These countries/territories and the entire Sahara area are vast. For example, Algeria is four times the size of France or three times the size of Texas. The Sahara is roughly the same size as the United States, and the trip covered 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometres) and lasted three months.
A book by the same name written by Palin was published to accompany the series. This book contained both Palin's text and many pictures by Basil Pao, the stills photographer on the team. Basil Pao also produced a separate book of the photographs he took during the journey, Inside Sahara, a large coffee-table style book printed on glossy paper.
Episode guide
The series consists of four 60-minute episodes, as follows:
A Line in the Sand
The programme starts in Gibraltar, shown to be a bit of Britain only a few miles from Africa. In Tangier, Morocco, Palin rides a camel on the beach, and then plays football with some youths and hurts himself. He's somewhat revived by visiting a hammam, a public bath house. He attends a church service at St. Andrew's Anglican Church together with some Nigerians who are trying to gain access to Europe. He also visits Jonathan Dawson, an expatriate Englishman, and his pet cockerel Birdie.
To get to the Sahara it is necessary to travel over the Atlas Mountains. Along the way Palin visits Fez and sees the old-fashioned way to dye leather. Then in Marrakesh, he visits the souk (market). In the mountains near Marrakesh Palin visits a Berber village, experiencing a "courtship dance". Before leaving the mountains he passes through Ait Benhaddou, an old town used as the location for many movies.
Finally having reached the Sahara, in Algeria, Palin visits the Smara refugee camp for people who fled from Western Sahara. A member of the Polisario Front shows him around and he sees their equipment, mainly old Russian tanks. After several days travel, Palin makes it to Mauritania, to the town of Zouerat. From there he takes the iron ore train south to Choûm, then by road on to Atar, where he encounters the Paris – Dakar rally and talks to Dave Hammond, the only remaining British entrant at that point. In the closing credits, Palin mentions that Hammond had moved up to twelfth position before suffering an injury, from which he slowly recovered.
Destination Timbuktu
The episode starts with Palin crossing the Sénégal River, leaving Mauritania and entering the town of Saint-Louis in Senegal. He has left Arab Africa and entered Black Africa, and the French influence, from the colonial past, is strongly felt here. He interviews the artist Jacob Yakouba and his soap-opera-star wife Marie-Madeleine, talking to them about polygamy, which is prevalent here. Palin also visits Gorée Island, the main departure point for black slaves sold to America.
Palin moves on to Dakar and watches (and takes part in) a late-night wrestling match, and then talks to the owner of a jazz café. Then he takes the Bamako Express train to Bamako in Mali, talking to a native woman about polygamy along the way. In Bamako he talks to the musician Toumani Diabate.
Palin visits the town of Tirelli on the Bandiagara Escarpment where the Dogon people live. The Dogons are a tribe of people who kept themselves isolated from the rest of the world until fairly recently, and have a culture unlike any other. While with the Dogons, Palin experiences getting gunpowder blown into his face from the Dogon hunter's old blunderbuss, eats a meal in a sweltering 56 degree (134°F) location, witnesses a funeral dance, and is introduced to the blacksmith, whose secondary job is to circumcise the boys (his wife performs female genital cutting on the girls).
Countries visited during Sahara.
In Djenne, Palin talks to a local man whose nickname is Pigmy and experiences the Muslim Tabaski ritual of slaughtering a sheep, first at the huge mosque and later at Pigmy's house. At the town of Mopti Palin tries to get ferry passage up the Niger River, but the low water level makes this impossible. Taking a smaller and very primitive boat instead, Palin meets Kristin, a Norwegian Christian missionary who has lived in Mali for six years, and they talk about female genital cutting and Kristin's attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity. Then the boat runs aground, and it is unsure if and when Palin will arrive in Timbuktu.
Absolute Desert
Michael Palin did make it to the mysterious Timbuktu, and this episode opens with views of the famous mosque built of mud. Palin talks to the imam, who shows Palin documents indicating that Muslim scholars had discovered that the Earth circled the Sun at least 100 years before Europeans figured it out.
