BootsnAll Travel Community

Because my wife encouraged me to take a trip in my first autumn of retirement, I selected an adventurous trip that I thought would be unique but one she herself would not want to go on. A delightful week in Paris preceded the Turtle Tours Nomadic Festivals of Niger tour of northern Niger in October of 2000. I was enticed by visions of a Wodaabe gerewol and proud Tuaregs racing camels as tonics to the100 degree heat and basic camping conditions. Regrettably our group of 12 saw neither although we fully understood that not seeing festivals was a possibility. It was a little like going on a whale-watch and not seeing whales. We did see staged renactments of festivals and were able to mingle freely and delightedly with people in Wodaabe and Tuareg camps. We even danced the tarantella under a full moon with Tuareg partners. We also drove hours on end for many days in crowded Toyota Land Cruisers, ate filling if unimaginative meals, and tried to make sense of our exotic surroundings.
Our trip began with casual meetings in the GDG airport in Paris as tour leader Leslie Clark made her way through the crowd ready to board an Air France flight to Niamey. It was reasonably easy to pick us out of the other passengers. After a night at the grandless Grand Hotel on the shores of the Niger River, we drove in vans to meet our four 4-wheel drive Toyotas in Tahoua. We then proceeded to camp for the night. Camping was whatever sleeping bag we had brought on a 3-inch mattress on a matt with mosquito netting draped over 4 poles. All perfectly adequate. A crew of 7 (4 drivers, 2 cooks, and 1 translator/cultural consultant) tended to our spartan needs. The next five days were spent in Wodaabe and Tuareg camps trying to find festivals. While disappointed we realized that festivals themselves are elusive, and portions of the festivals were renacted by our hosts. After a hectic evening in Agadez (one is tempted to say that Agadez embodies hecticness for tourists), we proceeded to drive on a series of death march-like full day drives to various points as we circumnavigated the Air Mountains. Moon-drenched nights were spent at a mountain water hole in which we swam and glorious sand dunes. Back to Agadez and then two long days of driving back to Niamey. We had an afternoon and evening in Niamey before our midnight flight back to Paris and home.
The safari conditions on this trip were much more primitive than those found in east and southern Africa. There was also endless driving in cramped conditions; two of the vehicles carried fume-producing, 55 gallon drums of gasoline. Even though we were guided through generally inaccessible lands and reclusive nomadic peoples, many of us felt that the tour was overpriced at $3825 land portion with $175 single supplement. Comfort would have been enhanced by flying the Niamey-Agadez-Niamey legs of the trip, providing more vehicles so that there would be 4 people in each vehicle, adding a few days to the itinerary (especially north of Agadez) to avoid long days of driving, and organizing camp routine better.

Turtle Tours; POB 1147; Carefree, AZ 85377

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