Hello hello,

Back in 2006/2007 I overlanded around West Africa a bit in an old 2cv, and had a jolly nice time of it.

Later on this year I'm likely to find myself in Morocco with friends and a car nobody wants to take back to the UK. My immediate thought was that I could run down to Mali or Burkina and sell it off.

A little bit of research on here has shown, however, that today's West Africa is somewhat different to the one I remember of 6 or 7 years ago.

The forum archives appear to show that the Road of Hope in Mauri is now considered dangerous and best avoided, and that people heading towards Mali take the south road via Kadei instead.

The archives also appear to indicate that Mali itself is a hassle by any route as much of that top left corner of the country is considered unsafe, that one ends up paying to have a solider in the car, and so on.

Have a summarised correctly?

I've also found a few posts from a few years ago saying that Mali imposed all sorts of crazy customs rules on cars (bonds paid at one border and released at that other) that were driving everyone nuts. Later posts appear to show these have been abandoned, but I can't actually find notice that this is the case. Any word?

Anyway, although I would have loved to have toured the area and revisited some happy memories of old, the principle aim is to get rid of this car. I'm not intending to make a profit, I just don't want it any more, and it would be nice to cover some of the costs of getting it to wherever it gets to. The car is a Pug 306 Diesel LHD.

With this in mind, may I ask what you would do? Try to sell in:
1. Nouadhibou/No-mans-land? I guessing this will fetch the worst price, but that's fine because I won't have had to drive very far. If it earns a few hundred quid that pays for the diesel down and the boat to Morocco, so happy days.
2. Nouakchott? People certainly tried to by my car last time I was there. Does that still happen? Do all the new checkpoints I've read about make that tricky?
3. Go for Bamako? Is the faff of personal guards and potential jihad worth it?
4. Burkina? If one has to pay for escorts right the way across Mali (as some posts seem to suggest) is it worth it to get down to Ouaga and sell there vs selling in Mauri?

I must stress that I'm not trying to turn a profit, I just fancy as much of a road-trip as I can justify on the value of the car at it's destination

Many, many thanks for taking the time to read this post, and for dispensing whatever wisdom you may be about to dispense. If any of my questions have already been answered of late on here, please do feel free to curtly push me in that direction.

Cheers,
Matt