The iron-ore train across Mauritania, at night

INSPIRE / SHORT STORY

id: 2023_mauritania-iron-ore-train

slug: mauritania-iron-ore-train

title: The iron-ore train across Mauritania, at night

type: inspire

region: North & West Africa

country: mauritania

angle: Wow

guide_wave: Brand

links_to_guide: none

status: draft

target_query: riding the iron ore train mauritania

meta_description: Mauritania's legendary iron-ore train has no passenger

carriage. You climb onto an open wagon of raw ore and ride it across

the Sahara through the night.

source_file: 2023_mauritania-iron-ore-train_source.docx

route_file: 2023_mauritania-iron-ore-train_route.docx

longform_file: 2023_mauritania-iron-ore-train_longform.docx

photos_file: 2023_mauritania-iron-ore-train_photos.docx

resolved: []

last_reviewed:

The iron-ore train across Mauritania, at night

In the Mauritanian desert runs one of the world's great train rides, and it was never meant for passengers. The iron-ore train is a freight line, up to three kilometres of open wagons hauling ore from the mines at Zouerat out to the coast. There is no real carriage to sit in. You wait by the tracks, and when it stops you climb onto a wagon, sit on the ore, and ride. People come from across the world to do exactly that.

We had meant to do it the easy way, riding inland with our cars, until that fell apart in Nouadhibou, where the cars went onto the wagons but were never coupled to the train. So we drove to Atar ourselves, hired a local driver to take us up to Zouerat and collect us at Choum in the night, and waited at the railhead from early afternoon for a train that keeps no real timetable.

It came just after eight, a wall of iron grinding out of the dark. Everyone climbed the same open wagon, locals and us, and at 20:40 we were hauled off into the Sahara. The first twenty minutes were pure adrenaline. Then the wind found us. A May night in the desert is genuinely cold, and the only warm thing on the train is the ore, so we lay flat on the pile, pulled out blankets, and spooned to keep the heat in, asleep on a moving mountain of iron under more stars than I could take in.

We woke to alarms when the GPS said Choum. Getting off was chaos in the dark: bags thrown down, jumping out one by one, a headcount, the stranger's bag we grabbed by mistake handed back just in time. About five hours on the ore, and our driver was waiting by the road, exactly as promised. We were back at the hotel by dawn, filthy, with iron dust in places I still can't explain.

You don't really book this train. You position yourself in the desert, trust the people you paid, and climb on when it comes. It is the best night I have ever spent on a freight wagon, and the only one.