With my stomach back to some form of normality after a hideous bout of travellers diorrhea, I rose from what I earlier presumed to be my death bed, and we got the the hell out of Bamako. In my opinion it isnt a bad place - its a terrible place, no its actually OK but not good if your feeling under the weather. We hit the road and Mali’s main tourist route - The Niger river route.
Leaving Bamako we spent our first night sleeping in the wilds, which is fairly easy as Mali isnt too heavily populated outside of the citys. The landscape is pretty arid and is a sort of semi-desert - ’sahel’. We didnt pick the best camping spot and I think we may of had some visitors in the night, but they didnt bother to wake us from our slumber.
The next day we got to the old town of Djenne, which has the largest mud building in the world (what a claim to fame). It is actually a very nice town, all be it a bit toursity. It is a place that definitely has to be visited, apparently back in the day when Timbuctoo was big time Djenne was an important trading town, and the buildings are still as they were back then, it has been looked after well.
The majority of the population are guides, who will be more than happy to pester you for most of the day. They have a special technique of making everything sound extremely boring. Needless to say we didnt bother and instead walked around at our own steam, as you can see in the photo below you occasionaly get bullied by big groups of kids - but we are a bit tougher nowadays. The photos were taken at sunrise when the local populace is sleeping. Crikey its December already!!
