Sitting on top of tons of iron ore under the scorching sun, on the world’s longest train that runs every day across the Mauritanian desert, I thought about Gabriel Garcia Marquez “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and about my father, who instilled in me a love for trains so great, to last a lifetime. It also gave me an opportunity to experience Mauritanian hospitality and understand the geopolitics of the western Sahara.
