Welcome back to Silk, Salt and Saddlebags, I am Selin Aydin. This episode is about the second word in the title. In the middle of the Sahara, at places called Taghaza and Taoudenni, men cut salt from the desert floor in slabs the size of a door and loaded them onto camels for a three-week walk south to Timbuktu. There, in the great years, a slab of salt could be traded for its weight in gold. Ibn Battuta walked the route in 1352 and complained about everything, which makes him a wonderful witness. We follow the caravan from the mines to the Niger bend, we talk about the Tuareg guides and the wells that decided who lived, and we hear from the salt market in Timbuktu today, where the camels have mostly become trucks. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.