Mali
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Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [143]
Forty five minutes later we arrived at the border post on the Malian side. Nominally, it carried the name of the nearest settlement, the village of Kiri. But truth to say, we hadn’t seen a single hut, let alone a house along the way to possibly let ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [316]
My taxi ride from Mopti to Koro basically came down to being my only first-hand experience of the Dogon country. Of course, I was hardly ever going to set my own foot on the Dogon soil, but from my privileged seat in the car I had a good view of the ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [335]
With his track record over the last few days since I’d first met him, I couldn’t be entirely at peace as to whether Guele would stick with what he’d promised me the night before and arrive on time to show me where I’d be able to take a shared taxi to ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [142]
Our final leg to Mopti was uneventful. Almost, that is. It would have been had we not had another flattened tyre. Just for the good measure. Somewhere along the way, with absolutely no lights visible in any direction, our „Toyota“ started cavorting ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [139]
Fifteen minutes later we were in Douentza. Arriving here also meant that now we were back on the paved road and, for real or imaginary reasons, it kind of gave us an additional sense of safety. It was Guele’s plan to stop by for an hour or so and ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [276]
Marianne and here son were Australians. She was a single mother and a music teacher by profession. However, the fact that she was a single mother, or a mother at all, didn’t seem to prevent her from travelling around the world when time and money permitted ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [279]
It was only this morning, or nearly at noon to be precise, that we finally got an opportunity to have a good look at Korioume. Just as I had already mentioned on our way up north, the place is just over ten kilometres away from Tombouctou and even less ... Read more >
Thursday, 19 Apr 2012 | Views [260]
For all those weird experiences I’d gone through a few days back, Tombouctou had come to occupy a fond memory in my mind. As ever with passage of time, things tended to don a gilded coating and invariably looked ever shinier with every new day. However, ... Read more >
Wednesday, 18 Apr 2012 | Views [275]
For a first-timer in Sahara like me, I think it’s nearly impossible to tell whether there are landmarks to go by along the way from Tombouctou to Essakane. Or back. I’m not even sure if there is such a thing which you can with confidence call the way, ... Read more >
Wednesday, 18 Apr 2012 | Views [277]
Sleeping under a blanket in a tent in Sahara most definitely has everything on sleeping without it. Being warm and relatively comfortable, my second night in Essakane was infinitely more pleasant than the first one. However, that was no reason for me ... Read more >
Wednesday, 18 Apr 2012 | Views [316]
If somebody had told me that in Sahara I’d be yearning for more sun, I’d have held them for mental. But after a night of desert blues, both in terms of music and sleeping conditions, or more to the point, desert woes, there is nothing mental about yearning ... Read more >
Sunday, 15 Apr 2012 | Views [238]
The rest of the way from Nibkitieid to Essakane was basically more of the same thing. With every new roll of the wheels we grew more impatient for the ride to end. The more you couldn’t move, the more you ached to. And whenever you managed to pull off ... Read more >
Sunday, 15 Apr 2012 | Views [218]
Like any novelty, the beginning of our ride to Essakane was fun. At first. I’m sure not many of us westerners had taken such a ride before, in an open bed of a pick-up truck. You had a sense of an adventure up there, with the desert wind blowing in ... Read more >
Sunday, 15 Apr 2012 | Views [105]
The first sight I was treated to when I stepped out of my room into the yard was a young girl sifting the white sand that the ground was covered with through a sieve. She was meticulously covering every square inch, depositing into an old, beat-up washbowl ... Read more >
Sunday, 15 Apr 2012 | Views [389]
By the time I woke up, Katrin and Lea had already been gone. Quite uncharacteristically for me, I had not heard them leave. I must have been that tired. The night before Guele had promised to send me someone both today afternoon, as I had expressed ... Read more >
Saturday, 14 Apr 2012 | Views [338]
Half an hour or so after our car was back on dry land, we finally arrived in Timbuktu. With all the breaks, break-downs, stops and crossings, it took us some twelve hours since the moment we had really set out from Mopti. Timbuktu . The legendary ... Read more >
Saturday, 14 Apr 2012 | Views [299]
Dusty landscape grew ever dustier as we progressed on our way up north to Sahara and remained as stubbornly flat as a fritter. An interesting rocky escarpment popped up out of nowhere not long after we had left Douentza, but once we left it behind us, ... Read more >
Saturday, 14 Apr 2012 | Views [138]
When I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning, I knew full well that the four-wheel drive wouldn’t pick me up at four, even if Guele had told me it’d be then. But of course, I wasn’t sure to such an extent that I could risk it. So I had to be at the hotel gate ... Read more >
Saturday, 14 Apr 2012 | Views [295]
In spite of all the recommendations to steer clear of Mopti as much as possible and linger there only for as long as strictly necessary, I decided to devote one whole day to it. The saying went around like the town was simply too corrupted by the unchecked ... Read more >
Friday, 13 Apr 2012 | Views [373]
After a colourful ten-man squeeze in what is basically a six-person car on my way to Djenné, I had it comparably more luxurious in an equally – or worse – beat up and dilapidated vehicle on my way back to Mopti, owing to the fact that I shared the ride ... Read more >
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