We waited, saw most of the men pray at least twice during our stay on the concrete benches, a few locomotives go past and then finally the train came - going the wrong way, but a good sign was that it was loaded up with iron ore (complete with passengers riding for free on top). This was about 4pm so we decided it would be a good hour or so until it came back.
There was nothing to do, it was a little frustrating as we could have spent more time in NBD, but the risk of going back into town and then missing the train was too great.
Eventually the ticket seller turned up just before dusk, sold us a seat each for 2,500UM and we felt a little more relieved that the train might just come before the morning!
The worlds longest train, operated by the Anglo-French mining company SNIM, turned up at 8pm, there was a sudden rush of passengers to it, everyone dying to get on, police were at the door trying to calm the chaos. I climbed in (it was a climb to get up to the carriage from the sand below!) and grabbed a seat in the first compartment opposite a couple of men, Gianni soon joined me and we held the final seat for Julian.
The stench of the carriage was unbelievable, I've been on a few trains across India, the Trans-Siberian and other locales but this was incredible. I had been warned that if we got a train with couchettes to have something to lie on as the couchettes were filthy dirty. As long as we got to Choum I thought I could put up with it and dozed off to sleep against the window. Julian did the same at the other end of the three seats and Gianni went out into the aisle to join some Mauritanian mine workers for tea all night. By 2am I'd given up on sleep and left Julian dozing in his chair whilst I went out to join Gianni and chat to the guys. The train had an awful sudden heaving motion, which was what woke me up, probably because of it's length. Just having been handed a glass of tea, not holding onto any of the rails it did it again and I threw my tea over my hosts and with them went flying about 3metres down the aisle.
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