Essakane nights

The road from Timbuctou starts well but after an hour just peters out – the way now is to follow what tracks you can see across the fine white shifting sands. Our drivers get lost, one car has to be dug out and we discover the desert burrs – they are sharp and prickly and get into just about everything. The journey in the end takes us about three hours and the trick seems to be to drive as fast as possible, skimming the desert and avoiding any obvious obstacles – slightly hair raising and not a little dangerous methinks but we arrive unscathed.

We had some inklings that there are problems in the region – three tourists were kidnapped up on the border with Niger a few months ago and there have been sporadic attacks by insurgents, but it still comes as a shock when we arrive at the festival site – there is a heavy military presence together with armoured cars around the perimeter. We learn later that the British Foreign Office has advised against all travel north of Timbuctou and this has certainly deterred many travellers to the festival this year.

We settle into our Tuareg tents – they are slung low, open and made from hides. A small group of men and youths have their fire just in front of our entrance – they are our “security” (or so we find out when we are packing up and they ask for cadeaux) and we are their reality television. Every slightest action of ours is closely observed and clearly fascinating to these men of the desert. Daytimes we spend wandering around – that is when we can face the intense heat – there is a marketplace – inevitably and masks galore (who makes all these?) – impromptu performances and a general festival chill. Taureg women go unveiled –unlike their men folk – and mingle freely in the crowds, dancing to the heavy desert blues pumped out through battered sound systems powered by ancient car batteries.

Late afternoons the fun begins, camel races, sword dancing, initiation rights – hard to know what is going on really – it seems that we have landed on another planet. On the first day it really hits home – having fantasised for so long about this festival – and there suddenly before our very eyes about two hundred blue men on their camels riding in – it is an awe inspiring and spine tingling moment – the hair on the back of the neck moment – they are proud, arrogant warriors, swords strapped to their sides, their camels spitting fury. They make way for no one as we learn – you have to get out of their way as quickly as possible or risk being trampled – the law of the desert.

Nighttimes are when the music really gets going. The sun sets across the endless desert and the temperature drops dramatically – everyone wraps up in whatever shawls and blankets they have and charcoal braziers burn on the dunes. On stage desert beats dominate – heavy rhythmic and hypnotic guitars, interspersed with long, effusive welcoming speeches. The festival is graced by a Moroccan princess no less (she gives out the prizes for the fastest camel, the most beautiful camel etc. on the last day) and various other dignitaries. There are also rumours that Ghadaffi will make an appearance although he does not show. Long flowery tributes are also paid to us - the “globetrotters and festivaliers” – all part of the Malian praise tradition.

The desert sky is out of this world, sparkling stars in a clear black universe, inspiring dreams and fantasies. Each night the best is saved for last – on the first night Salif Keita strides out onto the stage, for some reason wearing safari gear, his golden voice soaring into the desert night – a dream come true to see this legend on home turf – the crowd is electric, surging and singing along to every word. There is no programme and nobody seems to know who will perform – so each evening it is wait and see. We are not disappointed – Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba, Adel Becoum, various Tinnariwen line ups and on the final evening Habib Koite brings the festival to a joyful finale, ending with a knees up of just about everyone on stage. We stagger home frozen at two am, exhausted but both chuffed that we made it, monkey bites and all.