Grand Hotel De Bamako

Having finally torn ourselves away from turning traveller tyo tourist by staying in accomodation out of our price range and racking up hours beside the beach and pool we ended up in funny old Farafenni. As its name suggests, it is a lively little place inland from Banjul the boasts the best and boldest market in the area and we happened to arrive as it was happening, by horse drawn cart! We ate watermelon and delicious donut things til we ...

... a visit to the police station and pay offs, sandstorms with hurricane winds, heat in the Sahara that is hard to explain what it felt like, pov**ty and stick/mud huts ev**ywh**e, challenging (to say the least) infrastructure (imagine hours and hours of potholes so it takes forev** to go 10 miles)....you get the point. All that said, this was the hardest trip on me, p**sonally, even moreso than Calcutta, but also, the most rewarding. The humility, the warm and gentle waves we ...

... the city's residents love to party and clubs are open till the wee hours of the morning. The clubs are not expat dominated, as one would expect. Night time is when you really see Bamako's young middle class. Another strange quirk, considering Bamako is 96% muslim - the city is more liberal than my home town of Bangalore, where women are stoned for going to night clubs, where dancing is 'forbidden' and bars close by 1130. Bamako - you win hands down in the night life ...

... for. <br><br>Signs of development are everywhere - Chinese firms, French companies, Orange, Ford, Chrysler,.....I'm starting to see similar patterns of development now. First come the international telephone companies, then the car manufacturers, the DHLs...the familiar hotel chains, the infrastructure companies .... soon you will see the odd MacDonalds cropping up. Globalisation is indeed a great leveler. <br><br>Our little taxi continued ...

... with the mild sand storm irritating my eyes, throat and nose to the point I was pleased to get inside to dusty restaurants and bars. We enjoyed a delicious meal of doe-balls with a succulent meat cass**ole, which provided relief to the chewy meat we've been enduring since Morocco. The journey back was "int**esting". We lined up early morning to pile into Toyota Landcruis**s - all of which had seen bett** days. We loaded up each vehicle with our gear and seven passeng ...

... to the pharmacy and got an injection to stop me vommitting so that I'd be able to fly home. Things had hit an all time low. I was considering jacking in the whole trip and flying straight back to Oz. Morale was LOW. I was very weak at the airport and leaned heavily on my trolley praying I would be checked in without anyone noticing how ill I was. I just wanted to be at home (wherever that now was...)

... party town, so we were looking forward to a few drinks out celebrating new year. New years eve was strange, because we didn t have enough time to organise anything and find out where the live music was. We ended up at the "Place de l'independance", the equivalent of Trafalgar Square in Bamako, watching a live show retransmitted by Malian TV, where all the musicians were miming their songs, and without a drink in sight. No one ...

... and working our way through back streets we pulled into a campground around 6 which backed onto the ***** Riv**. P**fect timing as the sun was just going down so we w**e treated to a beautiful sunset ov** the riv**. Campground was good - bar, restaurant and swimming pool!! It did lack in toilets and show**s, having only 3 of them, but with a pool who needs show**s?! Best of all we w**e able to change money so enjoyed a few ice cold be**s, whilst listening ...

... to be anything but taking about half and hour and 5 people to put up. It was very funny watching the whole episode. Martin and Sarah bought out pre dinner shots for everyone - mandarine vodka followed by apple vodka. Sounds nice but actually quite horrid - all good. Poor Jim got triple shots of each. As the night wore on people got merrier and merrier. The drink game of never never started - always interesting - thankfully I was too ...

... chercher et on a sympathisé automatiquement. Il dégage naturellement une très bonne énergie et avec son franc sourire, personne ne peut rester indifférent. Il organise des sound systems quand son argent lui permet de louer le matériel qui est très cher. Dans son minuscule salon de coiffure, en dehors duquel on a passé un après-midi ensemble papotant sur l'avenir de l'Afrique, Thomas Sankara et Fela Kuti, il y a des photos affichées avec des artistes qui, tout comme moi, s'y ...