Mali with or Without Timbuktu by Fiona Dunlop

If you’re after cosseted travelling conditions, spa treatment, luxury safari lodges, gourmet feeds and chocolates on your pillow, then Mali is not for you. Even wildlife is not really on the agenda, bar a few hippos and caiman lurking in the Niger river. But if you’re after seeing a mind-boggling ethnic mosaic, being punted down the mighty Niger river, hearing the best music of Africa, deciphering the mysteries of the Dogon and seeing mud architecture that could have been designed by Gaudi before he discovered colour - then this is your kind of place. Between the stunning mud structures of Djenné, the commercial hub of Mopti and the mythological intricacies of neighbouring Dogon country, there is more than enough, so you don’t even have to go to Mali’s most famous town, Timbuktu. Yet try as you might (and I did) it is almost impossible to resist the lure of that synonym of remoteness.

Two thirds of this landlocked West African country is blanketed in the sand of the Sahara, only animated by near totally shrouded Tuaregs (the former desert nomads) and camels - all very picture postcard. One town, Niafounké, is famously home to Mali’s pioneering musician, Ali Farka Touré, but this notoriety fades in comparison with its World Heritage Site neighbour: Timbuktu. Yet its original claim to fame has faded, raising the question “So why was it so special?” For the record, apart from being a prosperous trading crossroads (in gold and salt as well as ostrich feathers and slaves) it was also a major centre for Islamic study. This dual role was exemplified by Kankan Moussa, Mali’s first ruler to embark on the Haj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), in 1324, who allegedly distributed so many gold bars round Cairo that the local money market crashed.

Today, seven centuries after its heyday and even when you arrive by 4WD as opposed to camel, the journey from the south to this far-flung outpost is rough. Four chokingly dusty hours are followed by a slow diagonal chug across the Niger on an infrequent pontoon; if you’re unlucky enough to arrive at the river-crossing behind several other vehicles, you can tack on a few extra hours’ wait. Then comes the anti-climax: a mishmash of concrete and mud architecture, litter drifting over the encroaching dunes, open sewers, exhibits mysteriously missing from the dusty museum, sand creeping inside houses whose upper storeys collapsed in last year’s heavy rains. The film-title would be “Desolation in the desert”. But there are also beehive-like bread-ovens in the street which churn out the local gritty flatbread, a couple of markets, superb studded doors, a nightclub, Tuaregs on motor bikes with mobiles glued to their ears and, not least, three historical mosques.

The oldest and most extraordinary of these, the Djingarey Ber (which non-Muslims are allowed to visit), dates from 1325. Inside, nine colonnaded corridors of packed mud are only dimly lit by tiny sky-lights. Entering it takes you into a shadowy, timeless world seemingly concealing the secrets of the ages. Long may this mosque last - with a little help from Unesco and an annual festival to resurface the outer walls after the rains - perhaps the only meaningful endeavour of this Saharan ghost-town.

Southwest of Timbuktu, a more accessible Mali is typified by the thorny scrub of the Sahel and sliced by the Niger river, its lifeblood and main highway. On an island sandwiched between the banks lies Mali’s other World Heritage Site, Djenné, a classic stop on the itinerary between the capital Bamako and Mopti. Here, where concrete is banned, the entire town is a symphony of adobe bricks and rammed earth walls radiating from another focal point mosque, this time the world’s largest mud structure. As an iconic African equivalent of the Eiffel Tower or Sydney Opera House it is hard to beat. The magnificent, century-old converted palace sits high above the main square on a raised platform, its walls and pinnacles bristling with projecting palmwood beams (which combine structural, scaffolding and anti-termite roles) and crowned with Daliesque ostrich eggs.

Most people time their visit for a Monday when the huge square and surrounding streets heave with a weekly market, high in wild colour, in goods and about as multi-ethnic as you can find anywhere in Africa. The Foulani (former nomadic cattle-herders, whose striking, statuesque women sport tattooed upper lips and scarification), Bambara, Dogon, Songhay, Tuareg and Bozo peoples are the most common of Mali’s ethnic groups. On market-day they pour in, balanced vertiginously atop huge bundles of goods in gear-grinding trucks, ferried across the river from a donkey and cart, or paddling their own canoes. For these extrovert West Africans, market-day is not just about commerce, it’s also the big party of the week and time to catch up on the gossip. Interest in tourists therefore comes pretty low on the agenda; as long as you don’t attempt to take photos (something they will aggressively reject) you can happily melt into the crowds. And nor will you feel out of touch, as their stunning printed cotton boubous honour familiar faces such as David Beckham and Jacques Chirac - separately.