After this, Palin joins a tribe of Wodaabe nomads on their way to Ingal (in Niger) to participate in the Cure Salée festival. He talks to a young Wodaabe man named Doulla and to Céline, a young French woman who is also following along with the group. The subject of polygamy is again raised, and we see the unusual courting rituals of the Wodaabe. Here the young girls choose the man they would like to try out, while the young men stand in a line dancing and rolling their eyes and looking very feminine (by Western standards) with much makeup.
At Tabelot, Palin visits an oasis, where a camel is used to raise water from a deep well using a long rope and a goatskin bucket. Palin visits the home of Omar and his four wives and 15 children. That evening there is a party before the departure of the camel caravan the next day.
The rest of the episode follows Palin as he follows the camel caravan on its way across the Tenere Desert, which the French had called "absolute desert". There is nothing here but sand, sand, and more sand. Finding a tree is cause for celebration. Palin shares conditions with the camel drivers, walking with them and eating their food. He tries to talk to them, but they speak no English or French, and they end up attempting to teach each other their native languages. "Bottoms up" is a favourite expression. After five days, Palin leaves the camel caravan, to return in the next episode.
Dire Straits
This episode starts with Palin crossing the border from Niger to Algeria, a desolate border with nothing but sand. A bit north of here are the Hoggar Mountains. At Assekrem he gets up early to view the sunrise from 9,000ft (2,700m).
Next, he boards an Algerian passenger plane and flies north to Hassi-Messaoud, an oil extraction and refining town; a man-made luxury oasis in the middle of the desert. From here the trip jumps to Libya, normally closed to western TV crews. To gain entry, Michael Palin and his team have joined up with a British veterans' tour, and he mingles with the 80-year-old former "Desert Rats" who reminisce about the Battle of Tobruk. He also visits Benghazi and the ruins of Apollonia, once a Greek port, and the ruins of Leptis Magna, once a Roman city.
Leaving Libya, Palin arrives in Tunisia. He joins an octopus fishing crew on a small boat at Djerba, visits a family who live in caves at El Haddej (the scene of his crucifixion in Life of Brian) and tries smoking a shisha (a large water pipe) in a café in Sousse. Then it's back to Algeria, travelling along the northern coast. Here the security is so tight (Palin is always accompanied by armed police) that there's not much chance for spontaneity.
The last two days are spent in Ceuta visiting an EU-operated detention facility for Africans trying to reach Europe, and talking to a woman on a Spanish beach about the illegal immigrants who die trying to make it across the "dire straits" to the "promised land". A final shot shows Palin back in Gibraltar, philosophising about the Gibraltar situation (Spain vs. Britain) and the impoverished "Third World" vs. the rich West.
The history of Western Sahara can be traced back to the times of Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator in the 5th century BC. Though few historical records are left from that period, Western Sahara's modern history has its roots linked to some nomadic groups such as the Sanhaja group, and the introduction of Islam and the Arabic language at the end of the 8th century AD.
Mauritania, a country in the Western Region of the continent of Africa, is generally flat, its 1,030,700 square kilometres forming vast, arid plains broken by occasional ridges and clifflike outcroppings. Mauritania is the world’s largest country lying entirely below an altitude of 1,000 metres (3,300 ft). It borders the North Atlantic Ocean, between Senegal and Western Sahara, Mali and Algeria. It is considered part of both the Sahel and the Maghreb. A series of scarps face southwest, longitudinally bisecting these plains in the center of the country. The scarps also separate a series of sandstone plateaus, the highest of which is the Adrar Plateau, reaching an elevation of 500 metres or 1,640 feet. Spring-fed oases lie at the foot of some of the scarps. Isolated peaks, often rich in minerals, rise above the plateaus; the smaller peaks are called Guelbs and the larger ones Kedias. The concentric Guelb er Richat is a prominent feature of the north-central region. Kediet ej Jill, near the city of Zouîrât, has an elevation of 915 metres or 3,002 feet and is the highest peak.
Mali is a landlocked nation in West Africa, located southwest of Algeria, extending south-west from the southern Sahara Desert through the Sahel to the Sudanian savanna zone. Mali's size is 1,240,192 square kilometers.
