Author and
tourism executive, Rick Antonson
sets out on an
unforgettable journey to Africa, and chronicles
his adventures in TO
TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT: A Journey Through West
Africa, published by
Dundurn Press on June 7, 2008.
"To Timbuktu for a Haircut
is a great read - a little bit of Bill Bryson, a
little bit of Michael Palin, and quite a lot of
Bob Hope on the road to Timbuktu." - Professor
Geoffrey Lipman, Assistant Secretary-General,
United Nations World Tourism
Organization.
Historically rich, remote,
and once unimaginably dangerous for travellers,
Timbuktu still teases with "Find me if you
can." Rick Antonson's encounters with
entertaining train companions Ebou and Ussegnou,
a mysterious cook called Nema, and intrepid
guide Zak will make you want to pack up and
leave for Timbuktu tomorrow. As Antonson travels
in Senegal and Mali by train, four-wheel drive,
river pinasse, camel, and foot, he tells of
fourteenth-century legends, eighteenth-century
explorers, and today's endangered existence of
Timbuktu's 700,000 ancient manuscripts in what
scholars have described as the most important
archaeological discovery since the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
TO TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT
combines wry humour with shrewd observation to
deliver an armchair experience that will linger
in the mind long after the last page is read. "I
left Africa personally changed by the gentle
harshness I found and a disquieting splendour
that found me. Mali was the journey I
needed, if not the one I envisioned. And I
learned that there's a little of Timbuktu in
every traveller: the over-anticipated
experience, the clash of dreams with reality."
&endash; Rick Antonson
Rick Antonson is the
president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver and a
director of the Pacific Asia Travel
Association. He has had adventures in
Tibet and Nepal, and in Libya and North Korea,
among others. The co-author of SLUMACH'S
GOLD: In Search of a Legend, he lives in
Vancouver.
From the Vancouver
Sun
It may seem
counterintuitive, but the appeal of travel
literature often has less to do with the
destination in question than with the character
of the traveller. Thus, while there may be
significant geographical overlap, there is a
vast difference, for example, between Frances
Mayes's Tuscany (in the best-selling Under the
Tuscan Sun) and Ferenc Máté's
Tuscany (in the equally impressive but less
commercially successful The Hills of Tuscany).
In each book, the milieu serves as a backdrop
for the revelation and development of the
author's persona. The reader responds not to the
locale but to the locale as experienced by the
narrator.
This may seem a minor
distinction, but it's crucial, especially when
you consider both the number of new travel
accounts published each year and the fact that
the world is a finite place with, sadly, few
remaining mysteries. The age of strict
geographic exploration is long gone, but the
potential for personal explorations through
geography is practically limitless.
Two new books from B.C.
writers nicely underscore this point, to varying
degrees of effect. In exploring two of the
world's less- travelled places, Rick Antonson
and Martin Mitchinson also explore
themselves.
About Rick AntonsonTourism
Vancouver president and CEO Rick Antonson
travels for a living, "flying a hundred thousand
kilometres each year for two decades," moving
from conference to air-conditioned hotel room
with seasoned thoughtlessness.
When it came time for him
to take a month-long solo expedition, however,
he decided almost on a whim to journey to one of
the most fabled -- and forbidding --
destinations in the world: Timbuktu.
Few places are quite as
evocative and mysterious. A centre of Islamic
scholarship and culture during the 15th and 16th
centuries, Timbuktu has long been a beacon for
travellers. Once thought of as a source of
unimaginable riches, the city today is
impoverished, threatened by the encroaching
Sahara Desert.
For this trip, Antonson
decided against his usual air travel and instead
made the journey on the ground: by train, boat,
car, camel and foot. The result, as recounted in
his impressive new book, To Timbuktu for a
Haircut, is a quixotic quest, alternately funny
and thought-provoking.
Readers follow his journey
chronologically as he moves toward the city and
then as it recedes behind him. His account is
threaded through with historical and cultural
information. Curiously, his encounter with the
city itself is almost anticlimactic. He clearly
relishes the journey, and his fellow travellers,
more than the destination.
From a ride up the River
Niger to an open-air music festival in the
desert, from the sudden close friendships that
bloom during such travel to the machinations of
an unscrupulous tour coordinator who seems
intent on foiling his travel goals at every
juncture, Antonson handles the joys and
occasional frustrations of his trip in vivid,
straightforward prose and with a wry sense of
humour.
Pearl of the
DesertTimbuktu was formerly a great commercial
trading city and an international center of
islamic learning. The city was probably founded
in the late 11th century AD by Tuareg nomads.
Timbuktu was a leading terminus of trans-Saharan
caravans and a distribution point for trade
along the upper Niger. Merchants from northern
African cities traded salt and cloth for gold
and for black African slaves in the markets of
Timbuktu. The visitors will discovered the
ancient mosques including the famous Sankore
whose reputation spanned all across north Africa
and Europe as a leading islamic academy for
centuries. Most of the ancient books (some
dating from the 14th century AD) are still
preserved at the Ahmed Baba Center . Tuareg
formed one of the most ancient tribal people of
the Sahara. They speak a Berber language,
Tamacheq, and have their own alphabet. In
ancient times, the Tuareg controlled the
trans-Sahara routes and substantially
contributed in the expansion of Islam in
sub-Saharan Africa even though they retained
however some of their older rites. Today, the
Tuareg symbolize the mysteries of the Sahara and
Masters of the Desert.
The city of Mopti is known
as the ''Venice of Mali''. Mopti is situated at
the confluence of the Bani and Niger rivers, and
is built on several interconnected islands. It
is from the river that one can best observe the
commercial and social activities of the town. .
Mopti is literally teaming with traditional
traders offering a variety of locally-produced
commodities and beautiful artifacts. For more
information visit
www.africa-ata.org/mali.htm
Architectural
Jewel
Founded in the 4th
century, Djenné has scarcely changed
since the Middle Ages. In the 13th-15th
centuries, Djenne was a rival of Timbuktu for
the wealth of the Trans-Saharan trade. The city
is located on an island in the inland Niger
delta, and is surrounded by mud brick walls. As
well as making a visit to the archaeological
site of Djenné Djeno that looks backward
in time over a 1.000 years. Generation after
generation, a guild of highly skilled
master-builders, the Baris, have ensured
Djenné's architectural integrity. The
atmosphere in the streets brings the traveller
back to medieval times.
For more information on
"To Timbuktu for a Haircut - Journey Through
West Africa," visit our website -
www.africa-ata.org
......Preview
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Final full size pdf version of this spread available
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