!" "OK, au revoir, merci!" "Ah, bottoms up!" "(MAN WAILS)" "He's going to win the Oscar for this, isn't he!" "Stop it!" "It's my show, dammit!" "It's my show!" "Il vient avec moi!" "Il vient avec moi!" "Merci!" "Au revoir." "Merci!" "Très, très bon!" "Bon voyage!" "OK!" "Now, then, which way?" "Yes..." "OK, au revoir!" "(MICHAEL) Tacoma." "Bottom up." "(MAN) Bottom up." "(MICHAEL) Bottom up!" "(MAN) Bottom up." "Izzot!" " It's 'ot!" " Izzot!" "Izzot!" "Izzot!" "Izzot!" "Izzot!" "Au revoir!" "Right, let me see..." "Algeria." "Bear right over the mountain, left at the oasis, fork left at the volcano, across the lake and sharp right." "Should be there by Tuesday week." "(GROANS OF EFFORT)" "(LABOURED BREATHING)" "In the heart of the Sahara, national frontiers are often flimsy affairs." "I'm in a no man's land near In-Guezzam on the border between Niger and Algeria." "These chunks of scrap metal seek to assure me that I'm crossing the dividing line between two of the largest countries in the Sahara." "It's a terrible anti-climax - a scribble in the concrete." "It reminds me of a tombstone." "Maybe that's appropriate, for this whole godforsaken area, haunt of smugglers and bandits, feels like a graveyard." "No point waiting around for customs!" "Goodbye, Niger, hello, Algeria!" "It's time to unwind and look around." "Algeria, tenth-largest country in the world, is 85 per cent desert - dangerous desert." "As many have discovered to their cost, driving here is not a right, it's a test of survival." "The soft sand is treacherous, the temperature scorching, and failure can be fatal." "The route from the Niger border up into Algeria is absolutely littered with the bleached carcasses of vehicles that tried to cross the Sahara and never made it." "It's so bleak and pitiless here that what might be a routine problem elsewhere, like running out of fuel, is a matter of life and death." "This was the area where Mark Thatcher went missing." "He was only found after an enormous rescue operation, and other people just weren't so lucky, and they paid for their mistakes with their lives." "The desert does weird things to your sense of reality." "As we head north, the shady rocks and cool lakes on the horizon turn out to be mirages - nothing more than a trick of the light." "This wholly edible non-mirage of fresh tomatoes and not so fresh tuna is real enough, but it's accompanied by, well, a pretty rum coincidence!" "I'm writing up my diary, when I bump into the only other Englishman in southern Algeria, or rather HE, poor man, bumps into us!" "The number plate is the first clue." "The lone Mercedes belongs to Tom Sheppard, and, no, it isn't a mirage." "Tom Sheppard is something of a legend out here." "He's a 68-year-old ex-RAF test pilot who travels the desert, writing books, taking photos, and devoting much effort to getting away from people." "I'm on my own, yeah." "I've come down from the north of Algeria, from Tunisia, and I'm going very carefully around the old French tracks." "When you're travelling, what do you survive on?" "I had a birthday two days ago, and had a really special meal on that one - meat and two veg and chilled grapefruit." "A damp kitchen towel and the dryness of the air makes evaporation, and you get cool grapefruit segments." "What more could you ask for?" "Does loneliness worry you?" "It's been more lonely than I expected." "The last session was about eight days between seeing one human being and the next." "I didn't expect it to be that long!" "(MICHAEL) Does that worry you?" "No, it's just so beautiful to be out there." "You get such a lift from the countryside." "Every morning you think," ""I've exhausted the pictures I can take,"" "then the next morning you look up and think, "Look at that!"" "And that's what the desert has always been for me." "40 years of it now!" "That you've been coming to the Sahara?" "Yeah, one way or another." "This is my lucky 13th visit to Algeria." "(MICHAEL) We're having some lunch." "Would you like to join us?" "That's kind of you, but I've got to be on my way now, actually." "Good for Tom!" "Anyone who can be THAT busy in a place like this wins my respect!" "Maybe it was the tuna?" "As Tom hurries south, we head north into the weird and wonderful Hoggar mountains, one of the most bizarre landscapes in the Sahara." "It's like riding through a giant sculpture park." "The hard cores of extinct volcanoes form a panorama of bluffs and spires and pinnacles." "These are young peaks, their sides deeply scarred by the explosive force of their creation." "The Touareg call this land Atakor, like something out of Lord of the Rings." "Next morning, I climb to the top of a 9,000-foot mountain to watch the sun rise." "Because of Algeria's ten-year civil war, the Hoggar massif is rarely visited, which only increases the