River Niger to Gao, Mali and Hombori

Sunday 15th January
The previous day we seen a nice looking patisserie called chocolat, but unfortunately it was closed on Sundays. We managed to buy some nice croissants from another patisserie to eat in the car. I went for a quick browse along the street of second hand book stalls as I thought I might have a good chance of finding our rough guide that was stolen and buy it back as books are very hard to find here. But unfortunately with some enquiries the best English book I got was the final third of the Lord of the Rings for John to read again. Niamey was a lot quieter on Sunday mornings than other days and I noticed a lot more of the women had similar cut marks on their face like a tribal custom. Leaving Niamey we took the main road to Mali that roughly follows the River Niger, although the Niger is not too easy to access. We arrived at Ayorou, the Niger border town, late afternoon for the quick exit formalities. The border guard had very striking face scars of six oval incisions from outside his eyes across his cheeks to his mouth. Whenever this had been done it must have really hurt to leave these very clear incisions. It was 40 km from here to the Mali border and border town so we thought we’d try and find a quiet spot on route by the River Niger. As the area did not seem too remote from people we stopped at a small village to ask if it was OK to camp nearby. There were only women and children around in the village and none of them spoke French, but Steve through sign language and drawing in the sand managed to convey that we wanted to camp nearby. We drove on to find a camping spot beyond the village but were soon in another bigger village where upon the exit there was another border post. This was slightly confusing as it wasn’t shown on the map. We checked that this was still a Niger border control and not a Mali one. This border seemed more formal than Ayorou and they even wanted to check our vaccination records which seemed a bit strange for an exit. We asked here if there was a good place to camp and they recommended a place 11km on along the River Niger, but it was nearly sunset so we only drove a few km along before trying to drive down to the banks of the River Niger for a place to stop. John thought he’d walk down to the river and investigate a spot for fishing tomorrow but didn’t get very far as the ground was interlaced with channels. The camp spot was noisy with the sound of birds and we just enjoyed the gin and tonic we’d bought at the supermarket in Niamey rather than cook.

Monday 16th January
I got out of our tent to spot a couple of fishermen in pirogues only about 50m from the tents just staring at the site of two strange tents. I put the kettle on to boil and after 10 or 15 minutes the fishermen decided to use their pirogue to within about 10 metres of our tents. There was also another pirogue with two people working its way towards us. The first pirogue was a father and son and only the father could speak a little bit of French and of course I can only speak a little bit of French to. I asked if the son went to school, but he said no, he was training to be a fisherman. When the other man and child arrived they could also not speak French. They were after any kind of goods we would give. I gave the boy some trainers which in hindsight would have been much more useful to someone that worked on the land not water, and Kathy and Steve gave away a couple of jumpers which they put on before they returned to their pirogue no longer interested in us visitors. In the distance on the opposite bank John spotted a black small whirlwind which looked like it might be locusts.
We soon arrived at the Malian border and quickly completed the car paperwork. However, the man in charge of passports was not happy with our visas as they were valid for a stay of one month within 3 months of issue, but ours were issued in Paris on 4/10/05. John was pretty sure that he’d explained the dates to the French embassy and we weren’t behind schedule, but it didn’t look right. The Malian official was keen for us to recognize that the visas were out of date; we could each pay the equivalent of five pounds and get the visas sorted out in the next big town of Gao. Going back to Niamey wasn’t really an alternative as we’d already formally left Niger on our visas in addition to all the extra time it would take. He said he would radio through the information to the police in Gao. We were now in Mali which was pretty sparsely populated in this area. We’d found out at the border that the time had gone back an hour to be the same as England and the rest of the West African countries we would visit. We were following the route of the River Niger, but not quite as close to it as John would like. Tributaries of the river which were dried up at this time of year, acted like reservoirs next to the Niger for watering the animals and washing. We wanted to camp next to the Niger that evening and again asked in the village for permission, using sign language as no one spoke French. As we drove to try and get close to the river a couple of boys were chasing afternoon. It was still pretty hot and on the route all the donkeys in the villages were lined up against the shaded wall of the buildings. We thought the boys were trying to show us the best place to camp, but when we followed them they were showing us a boat to take our vehicles across the Niger. This crossing led to just a 70 km section of track. We drove on a further kilometer and realized we weren’t going to get closer to the River Niger. They make lots of thorn tree hedges near the River Niger to keep the goats out of the farmed areas. Where we stopped proved only to be just over 100m from another group of juts and a man busy building his pirogue. These huts were still part of the same village where we’d asked permission. It wasn’t long before 2 or 3 people came over to have a look at us and see what was going on. Then a young guy came over with a bowl with what looked like might be some kind of animal in it and was walking over to Kathy and Steve, the vegetarians. What it turned out to be was cooked fish which tasted quite nice – the others said it was like Perch. About 10 kids gathered around fascinated by the dogs and doing sharp sprints away following any docile movement from Dillon before returning. One guy came over that spoke some French and was talking about death from something which sounded quite serious until we worked out that he was talking about hippos and how the lower ground 100m from us is used by hippos and obviously it’s not a good idea to get between them and the water. He invited us for evening food in the village but the guys politely declined. John was looking forward to the big Toulouse sausages bought from the supermarket in Niamey. A woman came over with her twin baby boys, Hassan and Yussein to proudly show us give us to hold. There was only the one guy amongst them that spoke any French. My mobile picked up a signal here as we were not far from Assongo so I was able to receive text messages from home and call a friend in Scotland and find out she’d got engaged. The line had a delay on it and it was horrible to hear myself echoed a second after I’d spoke.
