mali
april / may 2002
i arrived in
malis capital bamako after a very long drive from bobo-dioulasso. i had
been driving all day and was so tired that when i got off the bike my
foot got stuck in the luggage on the back. i struggled for a few seconds,
trying not to fall. but i had no chance and soon found myself squeezed
in tightly between my bike and a parked car. i desperately tried to push
the bike away from me, but it took two people to release me from this
most unfortunate position.
the result of that accident was an overstretched muscle in my left shoulder
which made driving impossible for three days. i would feel the pain even
weeks later when making a wrong movement. this was particularly bad when
driving on a difficult piste.
mali was very hot in april and temperatures hovered around 45 degrees.
on a motorbike you'd expect the headwind to cool you down, but here it
felt like a hot blow dryer, pointed at you face. i was hot! but it was
worth the pain as mali bears some of the most interesting tourist sites
in west africa.
i first went to djenne, the ancient trading town with its world famous
mosque which is made of clay-bricks. driving with my motorbike through
the narrow sandy alleys i felt like a time traveller, visiting the middle
ages. the only thing that was clearly not medieval was all the garbage
on the ground. here i didn't mind the heat so much as it kept away all
the tourist who usually swarm the place.
i paid a short visit to mopti which, during the wet season, is surrounded
by water (but now looked like a town built on a small plateau in the middle
of a dusty plane). from here i took off for timbuktu the famous, once
mysterious trading town in the middle of the desert. by now i had given
up all hope to find another tourist who would go the same way with his
own car or motorbike. and since there was no way i was going to attempt
to cross the 200 km stretch of sandy desert on my own i paid a bush taxi
to carry my luggage, and to help me if i had a problem.
this was my first long ride on sand and after some initial problems i
really started to enjoy it (though my left shoulder started to hurt badly).
we spent one night in a little village under open sky. the next morning
driving became more difficult as dense vegetation of thorny acacia trees
forced me to drive in the deep, sandy tracks of the main piste. i fell
several times and i soon realized that i would not make it. i left the
bike in a village and drove the remaining kilometres in the bush taxi.
timbuktu, with its beautiful mosques and its interesting architecture
was a nice desert town. but it was not the mystical place you might expect
after having read the reports of travellers who had visited the place
150 years ago. there was no gold in the streets, just lots of sand. here
the temperatures reached up to 50 degrees and i spent most of the time
lying around in the shadow.
after visiting timbuktu i drove back south again in order to visit the
dogon country. it is a breathtaking region centred around the high cliffs
of the 150 km long bandiagara escarpment. the escarpment is dotted with
tiny villages which are built right in the middle of the 200 meter high
vertical cliff. i hired a guide and made a four days trek together with
two german cyclists. the beauty of the landscape and the magic of the
villages made me forget that we were walking around for hours in 45 degrees.
the mosque at djenne
crossing the bani river
fishing on the niger river
on the way to timbuktu
timbuktu
dogon village
dogon market