Click here to read the full story of this trip. Click here to watch a video from the train.
There is one train in Mauritania. Each day, it brings iron ore 700km through the deep Sahara from Zouerat, an inland mining town, to Nouadhibou, a sandy, windswept coast town with a deep-water port. The train is a mile and a half long, 200 cars each carrying 80 tons of ore; the iron makes up half of the country’s exports. There is one passenger car; but there is no enforcement to stop people from hopping on top of the iron and getting a free ride to the coast. Obviously, I couldn’t resist.
The story of my relationship with the train starts under a mosquito net in a sweaty hotel room in St. Louis, Senegal. I’m watching a very specific youtube video on how to pronounce Ouguiya, the name of the Mauritanian currency, and worrying about the notorious border crossing at Rosso that I’d tackle the next morning.
Two days later, I’m in Atar, Mauritania, which is located a day’s travel into some of the harshest desert I’ve seen, bargaining for a used blanket decorated with multicolored hearts. That night, I’m sitting by the railroad tracks in Choum, a deep desert hamlet where the best restaurant involves a group of goats devouring a bucket of ripped-up cardboard.
I’m waiting with my trusty blanket for the train next to a couple of merchants; they tell me they use the free train to bring cheap pasta from the interior (delivered to people in rural Western Sahara by hunger alleviation projects) to the coast to sell at a profit. There are others, too, men only; young men visiting family, old men bringing sheep to sell in the city. Waiting, waiting, and then it comes up out of the hot Sahara night, countless ore cars rumbling past, and when it stops we all sprint to an empty car and climb on top of the ore, our home for the next 13 hours.
And the steel rails took us on our iron beds into the desert night. Some moments stood out: the midnight stop in a tiny sand village to switch tracks, prayer-music floating over from the mosque muffled by the sand and iron dust and desert immensity, the setting moon a deep orange; the sun rising behind us, pink and then gold, fellow travelers unwinding their head-wraps to see it, tea-smoke coming from a hole dug into the iron a few cars up; and the final stop in Nouadhibou, with the sheep-sellers throwing their animals unceremoniously 10 feet down to the ground, and the feeling of having arrived at the end of the world.
But mostly, the experience was about pure movement, the lullaby of the train, the desert stars above, the iron dust collecting in my eyes and mouth and nose, the feeling of passing through an absolutely different world. There was no softness, no tenderness, no way to get off the train until the end; but it was exactly what it was, and there was a harsh beautiful perfection to it that matched the Sahara. And I think I’ll probably go back up there and do it again.