How to ride the Iron Ore Train in Mauritania

Looking for all the practical information?
Click here to skip the other content and read my tips about how to ride the Iron Ore Train

The initial idea was to jump in one of the first wagons but, apparently, I was at the place where the tail of the train would stop.

The problem, however, was that it was a 2.5km long train that stopped in the middle of the desert, in a particularly inhospitable place with no signposts and markers, and walking along it with all my luggage, plus the several liters of water needed for the 20-hour trip across the desert wasn’t a very appealing idea.

Fortunately, a good man offered to take me in his 4×4 to the exact spot where the locomotive would stop, allegedly, a location even more inhospitable than the previous one, where there was nothing but sand and a few rusty wagons along the train tracks.

It was 1pm and, apparently, the train could show up at any time between 11am and 7pm, so I was there waiting, with the uncertainty that the train could arrive at any moment, but I only had to wait for two hours when, all of a sudden, I felt the noise of a locomotive approaching followed by an endless line of wagons.

The locomotive stopped pretty much in front of me.

About 15 wagons away, I was able to make out a Mauritanian loading tens of goats and, a few wagons further along, another man seemed to be loading more than 30 suitcases, as if he decided to move out to his new place riding on the Iron Ore Train. Pretty epic.

With my face wrapped in a sky-blue Mauritanian turban and a pair of ski goggles, I was ready to climb the ladder of the wagon, not without being a little nervous, of course, since I was about to cross more than 700km of the Sahara riding on top of a wagon filled with toxic dust, completely alone.

For more information about the country, don’t forget to check my travel guide to Mauritania

Operating since 1963, the Iron Ore Train – Train du Desert in Mauritania – is a train that connects the iron ore mines in…