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"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 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
Vancouver Sun\ TO
TIMBUKTU FOR A HAIRCUT: A JOURNEY THROUGH WEST
AFRICA BY
RICK ANTONSON 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. Tourism
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. More to come
.. .Timbuktu:
City of Mystery There
is a Tuareg proverb which says,
"It
is better to see for oneself than to be informed by
a third person." On these words we will invite you
to put Tombouctou on the top of your twenty first
century agenda. Located near the river Niger and at
the terminus of the great trans-Saharan caravan
route, Tombouctou became fabulously wealthy in the
13th 15 centuries. Loaded with blocks of salt and
other trade goods huge convoys of camels would
spend weeks crossing the unforgiving Sahara to
reach Timbuktu. It was here that salt was traded
pound for pound with African merchants bringing
gold and ivory along the Niger from the heart of
Africa.
At
its height in the 16th century, the city had
100.000 inhabitants and became not only a centre of
commerce but also an important seat of learning and
religion. The city was fiercely Islamic and the
fact that non-Moslems were totally banned from
entering the city only added to its mystique. TIMBUKTU: THE
PEARL OF THE DESERT) Timbuktu 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 continued to be seen as
the Masters of the Desert. Photo
Credits: Mariama Ludovic, Westair. Bamako,
Mali Mariama Ludovic
de Lys, Director |
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am proud to introduce our readers to this great new
book by Rick Antonson, a friend, who is CEO of
Tourism Vancouver. "Timbuktu for a Haircut " is one
of the best travel related books I have had the
pleasure of reading. My review will appear soon on
this website plus others in our network, and in
Africa Travel Magazine.
-2.jpg)
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. 
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