the other parts of my trip to Niger

Whilst the Gerewol was the purpose of my trip, and of course the highlight, I did also visit Agadez, Zinder and Mirriah, and some of the scenes viewed along the roads were also interesting.

This was a fully-laden truck, en-route from Libya to Diffa in the south-east of Niger.  The driver had stopped for a nap in the shade of the vehicle, and hearing that it had taken three days to do part of a road that took us eight hours, I really couldn't imagine it having to go through sandy parts of the Libyan desert!!

We also passed a family of Fulani nomads, with all of their household possessions piled up around them on their donkeys, which were almost as overladen as this truck.  & a group of Touaregs, travelling by camel, but with the camels all in their best leatherwork, decorated noseclips and so on, looking really spectacular.

In the towns and cities we were looking at a mixture of mosques (including the UNESCO-listed sixteenth century mud mosque of Agadez), sultan's palaces, and older districts of traditional architecture.  You can see at the top the eighteenth century sultan's palace in the town of Mirriah, which still has the old drum inside (beaten to announce the appointment of a new sultan) as well as sacks of something mysterious suspended from the ceiling inside the entrance, designed to protect the interior from evil.  Despite the presence of Islamist terrorism in parts of the country, it still holds a variety of traditional beliefs alongside Islam.

& here the front wall of the sultan's palace in Zinder, reputed to have three young girls and four Korans buried within (or under), on the advice from 1850 when it was built of some spiritual guides and hunters, considered to have mystical powers.

Inside included an area where prisoners used to be kept, with three doors to small dark 'rooms' (only shoulder high) where they could be sent to reflect on whether they had any information to divulge: the first where they were just left on their own for a while in the dark; the second where they were accompanied by a scorpion; and the third where they were accompanied by a snake.  Finally from the same area was the Door of No Return - any prisoner passing through here either met his death or was sold into the transatlantic slave trade.  Zinder was a major power along the trans-Saharan trade route.  Bizarrely, the current sultan also has a thing about fancy cars, and inside the palace were two very duty old Rolls Royces alongside a number of other fancy older brands and a ridiculously long limousine that surely has never been out in the streets of the city!

The Birni district of Zinder (around the palace) had some impressive old Hausa architecture, as well as a strange old French cemetery with no markings on any of the gravestones - I've not been able to get any explanation for that.  Agadez also had some nice architecture, and was very pleasant to walk around.

Even aside from the festival, Niger was a rewarding country to visit although, I will admit, not the most comfortable in terms of climate or facilities.