Cruising along the Mopti-Bandiagara highway on the back of a Chinese motorbike, dampened turban flying in the wind: life doesn't get much better than this.
Arid bush stretches out in all directions, and except for the odd donkey cart, there's no other traffic in sight. At a particularly scenic spot, my Dogon guide pulls in and we clamber off the bike. Glass litters the road.
This, Ali tells me, is where a fellow guide was killed by an oncoming truck. I ask if they were close. Very close, says Ali. He stares into space briefly, then gives a shrug. "C'est la vie," he mutters. He gets back on, and revs up the bike.
Feeling slightly more vulnerable, I get back on myself. I know about the death toll on Malian roads, of course. I'm trying to ignore it and concentrate on what lies ahead.
Beyond Bandiagara, the highway becomes a dirt road that strikes through bush to the top of an escarpment, which is the centre of Dogon life. We wend our way down, pausing briefly at the bottom to buy the biggest mangoes I've ever seen. I catch a glimpse of Kani Kombole, one of the oldest villages on the plain, but we're not stopping. We're heading straight for Bankass, the gateway to Dogon country from the Burkina Faso border. I'm in luck: my trip coincides with two days of Dogon festivities.
The small, dusty town of Bankass begins to fill up. Hundreds of people from the outlying villages come to witness the spectacle: the cream of the region's young men going head-to-head in a local form of wrestling.
Such is their enthusiasm that the surrounding trees are festooned with people, all eager for the best possible view. This is a big event, with dignitaries, loudhailers, drummers and a 3am finish.
La lutte, to my untrained eye, looks like a cross between sumo and judo. Wearing rough cotton shorts, the men lock shoulders and test each other's strength, until one discovers a weakness and manages a throw. Ali tells me that he loved to wrestle in his youth. It's part of the rough and tumble of a Dogon upbringing, along with diving in the seasonal waterfalls, catching and eating lizards and riding in bareback horse races.
The next day I'm lucky enough to witness these races for myself. Another enthusiastic crowd is kept in order by over-zealous police officers swinging clubs.
The preliminaries involve demonstrations of horsemanship: magnificent horses lie down for their masters, or leap in dramatic caprioles. Then it's time for a race. Boys of 13 to 15 years old, all in the grip of fear and adrenalin, circle around on their mounts. Their bare, skinny legs dangle down stirrupless, and the crowd is beaten back once more as they set off in a cloud of dust.
It's heart-stopping. A boy falls, but the race gallops on. The crowd roars.
It's all been a somewhat high-octane introduction to Dogon country. But now I'm due to head back to the escarpment, and the sort of experience that the guidebooks talk about.
The Dogon people arrived in this spot sometime around the 14th century. They came from the Manding hills east of Bamako, fleeing, so they say, from the spread of Islam. The people they found in situ were the Tellem - a pygmy race who lived in caves and grottoes high among the rocks.
How they reached their dwellings remains a mystery. Thus far, I'd failed to meet a single Dogon who did not insist that the Tellem could fly. Unfortunately, their magical powers were no match for the larger Dogon, who drove them out and took possession of the escarpment.
We approach the Dogon villages from the plateau. For the most part, they are inaccessible by road. There are a series of treacherous pathways up and down the cliff itself, while the villages on both the plateau and the plain are connected by sandy tracks.
Whereas tourists can now take a whistle-stop tour by 4x4, the time-honoured tradition is to trek between them on foot. We arrive in the late afternoon, leave the motorbike behind and walk the final stretch to Begnemato, where we will sleep.
The track winds between areas of cultivation - beautiful fields of lush lettuces and the Dogon speciality, onions, the rich scent of which fills the air. In the cool of early evening, men are watering their crops by hand with calabash bowls.
Up ahead, golden light glances off towering crags and I see signs of a village, set into the rocks. A donkey brays, but otherwise the peace is absolute. I feel as if I've landed in Paradise.
Further exploration of the village only adds to the impression. We wander to the edge of the escarpment, where a magnificent view unfolds. In the distance, golden-red sand dunes rise out of the bush, while at the foot of the cliff snuggles another Dogon village.
I take in the conical thatched roofs of the granaries, the simple stone houses, the drift of human voices echoing against the rocks.
Ali provides me with some explanations. Nothing is random here. There are men's granaries and women's; the women's are divided into four. The village itself is also divided into four, and the whole would be traditionally overseen by a leader known as the hogon.
Ali explains how this, the most holy of Dogon men, is chosen. A grid is drawn in the sand near the village. Each candidate places a stick upright within one square and the grid is left overnight. In the morning it is examined for the tracks of a fox, and the new hogon is the man whose stick has been knocked over. In other words, it's the fox who decides.