Mali’s Muslim majority excludes the Dogon who remain largely animist, still clinging to a unique system of beliefs which is echoed by their wide-ranging handicrafts: symbolic wooden masks, intricately carved doors and baobab maracas. Some are sold in Djenné at a handful of tourist-oriented stalls but it is In Mopti, closer to Dogon country, that they really proliferate. This humming port roughly halfway between Djenné and Timbuktu never seems to sleep, fed by a constant coming-and-going of craft, vehicles, carts, goods and people from over the borders in Burkina Faso and Niger, from Dogon country, from up and downriver and from the desert. On the river banks lined with scarily overloaded boats, several stalls sell what looks like stone slabs. These are in fact stacked slabs of compressed salt, once the ‘gold’ of the Sahara and proof that some things just don’t change.

In the labyrinthine street market above you can find anything from French pastries to foam mattresses covered in luminously coloured prints, bogolan (mud-cloth), Tuareg knickknacks and those ubiquitous Dogon woodcarvings. Mopti seems to churn out anything and everything, including canoes, and backstreet sweatshops are no doubt responsible for the ‘Tuareg’ necklaces you are so often pestered to buy. Bargaining is part and parcel of the culture, and itinerant hawkers materialise just about anywhere. One place to escape them is at the local cyber café, a big surprise on a dusty backstreet.

River transport, the traditional means of locomotion here, offers a choice between a packed public boat and a pinasse, a small, converted cargo-boat propelled by outboard motor and pole. As the water-level descends radically before the rains in June, some stretches of the river become almost unnavigable, forcing boatmen to sharpen their punting skills. The relaxing river route also offers a close-up on one of Mali’s biggest industries along with cotton and gold - fish. Hundreds of canoes-propelling fishermen net their catch to be dried, smoked and exported to neighbouring countries. It is hard to miss sampling capitaine, the largest and tastiest, and Mali’s greatest delicacy. On the riverbanks simple mud villages are shared by Bozo fishermen and the cattle herding Foulani, each extended family (including several wives) sharing a walled compound. Walking round these isolated villages is fascinating but also entails a voyeuristic element that is not always enjoyable.

Travelling by road takes you almost parallel to the river through classic Sahel vegetation of acacias, sheas, sturdy baobabs and towering palms. Sometimes monotonously flat and arid, the landscape changes radically in Dogon country, east of Mopti. Here, as the road rises into a boulder-strewn plateau, the immense Bandiagara escarpment comes into view. This stunning sandstone ridge, straight out of Arizona in scale, is home to a string of Dogon villages, all clustered along its base beneath caves hollowed out by the previous inhabitants, the Tellem. Poking above the one-storey village roofline are thatched pepperpot granaries, ‘male’ or female’ depending on their square or circular form, all connected by stoney paths curling uphill to caves and fetishes. In the foreground pockets of startlingly green vegetable gardens are the source for millet, shallots, aubergines and chilli peppers, all watered by the calabash-load from wells and streams.

There is a mesmerising spirit to this region, partly to do with the towering escarpment, partly the complexity and mysteries of Dogon culture, partly the sandstone constructions which blend completely with the ochre-coloured backdrop, and partly the endless stream of questions Dogons greet each other with. In a language which sounds like coo-ing doves, they ask after every family member from grandma to the latest baby, finally ending with gentles smiles before continuing on their way, balancing a container on their head (women) or clutching a trannie to their ear (men).

No mobiles, no cyber-cafes, no electricity even; here you are out on a limb in a society that still defies analysis. Marcel Griaule, the French ethnographer whose extensive research in the 1930s brought the Dogon culture to the outer world, unwittingly also let loose a stream of alien conspiracy theories. These originated in the fact that Dogon cosmology discovered the star Sirius B long before sophisticated western equipment did. However if you’re sleeping out on the flat, dusty rooftop of a Dogon house, gazing at the densely layered, sparkling night-sky above, listening to a few out-of-sync cocks crowing and donkeys braying, those alien astronauts seem totally irrelevant. For the moment this complex culture is just about holding up to a dribble of tourism - but it’s probably best to get there soon.