In 1960, at the time of the declaration of independence form France, Mauritania's authorities began the construction of the national railway, which started operating 60 years ago, in 1963. The network consists of a single, 704-kilometre long, line linking the iron mining centre of Zouérat with the port of Nouadhibou, via Fderik and Choum.
In Choum the train was supposed to stop sometime between 6 and 10pm. It meant that 12-hour long journey would have been surrounded by the pitch dark, coolish desert night. The reality was quite the opposite...the SNIM, the Société nationale industrielle et minière, couldn't help but delaying the train by 12 hours, so the convoy finally showed up at 5.30am.More than 2km long, the train is made up of three diesel locomotives, one passenger carriage and between 200 and 210 freight cars. When loaded on the westward journey to Nouadhibou, each car can carry up to 84 tons of iron ore. I took my spot in one of those freight cars, along with a handful of shiny happy people from the US, UK, Greece and Germany. The railway also allows a few locals to hitch a free ride through the desert, which makes the journey more authentic, not just a lousy touristy paying-adrenaline-induced experience.
Instead it was quite beautiful. The environment, the out of the world dimension, the sunrise, the wild camels, the bunch of cheering human beings, the inherently peaceful context. I was slightly concerned as I breathe awfully bad, but the fact that I stayed up most of the time and that the speed was no more than 40km/h, helped big time. So helped my 1993 goggles and the 450-pages long book. Shame that by noon I ran out of food, by 1pm I finished the book and by 2pm my goggles started falling apart. Hence, the last 4 hours were a bit more challenging: nothing to read, nothing to eat, no toilet breaks, the wind blowing the sand and the dust, the temperature rising up to 36 degrees, no shelter whatsoever and not a chance I could put sunscreen on, as my arms were covered in iron ore.
Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a decent dinner and 3 showers in the next 24 hours.
Cold ones.
