Macclesfields Finest - Africa Overland

From Douentza we awoke slowly and drearily, a sleepless night was had because of the party that was raging around us last night. The Africans like to have a good dance, and they certainly like to do it late! I did manage to dance a couple of songs with the locals before bed time, much to their amusement.

Today we opted to head into Dogon county on the less touristy escarpment to the east. Cash is proving to be a minor problem at the moment as it has been a while since we visited the bank. So any chance of a guide was well out of the question. With the lonley planet ‘map’ we headed in search of Dogon villages, with the intention of then trekking for a day or two. We were on what we presumed to be the correct track, but a local informed us otherwise. He opted to sit on the roof for a free ride and we back tracked to a small museum to ask directions. Possibly a bad idea as it was full of guides, even the guy on the roof turned out to be a guide, I think even the goats and cows were guides.

We decided not to bother in the end and save the Dogons for another time. If your interested in what a Dogon is, try looking it up somewhere else! We instead re-joined the main road and headed to Mali’s answer to monument valley and the Hand of Fatima. The hand of Fatima is an impressive rock formation that does actually look like a hand from some angles - with a bit of imagination. There are sheer rock faces of up to 600m in places

The name ‘Hand of Fatima’ is a muslim reference, in allot of muslim countries we have come across stickers, door knockers etc in the shape of Fatimas hand. The theory being that when you knock on the door all evil is left outside.

Anyway we decided to camp in the simple but nice campsite at the base of the formation. From here we went for a nice stroll around the Hand, we got a little bit lost, if that seems possible, and had to re-trace our steps. We got to see part of the sunset, before heading down while there was still light. All in all a very nice day and good to get out and do some walking, they even had a couple of cool-ish beers waiting at the campsite for us.

A quick bit of boring stuff for interested climbers out there - There are plenty of routes out here, all of which are bolted (the French and Spanish have been here lots) The grades range from 6a and up to the high 8’s. The rock is sand stone so I dont no if there is any leading potential. It looks great for sport climbing in a pretty astounding environment, I would be interested in a return trip at some stage - with the right equipment this time. There is a website which I dont have on me but can get if anybodys interested.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under MALI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.