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I’m leaving Mali tomorrow, readers, to spend the last two weeks of my trip in Senegal. I wimped out here: it takes at least 30 hours to get to Dakar from Bamako by bus, and that is just too damn long for me. The roads in western Mali and eastern Senegal are legendarily bad, and it’s hotter than hell in Mali during the day. I am just not up for it. So I bought a plane ticket (as usual, Ethiopian Airlines had the cheapest flight) from Bamako to Dakar; a 90-minute plane ride sounds a lot better than a 30-hour bus ride.

I’ve enjoyed Mali a lot. I took a six-day trip to see the tourist attractions in the east: the towns of Mopti and Djenné, and the legendary Dogon country. A full description will have to wait until later, but I will say that it was both one of the most physically uncomfortable experiences of the past year, and also one of the best. Mali is definitely the best place in West Africa for tourist-type attractions. Dogon country was amazing, and Djenné was pretty cool, too. I didn’t even head up to Timbuktu; that will have to wait for another time.

Mali reminds me of Ethiopia in a lot of ways: bad buses, physical discomfort (outside the capital city; my hotel in Bamako is the nicest and most comfortable place I’ve stayed in Africa), incredible levels of harassment from touts and hustlers on the street, lots of good things to see, lots of dust and dirt (Addis Ababa and Bamako are the dustiest capitals I’ve seen)… there are a lot of parallels. I’d put Mali, as well as Ethiopia, high up on my short list of recommendations for anybody thinking about a visit to Africa.

I hope to try and get halfway caught up here while I’m in Dakar, but that may not happen. If not, I’ll finally get caught up after I get home, which will be (God willing) on Friday, 8 April, two weeks from tomorrow. I will continue to put things up here on this blog until I’m caught up and talked out, and I will also finally be able to start going through all my photographs and putting the best ones up on my Flickr page.

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