MALI. Massive environmental variety. The Niger River is an enormous snake of water that goes for thousands of kilometres in between the sand hills of Mali. We cross east to west between these respective barriers. Big piroga boats transport men and goods from the crowded port of Mopti. It’s an authentic place unique in its way and inhabited by Bozo fishermen. North, on the left side of the river, a sea of sand starts where the Tuareg population now live based in the mythical Tomboctou.
This was the capital of passed royalty, crossroads of the old caravan tracks of east Sahara. For centuries this was a meeting point for the coranic school of the past. Today it is just disappearing into the sand and into oblivion. Heading south, on the right side of the river, the Sahel is the unchallenged master. In the glorious and jagged internal Niger delta the Bozo fishermen villages alternate with the Peul farmer’s. Vegetation on shore offers shelter and food for hippopotami and where the savannah begins it’s not unusual to find elephant families. Going more south the vegetation and the sand gives place to rocks - the tall Bandiagara’ cliffs. On its rock face there are villages of the ethnic group of Dogon, an ancestral population. Sometimes their unusual sandbank buildings are, incredibly, embedded in the steep walls of the cliff. There are a various, different and spectacular routes. From the north it is possible to follow the tracks of the salt caravans. From the south there is the Niger River with fords and boats, driving on the sahelian sandy routes and then going up on the rock of Bandiagara’ cliff.