Morocco To Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure

Timbuktu - a place so mysterious, mythical and far, far away that it has become a legendary destination. Alice Morrison, Arabist, writer, explorer and Marrakech resident, follows what was once one of the world's richest trading networks - the infamous salt roads - across north Africa from the top of Morocco to the fabled sandstone city of Timbuktu. Trekking 2,000 miles across some of the deadliest landscapes on earth, Alice journeys deep into the history, culture and civilisation of both ancient and modern north Africa. Standing at the crossroads between north and sub-Saharan Africa, and straddling the vast Sahara Desert and the great River Niger, the legendary trading post of Timbuktu, now one of the most dangerous places on earth, was founded over a thousand years ago, and its wealth was built on two precious commodities - gold and salt. Over the centuries, caravans with thousands of camels passed regularly between Timbuktu and Morocco. They were led across the deadly trans-Saharan 'salt roads' by a desert tribe called the Tuareg, who still patrol the desert today. Setting off from Tangier, Europe's gateway to Africa, Alice learns how gold was in high demand in north Africa, to be minted into coins and adorn palaces. Its source was the gold mines of sub-Saharan Africa, and so the routes across the desert were forged. Hitching a ride in a crowded taxi of locals, Alice passes through the Islamic city of Fes, home to the world's oldest university, where she stays in a caravanserai, the ancient traders' version of a motel with mule and camel parking, and helps prepare the merchant's dish of the day, camel meatballs. Next, she catches the famous hippy train, the Marrakech Express, to the other northern terminus of trans-Saharan trade, the great market town of Marrakech. Deep in the ancient city, she learns how to treat leather the ancient way by wading up to her waist in vats of cow hide, poison and... pigeon poo. And at night in the grand square, Djemaa El Fnaa

Alice Morrison takes on the vast Sahara in an epic camel trek over the dunes. At night by the campfire, she hears a shocking story of modern day slavery from her trekking guide. The next day, her journey across the sands is halted by the closed border between Algeria and Morocco. Undeterred, Alice heads west on another trading route to Guelmim. She stops in Tamegroute, where she finds a hidden library of ancient books, including manuscripts by a 16th-century Malian scholar. It is evidence that the trans-Saharan trade routes transferred knowledge as well as gold and salt.