Tuesday 17th January
Soon after dawn the fisherman were setting off in their pirogues and the boy goat herders were leading their goats away from the village. The boys used sticks to bash and shake the trees and drop goods for the goats who when not satisfied took to clambering up to the tree. We thought we ought to give out some goods to the village to say thanks you for the hospitality and stay near their village. I gave away the top I’d had made in Niamey which felt too big for me. We soon reached Assongo which has distinctive rocks against the wide Niger River and is known for hippo spotting, but we didn’t see any. The 100km dirt road from here to Gao was having some construction work done to it, but got close enough to the river for some good views. We got to Gao early afternoon where the guidebooks say you should register with the police and we needed to sort out our visas. They needed two passport photos from each of us and the office had an interesting photo album of tourists that had been through the town. This was to help them find you if you disappeared. In looking and stamping our passports they said nothing about our visas and this is where we’d been told to go so we hope our visas should now not be questioned. We still need a visa for Mauritania which we couldn’t get in London due to our date of arrival. We should have got them in Niamey and now it looked like we would need to detour to the capital Bamako to get them. There were lots of coloured scarves for sale in the street and with the weather feeling hotter all the time I thought I’d buy one. I asked if they were for women as well as men and was told 4metres for women, 6m for men. I wasn’t convinced that women were wearing 4m of material around their heads, but some white material to cover my head would be useful so I bought some. The stall owner could speak French, so he was getting a guy who was passing down the street in a wheelchair to translate. The guy in the wheelchair also spoke excellent English and asked if I’d buy a Tuareg cross – he said they’d been made by people who suffered from Polio. In Agadez and Niamey there had been many people in wheelchairs with bicycle pedals in front at hand height for moving with the hands. In Niamey there had also been a lot of boys who had lost a leg walking around on crutches. They tied all 4 metres of cloth around my head which was pretty hot and it was a relief when we drove off and I could take it off without offending. A guy from Nigeria, seeing from our car we were English asked us for money who’d been expelled from Libya and was now stuck in Mali without money.
We left Gao to take the boat across to the other side of the River Niger before it stopped for the evening. We drove along a causeway which had lots of water lilies next to it, to reach the roll on roll off ferry. Just beyond the ferry the piers and first deck section for a new bridge across the River were in place. The first bridge since Niamey. The boat men said it would be completed this year, but would seem quite as romantic as taking the ferry with the included animals and manure. Once across the other side we drove to Gossi, an area known for its elephants, but we didn’t see any and from here What we could see was three misted mound shapes rising above the flat horizon near Hombori. We drove until the sunset towards them and rough camped at the base of the largest one.
Wednesday 18th January
It was a really windy night with the car swaying and tent making so much noise that it was impossible to get much sleep. It felt like all the wind was being channeled around the Hombori massif to our tents. In the morning Steve found one of his heavy duty thick tent pegs had been bent. We walked up to the base of the Hombori rock to near where heavy duty rock climbing skills would be needed to continue. As we looked back at our tents we saw that we had actually camped quite near to a small group of round huts, but with no lights and natural materials we hadn’t noticed them the previous evening. When we got back to the tents there were two boys by the tents. They couldn’t speak any French and I think they were from the Fula tribe. Communication was pretty limited but they had a good laugh at some of the photos in the Michael Palin book as well as laughing at the digital image of themselves. We continued along the road to Douentza passing the unusual rock mounds, a monument valley, one rock called the hand of Fatima. We stopped at a village on route that was alive with its market day. The people looked very poor. John found one stall which sold Kola nuts and bought some as the guide books say they are useful to give out to important people in the Dogon Villages. We pulled off the road to some rocks for lunch. During lunch a family came over to us who couldn’t speak French but were communicating they wanted medicine. The man appeared to be communicating that he had earache and ringing in his head while he slept. The woman had a young baby who from his size must have been less than 3 months old and was indicating the baby was being sick although breast fed. Another woman with a larger baby showed us the weeping ears of her baby. It was easy to see why the infant mortality rate for the under 5s is so high here. The teenage girl with them looked much healthier in her smart blue material robe and pierced ears and braided hair of her tribe. John gave the women some money to take the babies to Doctors which they seemed pleased with. They enjoyed pointing out to us baboons climbing up on the sides of the rocks. This they did by pointing, repeating Un, Un and laughing. We continued on arriving in Bandigara in the evening where we were due to meet a guide for the Dogon region that had been arranged for us through the Joliba Trust charity that we’d raised money for. Arriving in Bandigara you’re immediately set upon by men offering to be your guides to find hotel and for the Dogon Region and English is a lot more widely spoken with the tourism. The expensive hotel was full and our guide who’d been around the hotels looking for us would come back tomorrow morning. The weather had turned pretty cold and I had to dig to the bottom of my clothes box to find jeans and a wool jumper. We bought a large bag of kola nuts from someone offering to be our guide and tried a bit of one – not very nice and quite bitter, so it was unlikely that we’d eat any of them. They’re grown in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.