With a long, gurgling groan, Lakhmar fell awkwardly to his knees in the roasting hot sand outside the town of Timbuktu. For the past six years he has been making the same gruelling trek across the ...

Ancient Timbuktu also had two things that the rest of the world wanted: salt and gold. While rock salt was a valuable commodity for African traders, it was the gold that interested Europeans.

At the time, salt was worth as much as gold, pound for pound, in Timbuktu. Tales of the city's riches were spread by the Muslim traders and European explorers who heard them dreamt of making their ...

Since the Middle Ages, camel caravans have navigated north from the fabled city of Timbuktu, in present-day Mali, West Africa, in search of the gold of the Sahara desert—salt. Traveling across ...

Arabist, writer, explorer and Marrakech resident Alice Morrison follows the Salt Roads - once one of the world’s richest trading networks to the fabled sandstone city of Timbuktu. Travelling by ...