Azalai Salt Caravan

The Azalai is not an attraction in the usual sense — there is no schedule, no ticket, and the caravans are working journeys, not performances. But if you are in Bilma during the season (roughly October to January) and you ask around, you will probably see one: a long line of camels on the eastern edge of town loading salt at the pans, with Tuareg drivers in indigo veils unhurriedly checking ropes and water skins.

Watch from a respectful distance, ask permission before photographing the men, and consider that this is one of the last working trans-Saharan caravans of any size in the world.

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A story
The Azalai — Tuareg for "going out" — is the annual salt caravan that leaves Agadez each autumn for Bilma, returning a few weeks later loaded with salt cones and dates to trade in the Hausa markets of southern Niger and northern Nigeria. The round trip is about a thousand kilometres on foot. Until trucks took over the bulk of the trade in the 1980s the caravans were a thousand camels strong. Today's are smaller — sometimes only a few dozen animals — but still genuinely walking, still navigating by the stars, still trading in the cones.

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