There are two routes to Timbuktu. We took the shorter one, but still, no one in Bamako can believe how fast we got to Mopti: 640 km in six hours. We drove very, very fast.

Our driver Issa was chosen for the trip because he could handle our Grand Cherokee Laredo on sand. His reflexes were good and he obeyed the basic road etiquette. However, we had to tell him to slow down whenever he accelerated over 160 kilometers per hour, which was often.

We flew by onion gardens and rows of pale green calabash the size of softballs; mud-brick villages off on the horizon; ramshackle villages right on the road, full of women and girls selling fruit and vegetables. We slowed and sometimes stopped for grazing goats and herds of cattle crossing the road. But when a puppy trotted out on the blacktop, looking expectantly over its shoulder at us, Issa only removed his foot from the accelerator, and did not swerve. We were going 120 kilometers per hour. The poor thing wagged its tail until its final seconds. I did not look back.

We made only one stop, at a bar in Bla, to use the toilet. It was just a hole in the ground with a door and walls for privacy. Mali was playing Guinea in the CAN 2004 and winning, 2-1; the young man was reluctant to leave the television to get our sodas.

At dusk, we pulled into the so-called “Village CAN” outside Mopti. In 2002, the CAN -- the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament that is being held in Tunisia this year -- was held in Mali. Special stadiums were built, and near each a “Village CAN” of lodging. The government and investors hoped that tourism in Mali would take off. It’s increased, perhaps, but today the villages are not the boomtowns envisioned. Mopti’s Village is decrepit and mostly abandoned. Jacqueline, a short plump redheaded Frenchwoman, bought some of the buildings and turned them into the Hotel Savanne. Like all hotels in Mali -- all the ones I’ve seen, with the exception of the Kanbary in Bandiagara -- it is surprisingly expensive for what you get. I paid just under $40 for a leaky shower, a toilet without a seat, and a foam mattress and synthetic blanket (no mosquito net) in a fluorescent-lit box of a room. The staff were lovely though. Most were from Benin and Togo, where they have more hotel schools than jobs for graduates.

As we left Mopti the next morning, visibility couldn’t have been more than half a mile; at the start of the hot dry season, the dust rises like a thick fog. We saw camels trotting along the road. At Douentza we turned left onto a road less well-maintained and covered in red dirt. Dozens of villagers walked or rode donkeys or rode camels to market day. The pavement was rough and broken, but nonetheless a vast improvement over the dirt and sand it used to be. The new road has cut hours off the trip north.

The landscape changed constantly. The Hand of God and the Hand of Fatima, huge rock formations, loomed out of the haze behind tall palm trees. Then it looked like Mars with trees; then black dirt; then gently rolling hills with yellow grass. Then gray and cracked like dried lava. At last, the pavement ended, and we tossed on the deeply rutted sand road like a little boat at sea.

We reached the ferry. After miles of emptiness, there was a small Bozo village at the dock; fishermen’s families camped out, selling tiny bags of peanuts and sugar, showing us their “cute” babies (sandy skin, dirty clothes or no clothes, leaking watery eyes, crusts of snot under their noses) in hopes that we’d give them a gift. The wind blew mercilessly, filling our ears with sand.

We waited out two 45-minute cycles of the ferry, and finally, we were the first car on. We didn’t want to be the only car, because we’d have to pay the entire fare; it’s 15,000 CFA per trip regardless of the number of vehicles. So at first we were happy to see a truck behind us.

Let me pause here to say that I did not have a good feeling about the ferry from the start. Things in Mali are a little off, at best, and machines in particular do not inspire confidence. Most of the cars on the road would have been thrown out or given away by an American years ago, worthless, but they are kept tenaciously, precariously running here. Taxis are dire; they often have no floorboards and sometimes break down en route. I was not looking forward to seeing, let alone entrusting my life to, a Malian ferry, and from Mopti to the dock I tried not to think about what kind of jerrybuilt, jury-rigged jalopy of a boat would supposedly carry us and our heavy four-by-four across the River Niger.

So the truck rolled on to the ferry, and pulled forward, and pulled forward. And bumped us, hard. Our Jeep jumped forward a foot or more toward the front of the boat -- toward the water -- there was nothing blocking the front. Worse, Issa was not in the driver’s seat. We leapt out of the car, and stayed out; I walked off the ferry on the other side and only climbed in the truck when it was back on solid ground. As for the ride, it was uneventful, but we refused to pay our (under normal conditions) fair share, given the dent and the potential disaster. We gave the ferryman 2500 CFA and (gesture: wiping our hands clean) refused to talk to him any further.

Because of the long road, because of the brush with death, because of the inaccurate image I’d had of Timbuktu (sand dunes, no vegetation in sight) the other side of the river looked impossibly lush. The river was receding but still high, and the floodplain was positively woodsy. It looked, more than anything, like a South Carolina swamp with eucalyptus instead of cypress. As we drove the last few kilometers (on sweet, smooth pavement!) away from the river and north into town, the scenery dried and bleached.

See photos of the road to Timbuktu.