While the rest of the world leaves the proverbial end of the earth Timbuktu as is, Michael Benanav chooses to set off on a journey that’s even farther than that, telling himself, “It was a trip I was born to take.” All for the thirst of experiencing a 1,000 year-old tradition that involves people traversing through 1,600 kilometres of death terrain from Timbuktu to the salt mines of Taodenni, on camel backs. When the author discovers that this practice is nearing extinction with the advent of truck transport, he chooses to set off on a trans-Saharan odyssey, knowing every moment what he was getting into, and still being continually surprised and almost every time, not pleasantly so.
“Despite all I had seen thus far and all I had imagined, I was unprepared for the untempered desolation of Taodenni. It is situated on utterly lifeless desert flats; not a single leaf, or even thorn, grows from the parched, crusty dirt, which was so sharp it bit into the soles of my bare feet.”
A journalist by profession, Benanav’s style is conversational and descriptive. You feel like you’re with him, as you vicariously experience the travails of a land that’s bereft of any sign of life, where technology is shaped like an alarm clock and the food doesn’t even deserve to be called so. The Caravan of White Gold derives its title from a time when salt was actually measured in the weight of gold and people hauled tons of gleaming rock salt from the mines of Taodenni to sell them in the markets of Timbuktu. And like the author tells us, the life risking feat continues even to this day, albeit rarely, the “caravan of white gold” being one of the last working camel caravans in the world.
‘Miracle’ might grossly understate Benanav’s feat of becoming an azali (inhabitant of desert) by trekking on foot, 18 hours a day, for six weeks, fighting sandstorms, drinking water blessed by camel’s rear and eating goat’s privates for food. It was not easy to get into a habit that challenged the last limits of mind and body. But for an outdoor veteran like him, it’s almost impossible not to catch on. He took his time, but eventually learned the ways of survival in the “Land of Terror” or the “Land of Thirst”, as described by the local Tuareg tribesmen. He learned to ride and take care of the camels, until a time when his fellow travellers would trust him to take charge, when they stopped to rest or pray. He also donned the hat of a handy doctor to the injured salt miners. While he continued to be amused and enlightened by myriad fellow travellers in exotic costumes and demeanours, following a completely unheard of Islamic culture where men, and not women, are veiled.
There are times when he drifts into romanticising the impoverishment. “It’s very beautiful. It’s my favourite,” he gushes to his guide on one occasion, only to be met with complete bewilderment from the latter’s side. But he is also smart enough to observe and graceful enough to accept the difference.
His foreign and seemingly unrealistic sense of beauty soon metamorphoses into a joke that he willingly participates in at his own expense. It is in instances like these that Benanav, in spite of his foreign quirks, comes across as an endearing man, who has shed every bit of “white” arrogance to be one with the men of an alien land.
While battling the geography, Benanav also explores the complex history of the forgotten culture. He recounts, “I’d been deeply affected by my contact with the miners, not only because of their kindness, but because they’d taken this potentially hellish place and made it, if not heaven, at least human.” As he delves deeper into the Sahara, his assumptions and fantastic ideas of the nomadic culture are proved far from accurate. And he realises how far civilisation has pushed mankind away from such hard-to-accept realities.