In the southeast of Mali lie the great Cliffs of Bandiagara, a very unusual place to take a hike. That´s exactly what we did in 2004. Starting in Accra, we drove in a northerly direction through parts of Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso until we reached the border to Mali. The very scenic drive was an adventure in itself, but the real attraction lay ahead. The Cliffs of Bandiagara, or to be geographically correct, the Bandiagara Escarpment, is a sharp drop in the sandy landscape of the Sahel strip. The sudden edgy cliff rising up to 500 meters is a dramatic sight when arriving from the south and the east, when having driven for days through the vast West African Plains. The fertile strip along the cliffs has been inhabited for at least the past 1,000 years. The first verifiable inhabitants have been the mythical Tellem people, a small population of cave dwellers who lived in the natural and carved out sandstone caves in the steep flanks along the cliff. They may also have had simple houses on the bottom edge of the cliffs. The interesting thing was their way of handling their dead. They were laid wrapped in blankets flat on their backs, into separate departments of the caves. The climate allowed for a slow and biologically clean mummification process and the mummies can still be seen today. Sometime along the 1400s came the Dogon people and drove the Tellem away. Nobody knows where to. They simply vanished never to reappear again, that´s what gives them their mythical aura. The Tellem seemed to have had a very spiritual relationship with their environs, similar to the Australian Aborigines, hence the myth of the skyward driven Tellem. The Dogon took over the structures and caves left behind by the Tellem, but concentrated their life along the bottom of the cliff, using the caves only for their dead and for religious practices.

This was the border post in Mali after coming in from Burkina Faso.

The steep cliff, or escarpment, can be seen nicely in this picture. We started our hike quite late on the first day, so we had to steer towards the next village for the long midday break. Those were four to five hour breaks and escapes from the heat at the same time. 

Apart from eating and drinking, we played local board games or had shoes repaired. Due to the extreme humidity in Accra, the inner life of my desert boots had crumbled away unbeknownst to me, so that after the first mile of hiking they became a case for the local shoemaker a.k.a. general manager of the village.

Mosques and Churches are both mingled

into the  traditional animist beliefs.

Unfortunately an extreme version of

Islam has gained control over religious

matters in recent times.

       Some of the houses, especially the grain storage buildings,

       are elevated from the ground in order to keep vermin and

       unwanted guests away. 

       A negative side-effect of tourism in the region is the sellout

       of valuable culture goods, such as wooden doors, window

       shutters and traditional single step ladders (which are still

       used to climb onto the flat roofs of the living quarters).

Peace, love and village life.

The caves and structures in the upper part of the villages.

Our sleeping places were mostly on the flat roofs of the village buildings.

Exotic for us hikers, a welcome earning for the owners.

Stay tuned for more...

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