impact of its beauty." "Down in the dormitory where we spent the night, we pack up." "Our newly acquired sense of peace is about to be rudely shattered." "(ENGINE ROAR)" "This is the other face of Algeria - a modern republic which freed itself from the French and is now trying to free itself from Islamic radicals." "Airlines and newspapers can't disguise underlying tensions, or the fact that these 21st-century comforts are paid for by one great stroke of fortune." "This is Algeria's Aladdin's cave - oil and natural gas fields that provide 90 per cent of the country's foreign earnings." "They've spawned high security towns in the middle of nowhere, like this one at Hassi Massaoud." "45 years ago, there was nothing here but desert." "This amazing transformation is the result of electric pumps working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to pump water up from vast reservoirs sometimes thousands of feet below the Sahara." "The result is a man-made oasis, and this extraordinary illusion that in the middle of the desert, there is no desert." "It's not just like being in a French provincial town, but French countryside as well." "These are very different from their bony counterparts in Mali and Niger." "It shows what can be done to the desert if there's a will and a petrochemical industry to back it up." "A few miles from where they first discovered the oil that so changed Algeria's fortunes, there is another frontier." "On the other side of it, an even richer country." "This lonely tree represents the border between Algeria and Libya." "It's one of the most spectacular frontiers in the world, and also one of the friendliest." "People from Algeria and Libya sit under the tree and take tea." "I don't want to leave this beautiful spot, but leave we must, across the border into the sands of Libya." "In Libya, like Algeria, the bulk of the population clings to the Mediterranean coast." "It's been quite a coup to get permission to film here, and I'm not going to miss a minute of it." "Well, maybe just a minute!" "This looks like being one of the longest bus rides of my life." "To all appearances, Libya has plenty of money but few people, which is not surprising as they have the world's third-largest oil revenues to divide amongst a population less than that of London." "In Benghazi, Libya's second city, you can see the layers of history." "A mosque is beside a palazzo built by Italian colonists." "It now houses one of the committees which run the great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamariyah." "It feels sleepy, but 60 years ago this coastline was one of the great Second World War battlefields." "(ARCHIVE COMMENTARY) The British have more to contend with than just Germans and Italians." "Choking sandstorms occur daily, but they don't interfere with the job - to destroy the enemy." "(WOMAN) It's the most tremendous battle." "It was a real turning point." "If you forget your history, it comes back and hits you in the back of the neck!" "Over the last few years, Lady Avril Randell has organised reunions for Desert Rats and their relatives." "Today, they're at Tobruk." "Survivors, now in their 80s, remember what it was like to be trapped here." "There were no girls, no bars." "It was just desert, and to spend from the age of 20, 21, 22 in that environment," "I hated." "Food, well, it was corned beef, bully beef, in one form or another." "We were down to about a cup of water a day, and that was for everything, and yet, the surprising thing was none of us grew beards!" "Highlight of the reunion is the floating of a wreath into the harbour these men defended for so long." "Without this vital supply line, the allied army in Africa would have faced almost certain defeat." "There was nothing inside the garrison at all, only ammunition and men, and so they had to bring all our food and supplies up, and they had to get it here somehow." "Rommel said that the desert was a tactician's paradise and a quartermaster's nightmare, and that was the fact." "It was like a naval battle at sea with the tanks, great fleets of tanks, but if the petrol and ammunition didn't get there, you were in trouble." "There were 25,000 of us in here, and that's where we won the name Rats, you know?" "Haw-Haw used to say, "Come out of your holes, you rats!"" "Well, we did eventually." "We came out a bit too quick for him eventually!" "(PLAYS "SCOTLAND THE BRAVE")" "Eyes..." "left!" "It's unlikely that any of these Desert Rats will see Tobruk again." "It's a long way, and they're not getting any younger." "Today may be the last time they celebrate the efforts of those who gave Hitler the first bloody nose of the war, and one from which he never recovered." "What's been the high point of this trip for you?" "The last march past of the old Rats with the bugler