Zouérat

I did not go to Zouérat for Zouérat. Almost nobody does. It is a company town in the far north of Mauritania, built around the iron deposits of the Kédia d’Idjil, hot and dust-coloured and unsentimental, where the desert and the mine have reached a kind of grim mutual agreement. People come here for one reason: to board the train.

The Longest Train

The Mauritania Railway exists to carry iron ore from the mines at Zouérat to the port of Nouadhibou, 700 kilometres west across pure Sahara. The trains are among the longest in the world — well over two kilometres, sometimes more than two hundred wagons, hauled by locomotives you cannot see the front of from the back. There is, technically, a single passenger carriage. There is also a long-standing tradition, born of poverty and stubbornness and adopted enthusiastically by a certain kind of traveller, of simply climbing into an empty ore wagon and riding for free on top of the load.

I had read about this for years. Lia, sensibly, read about it for one evening and announced she would meet me in Nouadhibou. So I went up alone, which is its own kind of confession.

Twelve Hours on a Bed of Ore

You do not buy a ticket for this. You wait near the loading terminal, you ask, you are pointed at a wagon, you climb. The ore is jagged, black, and unforgiving, and you arrange yourself on it as best you can with a mat, a blanket, and the resignation of someone who understands the next hours will be uncomfortable in ways he cannot yet itemise.

Then the train moves, and everything I went for arrives at once. The Sahara at the speed of a slow freight train is not empty — it is enormous and detailed, dunes and black gravel plains and the occasional camel that turns to watch you pass. The wind carries fine iron dust that settles into every crease of skin and clothing; by nightfall I was the colour of the cargo. A man in the next wagon shared dates and warm tea brewed somehow over a small fire he should not have been allowed to light, and I have rarely been so grateful for anything.

The Cold and the Stars

Nobody warns you adequately about the cold. The desert night drops fast and hard, and the wind never stops. I lay on the ore in every garment I owned and shivered anyway, looking up at a sky so dense with stars it seemed structural. Around me, the dark shapes of other riders, the groan of couplings, the endless rhythm of wheels.

I arrived in Nouadhibou near dawn, black with dust, aching in joints I did not know I had, and grinning like a fool. Lia took one look at me and laughed for a full minute. It was worth every uncomfortable hour. I would not do it twice.

When to go: November to February. The desert days are merely hot rather than lethal, and the nights, while bitter, are survivable with proper layers. Bring far more water, food, and warm clothing than you think you need — there is no service of any kind on the train.