The morning shift left the English behind without remorse, so we had to turn back for them from the petrol station. They are here now, we played craps all morning. Today is going to be awesome, as we’ll turn off from this road at some point, and we’ll head to Mali. Sunrise is unbelievable! In the morning we go slow (bus), but in the afternoon Tuti gets the wheel and eat up the miles. The roads are very good, at home I’m sure a Minister would officially open it. A big difference is that around here many goats and camels are passing. There’s more and more grass on the terrain, then desert, then mountains. We pass a few dusty towns then at 3pm we turn to the offroad leading through the savannah. The real adventure begins: go across the savannah and some small villages.
The bus does very well. We get stuck once, Gyula says we got till here, but in the end we continue our route. We get off from the off road to the real savannah; the soil is harder in here. We are passing and turning at trees, the thorns tear the stickers to pieces on the side of the bus. Aravind goes ahead of us with the Norwegians, figuring out the route. We reach a dried out river. We stop. Gyula says the bus wouldn’t make it across. Aravind comes back, tries to convince him that it will. The fake arguments come. That the other bus didn’t come in this direction. Great, here’s the chance to prove! But the bus will fall apart. Then we got this far, that’s it. We are stuck there on the savannah. We have food, we have water, we have a house in the bus, and there are other rally participants around us as well. We’ll need to spend the night on the savannah. That’s awesome; we came for this, right? The fear starts to evolve in others as well. Gyula turns back arbitrary. That’s about Africa! A hole appears and we run like the proud Hungarian soldiers at Győr. Back to a concrete road that is better than the 81 back at home. We go an average 60. I tell Kevin it’s like when a sailor would say I won’t go out to the sea, because the waves are tall. And anyhow, what should we go out to the sea at all, it’s dangerous! We’ll get sick on the road. And it might be that there won’t be ice for the gin tonic where we go. Our heart is bleeding, they would have went through by the Polski.
We go back, all in all we had a 400 km extra, and we gave up at the first difficulty. We stop to chat up some nomad woman with their kids. They are very nice and very beautiful. They didn’t ask for present, moreover, they want to invite us to their tents. Their pride, strength and spine is unbelievable that’s written on their face. Again the arguments come, that is’s gonna be dark soon, and the Norwegians, who don’t have lamp left us. No tea. It gets dar, and we meet the support car of the Dacia team, the owner of the car didn’t let them to go offroad, as he wants to sell the car in Bamako. There are a few policemen around us, they will watch out for us during the night. Everyone calms down, although I don’t think anyone would have suffered anything without them. I’s rather slept with the nomads, I’m sure they have guns too.
We open the last beer barrel in the evening and we invite the soldiers for dinner. Attila tells me the next day that the nomads brought sheep head, and he tried it out of respect. I missed that.
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