We learned this after receiving a friendly mail from Budavar Tours, your local friendly tour operator. 

Dear Passanger. 

Hearby we would like to inform you, that the planned charter flight on route Bamako-Budapest will be operated on route Agadir-Budapest as the organizers asked from our agency. 
Departure is 11:45 Arrival 17:05 on 30 of January 
The tickets for the modified flight will be sent directly to the organizers by us, you can pick the ticket up from the organizers during the rally. 
If you have any quaestions about this, please do not hesitate to contact our agency! 
Sorry for any inconvinienties caused! 

Best regards, 

We´re not sure what to make of it, because OUR tickets explicitly state Bamako to Budapest. It´s still unclear whether they´ll give as a refund our arrange with transport from Bamako. 

After yesterdays article, family and friends have expressed concern about us continuing as planned. We would like you to know that we don´t take the situation in Mali lightly. We constantly update ourselves on the situation and are becoming optimistic, now that we know more. We understand that the organizers feel reluctant to guarantee the safety of more than 200 teams constantly trying to get lost in hostile territory. But as a one of the participants stated at yesterdays info-meeting: -"We all knew the risk before signing up". 

Many of the participants here have a lot of experience in traveling through the continent and they have a very different view on the matter. It´s becoming clear to us that even though this isn´t entirely safe, the actual risk is very exaggerated. By taking necessary precautions we greatly minimize the risk. And the general rule in our convoy will be "leave no man behind!". 

The Budapest Bamako will continue for another ten days through Morocco all the way to the border of West-Sahara, so there is still plenty of time to assess the situation and make a careful decision. We have already informed Mr. Adama, our contact in Bamako, that our medical supplies and financial donations will arrive, but cannot guarantee that we´ll deliver them in person. 

The most important one deciding whether we can go or not is The Phoenix. She´s an old lady with special needs and she will let us know how she´s doing after a grueling 6000 km through ice cold Europe, rocky mountains, muddy savannas and bone dry desert. So far she´s holding up good and we´re very proud of her. It will be hard to leave her behind... 

On the bright side, it is nice to see that the original spirit of Budapest Bamako has returned. The unofficial part of the journey will consist of friendly adventurous people going on a trip together, exploring the continent. Sadly, we must realize that the Budapest-Bamako has become too big and commercial and that the original thought of "Anyone, by any mean,....", seems to have gotten lost somewhere in the rulebook. And for a brief moment yesterday, the Budapest-Bamako became a sad Deja Vu of the infamous Paris-Dakar. 

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EDIT: 

Dear Budapest-Bamako Participants, 

We were sorry to learn about the Budapest-Bamako 2010 route changes. 

The final consultation with the organizers after yesterday's press conference ended with the following result: the charter flight will fly the original route on the original date, from Bamako to Budapest on the 3rd of February 2010. 

Please ignore yesterday's email regarding the route change 

Yours sincerely, 

Budavár Tours 

16/01/2010 

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Audience 0730, Heroes Square, Budapest 

Starting line 

At this very moment we´re in Italy after a small hick-up at the Austrian border. "Vignette" = toll road and it has to be bought when entering the country. Apparently it was clearly stated on a small dirty road sign hidden in the bushes when we were entering their lovely country from Hungary. Tempers rose, some unpleasant words were exchanged and in the end all three Norwegian cars had to pay the outrageous fine of 120 Euro each! So that leaves us with a measly 380 Euro left in our "unforeseen expenses" budget-post. 
Team Polar Bears, follow their (and our!) progress via satellite on b2-10.polar-bears.no 

Minutes after, the Polar Bears´s Opel Frontera had had it with their rude behavior and overheated, spilling a mix of coolant and washe rfluid all over their precious toll-road. Handymean Atle and Lars swiftly removed the thermostat from it´s housing and patched up a leaky hose with some vulcanizing tape. 

It´s good to finally be on our way. We have both felt the tension the last couple of days/weeks and were tired of the preparations. We really just needed to get on our way. 

Right now were passing by Venice and it´s a mere 180 km left to our destination, Mantova, just south of Verona. We´ll upload this article when we get there and get some well deserved sleep after more than 900 km on the road. 

Good night!