and piper and the Rats of Tobruk Association standard." "(MAN) Do your duties." "Dismiss!" "(AVRIL RANDELL) The boys can now march off into the sunset." "You'll never see them again." "(PEOPLE APPLAUD)" "Modern Libya has often cut itself off from the West, but over 2,000 years ago, it was an integral part of Europe." "The Greeks and then the Romans were drawn to this fertile land between the sea and the Sahara, and built some of their grandest cities here." "Cyrene was a busy metropolis 500 years before Christ." "It had its own port, Apollonia." "Staggering sites, these, but totally deserted." "But then, the modern towns are deserted as well." "Is there some national emergency we've not been told about?" "Is it National Stay Indoors Day?" "Where ARE all the Libyans?" "Apart from our driver, everyone seems to have gone... ..and taken everything with them." "Picnic time, and despite the fact that there are big cities - we've seen Tobruk and Benghazi and we're off to Tripoli " "Libya is largely desert, so it's picnic time in the desert." "My packed lunch is enormous." "I can't tell what it is because everything's in Arabic." "All the signs in Libya are in Arabic as well, despite the fact that a lot of people speak English." "So it could be lunch, or a very large hat." "It is lunch!" "There we go." "A nice little well-sealed box here." "Ah!" "Everything's very typically Libyan... ..apart from cold chips." "The shortage of water is clearly a problem for Libya, but Colonel Gadaffi has an impressive answer to it." "These huge concrete sections are for his man-made river project to bring underground water" "1,000 miles from the desert to the coast - one of the most ambitious engineering schemes in the world." "1700 years ago, water was no problem." "This land was known as the bread basket of Rome, rich enough from exports of wheat and oil to boast North Africa's most magnificent city" " Leptis Magna." "It gives off a powerful sense of the brute strength of Rome." "These halls were built by Septimus Severus, an African who became Roman emperor and died in England." "It wasn't just Septimus that ended up in England." "In 1827, the ruler of Tripoli sent 35 columns and other assorted features as a present to King George IV." "A bit of Leptis Magna can still be found off the A329 near Virginia Water." "I'm told the amphitheatre at Leptis Magna has the best acoustics in North Africa." "Let's find out." "(AS GEORGE FORMBY) # I'm leaning on the lamppost" "# At the corner of the street" "# Until a certain little lady comes by" "# Oh, me, oh, my" "# I hope that little lady passes by" "# She's absolutely wonderful and absolutely marvellous" "# And lots of people ask me just why" "# I'm standing on the corner, on the corner of the street" "# Until a certain little lady passes by!" "#" "(MAN SHOUTS) Get off!" "(SCATTERED APPLAUSE)" "As we leave Libya," "I have the feeling that despite being generous hosts, the Libyans are mistrustful of people with cameras." "This was never a problem in my next destination." "Less than 100 miles from the Libyan border, we're in this arid, almost lunar landscape of southern Tunisia." "It's so arid and uncongenial, that for the last 700 years, people have been living in caves under the ground." "Believe it or not, I do know this place." "I was crucified here 23 years ago for The Life of Brian." "I've always wanted to come back because it is so unforgettable - and not many people can say they've gone back to the place they were crucified!" "I'm going to see what it's like." "The crosses are gone, but El-Hadej hasn't changed much." "It remains an underground town, and though the authorities wish to move people into houses, there are those who by tradition and inclination prefer to live and work below the surface." "The older generation of troglodytes can't see why they should have to move from their caves." "One answer is to cash in on the curiosity value and become hoteliers." " Bonjour." " Bonjour." "I'm Michael." "Beautiful!" "This is where you live." "Your house!" "(MAN) Yes." "Mmm, nice and silent and cut off from the world." "Do you have a room?" "Yes?" "OK, I'll see the room." "Thank you." "In here?" "La?" "Merci." "Après vous." "(SPEAKS ARABIC)" "My host was very keen to point out that living underground made very good sense as the caves are warm in winter and cool in summer." "Mmm, I think tea's made." "(MAN AND WOMAN SPEAK ARABIC)" "My own Arabic being limited, I rely on the one word I know and repeat it as often as possible." "Merci." "Thank you." "Shoqlain." "Shoqlain." "Shoqlain." "My little Arabic that I know..." "Some peanuts as well." "Thank you." "We've been right round the Sahara and one thing that doesn't change is the tea, and the method of making the tea." "It's been the same in every country we've been to, from