The Sahara is a desert spanning North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
Trans-Saharan trade is trade between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa that requires travel across the Sahara. Though this trade began in prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the early 17th century CE. The Sahara once had a different climate and environment. In Libya and Algeria, from at least 7000 BCE, there were pastoralism, large settlements, and pottery. Cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara (Ahaggar) between 4000 to 3500 BCE. Remarkable rock paintings in arid regions portray flora and fauna that are not present in the modern desert.
Araouane or Arawan is a small village in the Malian part of the Sahara Desert, lying 243 km (151 mi) north of Timbuktu on the caravan route to the salt-mining centre of Taoudenni. The village once served as an entrepôt in the trans-Saharan trade.
The Wodaabe is a name that is used to designate a subgroup of the Fula ethnic group who are traditionally nomadic found primarily in Niger and Chad. All Woodabe people should not be mistaken as Mbororo as these are two separate subgroups of the Fulani people. It is translated into English as "Cattle Fulani", and meaning "those who dwell in cattle camps". The Wodaabe culture is one of the 186 cultures of the standard cross-cultural sample used by anthropologists to compare cultural traits. A Wodaabe woman, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, was also chosen to represent civil society of the world on the signing of Paris Protocol on 22 April 2016.
Articles related to Mali include:
Inside Sahara is a large coffee-table style book containing pictures taken by Basil Pao, who was the stills photographer on the team that made the Sahara with Michael Palin TV program for the BBC.
Sahara is the book that Michael Palin wrote to accompany the BBC television documentary series Sahara with Michael Palin.
The wildlife of Mali, composed of its flora and fauna, is widely varying from the Saharan desert zone to the Sahelian east–west zone, to Mali, a landlocked francophone country in North Africa; large swathes of Mali remain unpopulated but has three sub-equal vegetation zones; the country has Sahara Desert in the north, the Niger River Basin at its center and the Senegal River on the south.
Migrants' routes encompass the primary geographical routes from tropical Africa to Europe, which individuals undertake in search of residence and employment opportunities not available in their home countries. While Europe remains the predominant destination for most migrants, alternate routes also direct migrants towards South Africa and Asia.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Mali:
Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.
The May 23, 2006 Democratic Alliance for Change is a Malian Tuareg rebel group, formed in 2006 by ex-combatants from the 1990s Tuareg insurgency in Mali. In 2007, splinters of the organisation returned to combat in northern Mali, launching the Malian element of the 2007 Tuareg insurgency. Led by Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, this ADC faction continued to operate under that name, despite most elements remaining under ceasefire. In July 2008, most of these elements, along with much of the splinter following Ag Bahanga reached another accord with the Malian government in Algiers. Ag Bahanga and a faction of that group rejected the accord and fled to Libya. At the end of 2008, this faction returned to fighting, operating under the name Alliance Touaregue Nord Mali Pour Le Changement (ATNMC). The government of Mali has contended since 2007 that the Ag Bahanga faction of the ADC is a "band of marginals" who were "isolated from the heart of the Tuareg community", primarily motivated by lucrative Trans-Saharan smuggling operations operating from Ag Bahanga's home town of Tin-Zaouatene. Ag Bahanga and the other leaders of his faction contend that the government of Mali oppresses the Tuareg population of the north, and has repeatedly failed to live up to its agreements with the ADC and other groups. Outside observers have also speculated that internal rivalries between Tuareg from the Kel Adagh and the Ouilliminden confederations have frustrated peace attempts.
The Guérewol is an annual courtship ritual competition among the Wodaabe Fula people of Niger. Young men dressed in elaborate ornamentation and made up in traditional face painting gather in lines to dance and sing, vying for the attentions of marriageable young women. The Guérewol occurs each year as the traditionally nomadic Wodaabe cattle herders gather at the southern edge of the Sahara before dispersing south on their dry season pastures.
Between the first century BC and the fourth century AD, several expeditions and explorations to Lake Chad and western Africa were conducted by groups of military and commercial units of Romans who moved across the Sahara and into the interior of Africa and its coast. However, there was a huge Roman and Greek presence in modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia. The primary motivation for the expeditions was to secure sources of gold and spices from Axumite piracies.
The Algeria–Mauritania border is 460 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Western Sahara in the west to the tripoint with Mali in the east.
The Algeria–Mali border is 1,359 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Mauritania in the north-west to the tripoint with Niger in the south-east.
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