Down the falaise

As we walked out of Djigibombo, Baba set a fast precedent, and after a kilometre or so of walking along the paved, dusty road I began to think "had we been taken for a ride?" - just a walk via road! No sooner had I thought this, than Baba turned off the road and went along a huge plateau of rock heading towards a misty decline. We walked a bit further and came across a fantastic view of the plain below, resplendent in shades of green, with a river running below. No time to stop and savour it of course, and we had to quickly follow our elusive guide down the rock face. Literally climbing down, using hands as well as feet.

After descending through a ravine, with some sketchily rested rocks as a path, we came to where a waterfall would have been if it was the rainy season. Unfortunately, we only got a sheer rock face, but it was still impressive. After a brief drink stop, we carried on next to the picturesque river at the bottom, passing bare-footed women carrying stacks of pots on their heads, clambering over the same rocks we needed shoes for!

Fully onto the plain we could apreciate the scale of the falaise, shooting vertically up, about a hundred metres, and as far as the eye could see into the distance. Really breathtaking stuff. With the cliffs as a backdrop, we walked past herds of goats and dried out millet fields to the touristy village of Kani Kombolè, where we stopped for lunch. We bumped into the same group of Americans that we'd seen in Bamako a few weeks earlier. Seems that everyone does the same route around Mali!

Baba showed us around the village, where we saw women pounding millet with a massive version of a pestle and mortar, cows with tell-tale humps on their back exactly like camels, and a compact little Sudanese-style mosque, like in Djennè. Looking up to the falaise it was pretty visually stunning, towering above.

Then we saw little houses embedded in the rock face. Baba explained that they were the houses of the people who lived in the cliffs before the Dogons - the Tellem. No one knows for certain why the Tellem left, but it was either by force, or by dying out. The tiny mud domes are built up to a hundred metres straight up the cliff. Baba said that the Tellem, who were pygmies, used magic and flew up there. We think either rope ladders or good climbers!