Morocco to Mali to Mauritania to Tunisia." "Thank you." "Shoqlain." "Very nice." "(ERIC IDLE) Cheer up, Brian, you know what they say, some things in life are bad." "They can really makeyou mad." "Other things just make you swear and curse." "When you're chewing on life's gristle, don'tgrumble, give a whistle... # .." "And this'll help things turn out for the best" "# And..." "# Always look on the bright side of life I" "(EVERYBODY WHISTLES)" "# Always look on the light side of life I" "(EVERYBODY WHISTLES)" "# Always look on the bright side of life I" "(THEY WHISTLE)" "# Always look on the bright side of lifeI #" "In southern Tunisia where the desert meets the sea, an offshore island called Djerba hangs on to old traditions as tenaciously as the troglodytes of El-Hadej." "In their case, it's catching octopus in Greek vases." "These men appear to be dressed by Dolce and Gabbana, but their technique is pre-Roman." "The pots are strung out on a line, and unfailingly, between November and March every year, the octopus obligingly climb into them." "There it is!" "Wow!" "Get back in there!" "They're all over the place!" "OK, well, there's two." "One's crawling up your leg, Nige!" "Get back in!" "Thank you!" "I'm not much good at octopus wrangling, but I'm learning!" "Oh, my gosh!" "How many are there?" "!" "Getting them out of the sea's the easy bit - keeping them on board's difficult." "They love these." "They love living in these little urns." "Obviously, there's a synchronicity between the octopus and the urn, and here we are, ripping them out, so I'm not having any more to do with this." "I'm going to start the Octopus Protection League!" "Djerba claims to be the island of the lotus eaters to which Ulysses and his weary sailors came to be seduced by the narcotic delights of the lotus." "There's no lotus left, but Djerba seduces thousands of foreigners every year." "(LIVELY MUSIC)" "Tourism is now the biggest business in Djerba." "I walk round the souk with El Hay, who runs one of the better shops in town." "There were few tourists when he was a boy." "He now relies on them for 70 to 80 per cent of his business." "Do you think tourism can have a bad effect, an adverse effect?" "Of course, yeah." "It didn't bring only good things." "It brought a lot of money to Djerba," " but we have other problems." " What sort of problems?" "Well, we have a lot of..." "Our young people change." "They are not practising their religion any more." "They are running after..." "I don't know..." " Seduced by the money?" " Yeah, exactly." "We have this..." "I don't know if I want to talk about it." "We have this sex tourism." "We have a lot of old ladies coming here to find a young friend." "This is not good." "It's one of the bad sides." "You find sometimes some homosexuals." "They are..." "You just go to the beach, and you see that there are people waiting for an old lady." "We also have a lot of young people who don't want to work because they have a..." "I don't want to say." "But old ladies leave their husbands there or they don't have a husband, and they come here to find a friend here, and so they pay him." "This is one of the bad sides of tourism." "Tunisia, lacking the oil reserves of Libya and Algeria, has to do all it can to make tourists welcome." "They've been greatly helped by the Romans who, at el-Djem, left behind the third-biggest amphitheatre they ever built..." "..whilst at Douga, graceful temples overlook a purpose-built brothel, and next door, a masterpiece of imperial plumbing!" "The Romans weren't bashful about bodily functions." "This is a public lavatory in the truest sense of the word, in that there are 12 little toilets here, and it was a communal lavvy." "You went in - they were called furaci - and you paid one "ass" to come in, which is a tiny coin, and they would sit here, and it would be a group thing." "You'd discuss the weather, politics... ..acting, life, architecture, digestion, and there'd be water running around this little runnel here, so you could wash your hands there, bring the water up," "put your hand under there and wash the bits like that." "It was beautifully done." "They used cold water, though, so it must have been a freezing jobby here." "But, er...the Romans were oddly civilised in sanitary ware, I think." "Not just Romans but Phoenicians, Turks, Greeks, even Normans have all contributed to Tunisia's rich racial mix." "The most influential were the Arabs." "One of their great monuments is in Monastir, and the locals never stop talking about the day Monty Python filmed here." "Believe it or not, the more comfortable parts of the filming that weren't done on crosses happened here in Monastir." "This is the Rebat which is a very old building, probably about 1300 years old, and this is where most of the scenes of Life