In-Gall

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Also: In Gall, I-n-Gall, In-Gal, Ingal, Ingall

In Gal, seen in 2005.

Town in the Agadez Department of northeast Niger. Year round population of less than 500.

Known for it's Oasis and salt flats, In-Gall is the gathering point for the Cure Salee festival of Tuareg and Wodaabe pastoralists to celebrate the end of the rainy season each September. During the festival, InGall's population grows to several thousand nomads, officials and tourists.

InGall had been a stop on the main roads between the capital of Niger, Niamey (120km to the southeast), and the mining town of Arlit on the Algerian border, or the provincal capital Agadez, to the northwest. In the 1970s, the main road was repaved to transport uranium from the French owned mines in Arlit, but the new road bypassed InGall, ending its use as a waystation. Since then, it's population has dropped from almost five thousand to less than 500.

During the Tuareg insurgency of the 1990's, InGall was a prime fortification of the Niger armed forces, and when peace was concluded in 2000, the old fort is reportedly abandoned. [1]

1 Location:
2 History
3 Outsider's Description
4 Dinosaurs
5 Urainium Mining
6 Other Links

[edit] Location:

Latitude 16.7861 Longitude 6.9336 Altitude (feet) 1499 Lat (DMS) 16° 47' 10N Long (DMS) 6° 56' 1E Altitude (meters) 456 Time zone (est) UTC+1 Approximate population for 7 km radius from this point: 159 [2]

See http://www.fallingrain.com/world/NG/1/Ingal.html [3] for rainfall charts and local area maps.

[edit] History

Pre-History

Recent excavations

Central Saharan Trade Route

Songhay

Aghadez Sultanate

French Occupation

[edit] Outsider's Description

InGall, an oasis town in a semi-desert zone that forms the gateway to the Sahara. InGall is a conglomeration of mud houses, whose gardens, in contrast to the barren landscape in which the town is set, are filled with fruit trees and vegetable patches. It is dominated by its mosque, whose pyramidal tower, built from mud and stones and spiked with the projecting ends of wooden beams, is the tallest build ing for a thousand miles around.

- Iain Gately, Sunday Times, 2004. [4]

See these photographs of the InGall market taken by members of a French aid convoy in 2003. [5]

Also see this decription of the town during the Cure Salee festival of 2000. [6]

[edit] Dinosaurs

In-Gall is also famous to outsiders for it Pelentological digs, most notably the Jobaria tiguidensis, and the remains of petrified forests dating back 135 millon years. See "the Dinosaurs of InGall" [7]

[edit] Urainium Mining

In 2004, a Canadian corporation was granted a government license to mine for Urainium the area. Northwestern Mineral Ventures was awarded the Irhazer and Ingall concessions, each 2,000 square km (772-sq. miles) in size. Mines will reportedly be "open pit" strip mines. [8]