On the move ... almost

My EPIC journey from Syama to London began last Wednesday morning - I left site at 8:30 am with Dao in the blue/navy/grey toyota armed with a couple of snooushes, a couple of cokes and a tonne of reggae music, for the 6 hour road trip to Bamako. I was still feeling somewhat tentative as we left because I had been informed at 4:30 pm the day before that there were STRIKING ground crews at Bamako airport, meaning that several international flights had been cancelled - I know - casting my whole London/Vancouver/Paris experience into doubt!

By the time we finally arrived at the Bamako office in Hippodrome and sorted out how we were going to ensure I got on my flight, Dao and I had just enough time to take a super-express tour of the parliamentary area, and a 3 minute stop at the point de vue de Bamako before rushing over to the Air France office to put my bags through manual check-in. That is, handwritten tickets, boarding passes etc. What a drama!

Epic journey phase two started when I actually got to the airport - it seemed to take forever to board the plane, but fortunately Olivier managed to organise things so that I got to see Marcus briefly as he arrived back on the flight I was going out on! I filled him in on the latest news from site and he filled me in on his holidays - gee he looked refreshed, which made me wonder how haggard I must have looked going out.

Flight out finally left about 23:40 - scheduled for 22:50 and getting on board was MAD! Malians who travel (i.e. the very wealthy ones) all seem to be anxious to be the first on, despite having been given a seat allocation in advance. I had a seat next to a completely shambolic small French doctor (in his mid-forties) who I had seen at Air France earlier in the day trying to take 4 steel trunks plus his two suitcases on the flight with him! He spent the whole flight accidentally sleeping on me - not brilliant.

Arrived at Charles De Gaulle and had been waiting for my bag for 15-20 mins when it was announced that there was a grève (a strike) by baggage handlers at CDG! MAN! Anyway by about 9 am (I arrived at 6:30), after a round of Chemical Brothers on my iPod, I had my bags in hand and headed over to the priority lounge that Resolute have issued me a pass for, only to discover that it only works if your flight is leaving from that particular terminal ... or terminal hall! Foiled again - because I had 4 hrs till my London flight - which was departing from Terminal 3. Have you ever been to Terminal 3 at CDG? It is just a shed! I am sure it's an old hangar they've converted - pretty unappealing place to lounge about in, and even more uncomfortably, all the chairs are made of punched steel - no soft padded upholstery in this budget version of an airport terminal.

I was so sleepy that I managed to get a few winks, before sourcing some lunch from the lone takeaway food vendor - I had a wildly delicious chicken and mayonnaise baguette (on multi-grain bread!), OJ (freshly squeezed!) and an escargot scroll - really beautiful after 9 weeks of Syama dining. As you all know, food is a rather central focus for my general state of happiness, and although the food at Syama is outstanding for an African minesite, it is still minesite food.

My flight out of Terminal 3 was delayed too - so I spent my time people-watching in the gate lounges all the while suffering from that weird oversleepyness you get from hanging out on planes and in airports. Once I landed in the UK, England looked lush, green and fabulous ... and sunny ... and there were people everywhere! Got the train into London and then had to negotiate my way through the tube to Belsize Park where I'm staying with Trudy and Arthur - but, I forgot about the stairs!

I had no way to cope with both bags on my own, and I was just contemplating that from the top of a staircase in Kings Cross station when a lovely young skinhead junkie offered to help me - which he did, and then told me to have a nice day! Another man and his young son helped me at my next impass, and heaps of people helped me to get my cases on and off the trains, including a lady in her eighties - how nice are Londoners?! Thus, I finally managed to get all the way here 31 hours after I started my journey.

So look out London, I have arrived ...