of Brian were done." "I'm just trying to remember it, because it all looks very tidy and neat." "Yeah, it's coming back to me now." "I think the stoning scene where we were dressed up as..." "Women were not allowed to go to stonings - or was it only women?" " so we all played women with beards." "RightI Who threw that?" " Come onI Who threw that?" "I - (HIGH VOICES) She did I" "(DEEP VOICE) HimI HimI" " Was ityou?" " (HIGH VOICE) YesI" "Well, you did say '"Jehovah"I" "Now this DOES bring it back!" "The tower Graham Chapman ran up." "At the top, the stairs ran out, and he's rescued by a flying saucer and goes on!" "Aaagh!" "I think we must have just taken over this place entirely for about two months, which seems unlikely." "Up there where those girls are coming down, just above that, I think, columns were built where Pontius Pilate came out and the "We-lease Wodder-wick"" "and "He wanks higher than any in Wome!" was done up there." "It's difficult to tell because we added pillars and flags, but I remember coming out above that bit." "(PEOPLE CHEER)" "People of"Je-woo-salem... ..Wome isyour fwendI" "(LAUGHTER)" "A very strange and rather effective moment where the power of Rome was challenged, not by people fighting but by people laughing." "That's what moved me." "Once people laughed at him, there was nothing he could do." "Laughter's a very good weapon and not used enough." "As soon as they started screaming with laughter... ..then he got..." ""ve-wee, ve-wee an-gwee" and made a "gwate fool" of himself!" "SilenceI" "This man commands a cwack legionI" "(SHRIEKS OFLAUGHTER)" "He wanks as high as any in WomeI" "(SHRIEKS OFLAUGHTER)" "(ECHOING LAUGHTER)" "Along the coast from Monastir is the city of Sousse in which Brian also came to life." "It seems strangely subdued today." "I remember the streets of the old town as the liveliest in Tunisia." "Now they're quiet as the grave." "They're already shutting up shop for the day." "I learn that it's the start of Ramadan, the one month each year when Muslims are expected to fast during daylight hours." "Candy stalls do a roaring trade thanks to night-time feasts." "I've heard that people put on weight during the fasting - now I understand why." "Tunisia likes to see itself as secular and outward-looking." "It's also the only Islamic country in which it's not compulsory to observe Ramadan, but most do, and with my friend Moes, I visit a café to see how the country makes the most of the hours of darkness." "Moes orders a shisha, which is a cigarette the size of a vacuum cleaner." "Charcoal heats honey-flavoured tobacco, and the air is cooled by the water." "(MOES) Do you want to try it?" "Yeah, OK." "Yeah, very nice." "It's very relaxing, isn't it?" "Would you normally smoke this?" "Sometimes, yeah, especially in Ramadan." "People, after eating and everything, they like to relax, to have a cup of tea and to smoke the shisha." "Are you allowed to smoke during Ramadan during the day?" "No, nothing." "No water, no smoking, nothing in your mouth." " Really?" "That's very hard!" " Just air, you know, maybe." "What is..." "What is the worst thing to be deprived of?" "Is it water, is it food?" "For me, it's water." "For some people, it's food." "It depends." "Each person..." "Some people, smoking, too." "The hardest thing for them is to stop smoking for 12 hours." "Does it make people bad-tempered?" "Some people are bad-tempered, but some people are not." "If they are bad-tempered, they are bad-tempered." "It's not Ramadan, but some people say," ""I am bad-tempered because it's Ramadan," but it's not true!" "They're using it as an excuse." "Apart from the Arabs, most of those who invaded North Africa stopped short of the Sahara." "The Romans never crossed it and another famous occupying empire looked only towards the sea." "They were the Carthaginians, and their power base was here." "In fact, the station's called Carthage." "This is the start of my journey through to Algeria." "This is a local train which will take me to Tunis Nord, the main station in Tunis from which I'll get the Trans-Maghreb Express." "(WOMEN LAUGH) Excuse me, I'm working!" "The Trans-Maghreb Express goes to Algiers." "This line goes through wonderful stations" " Carthage Amilcar," "Carthage Présidence, Carthage Hannibal - great name " "Carthage Dermech, Carthage Byrsa." "So five Carthage stations." "Whatever the Romans might think, Carthage is not destroyed!" "I think when the Romans left Carthage, they were so fed up with the Carthaginians attacking Rome that they sowed the fields with salt so nothing would grow." "From the main station in Tunis, it looks easy enough to continue my journey across North Africa aboard the Trans-Maghreb Express." "The Arab word "Maghreb"" "means "the lands of the setting sun" - the lands of the west." "But