Thanks Richard,

We are of in two weeks, doings Algiers, Tam, BBM and on to Mali. It seems quite busy there. I hear in Niger a guide is obligatory in the north. But I think it's too dangerous now there. A real war. Tanout seems occupied by rebels since a couple of days.

What were you doing in Tam? Is camping Dassine the old camping fromthe 90's?

Greetings
Gerbert

Okey, here comes some randomly chosen coordinates. They are not necessarily at road splittings and it is the route our guide took us, not necessarily the straightest way.... (We happened to pass by some of his relatives on the way).

Borj: N 21 19.916 E 001 00.479

Small village, no checkpoint: N 21 12.105 E 001 02.220

Tessalit, mali customs (3hours to stamp 7 passports, there was a good program on tv) N 20 12.176 E 001 00.553 From here the route is very clear for the first couple of hours.

At N 19 16.037 E 000 52.871 we turned right.

N 18 56.381 E 000 48.291 The pist goes straight south until N 18 38.300 E 000 49.400 where it bends to southsouthwest.

At N 17 51.139 E 000 19.751 turn west to the village Ergane N 17 47.852 E 000 01.674.

Go south to N 17 35.104 E 000 00.531 and then to the village almostart N 17 21.827 E 000 09.010

Go south to N 16 18.833 E 000 04.455 where you turn west for Gao at N 16 16.609 W 000 03.126

Looking at the numbers (3 cars going south in 3 days) it sounds busy, but these guys were the only independent travellers we saw in 30 days in Algeria. It seemed very quiet compared with any time between 1999 and 2003.

I agree with your view of Niger. It is serious and one would need random luck really to get through OK.

We were in Tam at the end of a nice piste from Djanet (via Mnt Tazat, Amadror, Tefedest and Garet El Djenoun). Went with family (including our 2 children of 4 and 7 who loved the desert and were no trouble at all). Camping Dassine is the original place - still with the desert bus near the entrance.

The high way south of Ain Salah is pretty broken up at the moment, especially around Arak. Its good for about 100 km south of Ain Salah and about 120 km north of Tam. The rest is slow going. It seemed much worse than in 2002. From the border to Ain Salah is mostly good.

On the way back we had to hurry (visa was about to expire) and so I had to drive straight through from Arak to Nefta in Tunisia. Part of this was at night (leaving Ain Salah at midnight). Until now I hadn't realised it was OK to drive at night. But there was lots of other traffic and the road blocks paid much less attention to us at night than during the day. It was cold and they preferred to stay next to the fire - just in case you need to hurry as well.

Finally, Tam is back to long queues for fuel - about 2 hours or more. Luckily we had the range to get fuel further up the road (In Eker or Arak) where there was no problem. Its been like that for a while apparently.

Good route!

Thank you. Sounds as a nice trip. How is camping Dassine? And what about gite Saharien?

Camping Dassine has defintely seen better days. Everyone who stayed there eneded up in the bangalos close to the gate. All the overlanders I saw in Algeria (only 3 cars) were staying there. The guys werea bit lazy to make hot water for the showers, but if you go round the back of the shower block you can find the room with the switches for the electrical water heater.

We wanted to stay at the Gitte and emailed Claudia about it before we left. Its a lovely place and is looking even nicer now. She said we could only stay there if we used her services for guides and invites. Since we had already made a plan for that we couldn't revert to her. But when we got to Tam we did call in at the Gitte to see if she could change her mind - there was no one there apart from the gard at the gate. We tried phoning their number (in Tam I think) but there was no answer. So we went back to Dassine.