Then, just as the sun’s coming up, a jeep comes over the brow of the hill.”Īs a child, I was fascinated by the story of my parents’ journey on the iron ore train, a mysterious adventure that seemed incompatible with the world I knew. “Imagine travelling hundreds of miles into the Sahara desert in a cargo wagon, then getting off before dawn in the middle of the desert, praying you’ve got the right stop. “It’s one of the longest trains in the world,” my father would tell us at the dinner table. But this steel desert caravan was a new lesson in austerity – an empty, open-topped metal box, completely exposed to a constant elemental symphony of heat, wind and noise. Hardly strangers to discomfort, Mike and I had endured sweaty trains, rickety bunkhouses and hikes through mosquito-infested swamps in subarctic Russia. It is a noisy, dirty and dangerous journey: falls are common, and the temperature can reach well over 40C during the day. Many Mauritanians choose – like my companion Mike and I had done – to forgo the overcrowded passenger carriage and ride “second-class” in the freight cars, free of charge. The train also carries passengers to and from distant desert communities, cutting up to 500km off the inconvenient journey by road, which involves a lengthy detour south to Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital. A Myanmar rail journey not to be missed.When loaded on the westward journey to Nouadhibou, each car can carry up to 84 tons of iron ore. More than 2km long, the train is made up of three or four diesel locomotives, one passenger carriage and between 200 and 210 freight cars.
The full journey, which runs along the border of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, takes around 20 hours and covers a total distance of 704km.
Opened in 1963, Mauritania’s Train du Desert operates a daily service from the port at Nouadhibou on the Atlantic coast to the iron ore mines in Zouerat in the country’s north-west.
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