there are problems ahead." "Tunisia is international, outward-looking, and relatively stable." "Algeria, the country I'm going to, has been caught in a spiral of violence since 1992." "Foreign Office advice is unequivocal." ""The security situation remains serious." ""We advise against all holiday and non-essential travel to Algeria."" "At first sight, Algiers seems like any other modern city." "The trains seem to be on time, there are no porters at the station, and my hotel, the el-Djezair, is rather grand." "Formerly called the St George, it was built in the 1880s for fashionable Victorians who flocked to Algiers to benefit from the healthy climate." "No one flocks to Algiers any more, and I have a bodyguard." "(MAN) Beyond the hotel, we will be required to travel around Algiers with a team of..." "This is Eamonn, and he's an ex-Marine commando." "(EAMONN) The reason we need this security in place is that since 1992, foreigners in Algeria have been under fatwa by certain extreme Islamic groups." "(MICHAEL) Really?" "Fatwa - the same as in the Salman Rushdie case?" "(EAMONN) The Satanic Verses, yeah." "The result is that over 100 foreigners have been killed in Algeria." "I've travelled quite a bit, and as far as I know, no one's ever tried to kill me!" "I ask Eamonn if this is all strictly necessary." "It is." "You're a public figure with a high profile, and if I lose you, I lose my job!" "(MICHAEL) Well, I hope we won't be a problem." "(ACCORDION MUSIC)" "Out on the streets, you could be in Lyon or Marseilles." "For 100 years, the French treated Algeria not as a colony but as a part of France." "As a result, the independence movement was resisted more fiercely here than anywhere in North Africa." "Said Chitour, a local journalist, is proud of the fight his people put up, and takes me to what was the centre of the struggle, the ancient heart of Algiers - the Casbah." "As the streets of the Casbah are still a flash point for violent protest, the local police, known as the Casbah Cops, have thrown a discreet cordon around the area for our visit." "So successful is this precaution, that there's absolutely no one about, and even when someone appears, he's a local policeman, regrouping, but they can't keep out the ghosts of old heroes." "Ali La Pointe was one of the resistance fighters against the French." "He was in the film The Battle of Algiers." " Did he live here?" " He lived here with his friends like Hassiba BenBouali, and all those freedom fighters." "He was a hero of the Casbah and the Battle of Algiers." "Was the resistance centred on the Casbah?" " Yes." " So it was pretty difficult for the French to get the revolutionaries out of here." "Very difficult because it's roof to roof, house to house, and the people can jump from roof to roof." "This is the memorial plate in memory of Ali La Pointe." "What does it say, Said?" ""In October 8th, 1957," ""Ali La Pointe, with his companions," ""spent all day resisting the French paratroopers" ""of Bijar and Massoud." ""The French army decided to blow up the house." ""He didn't want to give up, and he died."" "(MICHAEL) That's the scene in the film where they give them the chance to come out." "They decided to stay in, and then they blew the place up." "What do you think Ali La Pointe and these people achieved?" "Freedom." "Independence for us - for the generation who are coming after 1962." "Now this place became a kind of centre - a training centre for young girls of the Casbah to teach them how to make a good couscous." "Couscous?" "From the sublime to the ridiculous!" "(CHANTING AND MUSIC) The Casbah's coming to life." "I begin to forget security and enjoy myself." "There's lots of character to these claustrophobic alleyways." "(MICHAEL LAUGHS) They think we're crazy!" "(SAID) She's a funny girl." "Said shows me some of the Casbah's hidden gems, like the mosque of Sidi Abd er-Rahman." "He was a 15th-century holy man and patron saint of the city." "A visit to his tomb is said to be very effective for women." "(SHE CHANTS)" "Some women pray in here for Allah to be merciful " ""Allah, bless us" - and to give us rain because in Algiers there is no more water." "Ironically, the prayers worked only too well." "Within two weeks of our visit, hundreds were drowned in Algeria's worst flooding for years." "By Saharan standards, those who live in Algiers look prosperous." "The oilfields see to it that the street markets are well stocked." "Look at the size of those brassieres!" "Goodness me!" "You could get a couple of footballs in there!" "I might just pick up a couple." "Next morning, it's time to leave Algiers la Blanche - the White City, as the French called it." "There's a train that goes west to Oran." "I've heard the line is dangerous so I seek professional advice." "Is it OK to travel?" "I know