Golden era of Adventurous travel

The Golden era of adventurous travel has come to an end, is the two tales of a city, and its historical race to reach one of the world’s most mythologised places. Timbuktu is a tantalising paradise, where even the slaves wore gold. In the eighteenth century, a series of explorers in the name of discovery tried to reach the fabled city, despite succumbing to attack, diseases and climate. The city was also home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, history and law. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these priceless documents, a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding.

At the age of 18, Charlie English inspired by Tim Selssor’s account of an overland expedition from London to Singapore in 1955, decided to drive from Yorkshire to Timbuktu, on old Land Rover and set out with a friend in the winter of 1987, eventually reached Algeria and left for Sahara. The desert town of Aguelhok in Mali ended the summit and was forced to sell the Land Rover in Gao, on the banks of river Niger, and travelled to Burkina  Faso and Coted’Ivoire.

Librarian Abdel Kader Haidara, was responsible for the manuscripts of Timbuktu, its priceless literary past and his extraordinary mission which takes him across Africa, braving war zones,and traipsing through small villages and towns to find each a piece of the precious collection and manages to pull together this precious cargo, out from under the noses of occupiers and across the desert, which became a Western obsession. English narrates a moving, picture of a city that may have been destroyed by war and occupation, but whose history was literally pulled out rubble. English shows why the world will always need heroes like Hiadara, who understands the priceless value of Timbuktu’s literary past.

Mark Twain’s Excerpts from the book of the Innocents Abroad, the 1867 tour of Europe and Holy  Land, is so true which states “ Travel is fatal to Prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome and charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Charlie English is the former head of international news at the Guardian, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and author of “The snow Tourist”.

The Book smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English, published by William Collins, in the UK and in the US by Riverhead under the title “The Storied City”.