We walk back into the village. Ali points out the hiding place for the ritual funeral masks; the women's menstruation house; the hunter's enclosure, whose storehouses are hung with animal skins and studded with baboon skulls.
Along the way, he points out village elders, and I fish in my pockets for kola nuts. These nuts - so bitter I find them inedible - are accepted with cupped palms, in reverence and gratitude. Here, as in much of traditional West Africa, to give them is a token of respect.
The days pass at a leisurely pace. We walk or take a bullock cart from village to village, staying in the simplest of encampments: stone huts with mattresses slung inside, or out on the roof on hotter nights.
As there is no running water and no electricity, showers come in the form of a bucket - and a cold drink is something that a petrol generator has chilled from warm to tepid. The local brew, millet beer, is tangy, with a kick that depends on its age.
But in spite of the beauty and magic of this place, my impression of it as an idyll slowly crumbles. I'm acutely aware that the water I wash with has been carried from the well on the head of a woman, who has had to carry out this task at dawn.
She'll also have collected the firewood on which my food is cooked, after which she'll spend most of the day pounding millet or onions, perhaps with her latest child strapped to her back. One night, I hear of a woman who has died in childbirth, along with her unborn child. Her husband refused to allow her a Caesarean until it was too late; by that time, there was no ambulance to come to her aid.
And if the men's life seems easier, it is no less fragile. We meet an old man doubled up in pain, surrounded by fellow elders. Their eyes fill with hope on my arrival, but all I can offer is paracetamol for an ailment I can't diagnose. In another village, a nine-year-old boy has died overnight, having come down with pains the day before.
Suddenly, I notice how young the population is. In a nation where life expectancy is only 49, I've seen more death in two weeks than in a year back home.
Perhaps it's not surprising that I've met only a single hogon. The old practices are dying, too. Islam caught up with the Dogon in the end, as did a number of French missionaries. Most of the villages are now divided not into the traditional quarters, but into Muslim, Christian and animist. Of these, the Muslim areas are often the largest and feature beautiful mud-brick mosques. But the animist population is shrinking, and with it the beliefs and practices that make the Dogon unique.
In the heat of the day, we rest in Tereli as a convoy of 4x4s shows up. This is as close as anyone gets to package tourism in Dogon country. Forget luxury hotels: there aren't any. But there are masked dances put on for the passing groups, and I watch as the 20-odd tourists take their seats. It's a charade, deplored by some, who see it as a desecration of the very thing that tourists have come to see. For others, the economics make sense.
Travellers' Guide
Getting there
- There are no direct flights between the UK and Mali. The capital Bamako is served by Air France (0870 142 4343; ( Air France) from a handful of UK airports via Paris; Afriqiyah Airways (01293 596 638; Afriqiyah Airways ) from Gatwick via Tripoli; and Royal Air Maroc (020-7307 5800; Royal Air Maroc ) from Heathrow via Casablanca.
- For those who would prefer to travel in a group, Explore (0870 333 4001; explore) offers both walking and non-walking holidays to Dogon country that also take in a trip to Timbuktu. For example, its 16-day Timbuktu and Dogon Trails trip - with departures available between October and February 2008 - starts from £1 804 (about R25 000 ) per person, including flights from Heathrow, bed and breakfast accommodation, some meals, transfers and also guides.
To reduce the impact on the environment, you can buy an "offset" from Equiclimate (0845 456 0170; Ebico) or Pure (020-7382 7815; Pure Trust).
Visiting there
- Most travellers will enter Dogon country via Bandiagara, which can be reached by public transport. From there, the rough roads necessitate a 4x4 or motorbike to the escarpment itself.
- It is possible to visit Dogon country without a guide, but it is inadvisable for cultural reasons. Guides will approach you in the towns of Mopti, Bandiagara or Bankass. Make sure your guide is Dogon (rather than Bambara, Peul, etc), and that he speaks English if your French isn't up to scratch. You can check on a guide's credentials at OMATHO in Mopti, or at the Mission Culturelle in Bandiagara.
Red Tape and Information
- British passport-holders require a visa to enter Mali. These can be obtained from The Embassy of the Republic of Mali, Avenue Molière 487, Brussels, Belgium (00 322 345 74 32). A visa costs £21, excluding postage. The visa company Travcour (020-7223 5295; Travcour) can obtain visas on your behalf for £130.
For more information contact the Mali Tourist Office: 00 223 222 5673; Mali Tourist Office