there are security problems." "Security is not a problem in the train." "You can go to Oran." "Security is not a problem for you." " OK?" " OK." "That's good." "You speak English so well!" "Is this something they teach you on Algerian Railways?" "It's English of school, but when you like a language, you practise it very good." "What is your job here?" "My job is master of the station." "Station master?" "Not station mistress." "Yeah, I'm the first lady in Algeria, in the stations of Algeria." "This is very clean, I notice." "Absolutely tidy." "Yes, it's a woman who is master!" "(MICHAEL) And it's a policeman who is following us!" "The train is leaving and it's time to say farewell to Said, who's shown me that, despite the dire warnings, the people of Algiers could not have made us feel more welcome." " Michael, have a good trip." " Thanks for everything." " We'll see you soon." " Inshallah." "Bye." "As we pull out, everything looks normal enough, but in Algeria, it's never wise to be complacent." "The Algiers-Oran line DOES have a history, and I'm certainly not allowed to ride it unprotected." "Is that OK?" "Is there a security problem on this line?" "Yes, there is, and there has been over the last ten years." "This is an area to the south of Algiers in a..." "Known as "The triangle of death"." "We're approaching Blida, and this has been the most bombed railway line in the world over the last ten years." "Do people attack the train, ambush?" "Yes, this train has been bombed, it has been stopped by people coming onto the train and pulling the communication cord, which is why there's no communication cord on the train." "Really?" "What was the problem?" "Well, you'd get confederates of terrorist groups who'd come onto the train masquerading as passengers." "They'd pull the communication cord, the train would stop and the terrorists would come onto the train and commit acts of cruelty and barbarism." "What, they'd take people's lives on the train?" "Yes, they would, in awful circumstances that we really don't want to go into." "Now, however, over the last two years, you will find as you are going along there is a major security presence, and you will not really run the same risk, or so we're told." "Yeah, but you don't see many foreigners on a line like this." "No, you're probably the first foreigner to pass along this line in the last ten years." "(MICHAEL) Well, so far it seems to be fine." "The train left on time, everyone was very friendly, even the countryside is like farmland." "I don't want to put people off coming to Algeria, because we've had no problems." "People have been very friendly." "I know we've been guarded by you and other people, but I don't feel there's been any hostility." "No, there's no hostility from the general population." "They're a very welcoming people as you've seen." "Even at Chlef, where violence has been rife, there is an unthreatening air of ordinariness, but the hard fact remains that in the last ten years of terror," "100,000 people have been killed." "One thing you won't be able to see on our journey is the presence of the armed guards." "They have quite a heavy security presence, both from Algiers and a town called Chlef where we stopped." "They changed the guard round and 18 members of the Gendarmerie Nationale armed with AK47s came aboard to look after us." "It's dangerous for them to be filmed, but the train is bristling with guards looking after us." "Merci." "(INDISTINCT)" " Merci, monsieur." " Merci." "The train used to be exotically known as the Algiers-Casablanca Express, but tensions between Algeria and Morocco over security have closed the railway border, and now the train terminates at Oran." "The army can go home." "I'm someone else's responsibility." " Great station!" " Beautiful." "Is Oran an important city?" "(EAMONN) Yes, it's the second city of Algeria." "Now, where do we head?" "Off down here?" "Yeah, into the centre of town." "Oran, like Algiers, is still steeped in French influence." "Bare-breasted northern maidens gaze down from the opera house." "Nearby, a carved likeness of Arab nationalist hero," "Abdul Kader." "The confusion reflects my own feelings as I near the end of the journey." "This is the last big city on my journey, and you can't get much further west in Algeria than this, so I've got to think hard about how I'm going to get back home." "I'm able to bypass the closed border with Morocco by taking a roundabout ferry route into Ceuta." "From there it should be easy enough to get back across the Straits to Europe." "Ceuta is a curiosity." "It's a slice of Spanish territory clinging to the coast of Africa." "It's surrounded by Morocco, and just as the Spanish want Gibraltar, the Moroccans would rather like Ceuta, but there's no sign of Spain parting with it." "Indeed, this lovingly