Along the plain to Tèli

We carried on in the afternoon through a dried out river bed, and past many fields of millet that had been already harvested. Every little bit of the millet cereal gets used up, from the edible grains, to the parts that get made into thatching for roofs or feed for animals. I spoke for a little while to Baba about Malian and African politics, and he had a very good grasp of English. He kept saying throughout the trek that he was from Dogon, but things didn't seem right. He was unsure of some things, and when we asked about his family he kept having a lot of links to France - even though he said all his family lived in Endè.

The greetings for Dogon people are fantastic. Whenever a younger person meets an elder they have to go through the equivalent of asking "How are you, how's the family, how's the wife, how are the kids?", each time leaving a gap for the other person to say "Fine". And then the whole thing is repeated, with the elder asking. And that's the short version. We've heard greetings go on for a few minutes. A great tradition, and funny to hear. Baba did these "authentic" greetings with some others along the way, but always seemed to look down or away.

Along the way we saw so many signs for tourist encampments (at least one in each village), and so the trek could easily be done without guide as long as your French was good enough to converse with the locals. Paying for a guide is worth it though as long as he doesn't rush off! One such place was in Tèli, where we stayed for the first night.

The falaise towered above the village, and from a distance we could see a row of huts in the cliff face. The afternoon was incredibly dusty, so Baba said he would take us to see the old village in the cliffs tomorrow, as it would be a better view.