preserved monument commemorates a Spanish invasion of Morocco." "The Spanish presence makes Ceuta a magnet for those wanting to get out of Africa." "High on a hill above the town is one of the outlying defences of Fortress Europe, a holding centre for immigrants, built and run by the European Union." "(MAN) Gracias." "It's bright, clean and modern, and people can't wait to leave." "There are nearly 400 men, women and children in the centre, but only 45 applications have been processed in the last six months." "The inmates are restless, some are desperate, but they're not giving up - not after the risks they've taken." "Where have you come from?" " From Nigeria." " And how did you get here?" "Through the Sahara Desert." " On a vehicle?" " With leg." "On foot?" "You walked through the Sahara?" " How long did that take?" " It take me almost one year." "How did you get here, into Ceuta?" "I passed through Sahara, get to Morocco, from Morocco I come to this place." "How did you get here from Morocco?" "This is a fortress." "I passed through the barbed wire, through the barbed wire with the fishing boat." "I came by the boat." "You came by boat and that brings you up onto the shore here?" " Yeah." " Did you have to pay somebody?" "Yeah, for the boat we pay about 1,500... (INDISTINCT)" "1,500 dollars?" "U.S. dollars?" "Yeah." "At the narrowest point of the Straits of Gibraltar, only nine miles separate these people from their goal." "I'm lucky." "I can cross the Straits in an hour, on a scheduled ferry in broad daylight, but thousands of Africans will pay good money to be brought over on unsuitable boats at dead of night." "Belinda Braithwaite, who has a house close to where they land, knows that many will never reach the beaches of Europe alive." "(BELINDA) They cross when it's calm in the middle of the night, but with the Straits, you can suddenly get a squall, and they've got too many people in the boat, none of them can swim and they don't have any life-jackets," "and so the boat capsizes, and the poor things are thrown into the sea." "Do they have any sort of navigation?" "Do they have to come along here with no lights?" " Is it always at night?" " It's always at night." "Some of the worst casualties happen when it's a foggy night, because it would appear that some unscrupulous skippers say, "It's 200 yards over there, jump out here."" "I fact, it's more like a mile, so the poor people are out of their depth and can't swim." "Imagine if you're a pregnant woman thrown over the side of a boat, and don't stand a chance." "And when they do get ashore..." "I mean, this is..." "The boat must have gone against the rocks." "There's holes in it." "What happens when they get to the shore?" "They scatter quickly and disappear into the pine forest, but, obviously, if they've just got out of a boat or maybe had to swim the last bit, their clothes are sopping wet, and they tend to bring a little..." " There you are." " Is that off a boat?" "Well, it looks remarkably like it's been bound up to keep it waterproof, and they would then keep some dry clothes in there." "Here you've got the fellow's clothes that he's taken off." "They take them off because they're sodden?" "Yeah." "He's got shoes and bits and pieces and his water bottle." "That's someone from Morocco, Mali..." "And then he'll just quickly get away before he's spotted." "So there are clothes all over these dunes?" "What amazes me is that sometimes I come across them miles out." "When at last I reach Gibraltar, the flags are flying, and day trippers fill the streets, but there's something different in the air, a smell of betrayal." "Your Excellency, may I have your leave to secure the fortress?" "(INDISTINCT)" "After nearly 300 years, the unthinkable is happening." "Britain and Spain are discussing joint sovereignty." "(MAN SHOUTS) Who goes there?" " The keys!" " Whose keys?" "Queen Elizabeth's keys." "Advance, Queen Elizabeth's keys." "(INDISTINCT)" "The Ceremony of the Keys dates back to when the gates of the citadel were locked every night." "The fortress is secure and all is well, sir." "But how secure IS the fortress?" "Suddenly, this harmless ceremony seems loaded with significance." "It's more than just an entertainment." "Will the gates of Gibraltar have to be locked again?" "When I set out, I saw Gibraltar as the bridge between Europe and Africa, but now I've finished the journey, what's more important for the future is that the Sahara is the bridge from Africa into Europe." "There is a danger in becoming obsessed with our own security." "Locking out the enemies at the gate, may only create more enemies." "The best hope for the future is to look around the gate, to find out more not less of how other people live." "After all, this time a year ago, I thought the Sahara was empty!" "Whoo!"