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March 7 - Niger

We follow the Niger river over a tarmac road and reach Segou, a nice town on the riverside. The next day I feel bad; stomach problems. After 80 km we stop and camp in the bush. I throw up a couple of times and feel very weak. Saskia brings me tea, at least I can keep that in. The next morning I feel better and we continue. Winds are strong and mostly against us.

We visit Djene, a dirty, small river town with a nice mud brick mosque. From Sevare we continue towards the Bandiagara Enscarpment. We stay a couple of days in the Dogon village Sangha. In this area the Dogon people live. They have build their villages on top and down the impressive enscarpment. These people have their own rituels, believes and sacred places and their villages are pretty. But more interesting are the people who lived her more than 700 years ago; the Tellem. They were said to be red skinned pigmees. They have build their tiny houses right against the escarpment in places which are inpossibel to reach by normal people. There are still many houses left as they are well protected against man and nature. Imagine how those people lived here, just incredible and mysterious. Where have they gone and why? The Dogon people believe that they used magic to get to their houses.

After doing some nice spectacular walks in the area we head for Douentza over a small rouch and often sandy road. We pass Dogon villages where no tourist ever comes. People react so very different in such villages, find it an honnor that we come to their village, they are vey helpfulland nice. We descend the escarpment, the road consists of huge rocks here and is steep. Impossible for cars, we think. But also difficult for us.

From Douentza we are on tarmac again. Strong winds and dust in the air make visability bad. Thet's a pitty as we see almost nothing of the steep table mountains in thies area. Luckily when we reach Hombori the views are better and we can see the steep Main de Fatima and the Mnt. Hombori; the highest mountain of Mali. Great place for some walking and glimbing so I spend one day in the mountains while Saskia takes a restday.

We have reached the Niger river again just in time to cross over with the last ferry of the day. Still 7 km to got to Gao but it's quickly becoming dark and within no time we see nothing anymore. We decide to camp within 2 km's of town almost on a cross road. After 2 days of rest we leave Gao and cycle along the Niger towards the border. The road is rouch, lots of corrugation and sandy parts. Especially in the pretty villages the road is sandy and we push the bikes followed by many happy children. Luckily they often help us pushing.

Temperatures reach 40° C every day now; our drinking water is always warm and bread dries out very quickly. On average we can do 60 km/day here but on the fourth day we reach the border with Niger and 40 km further the rarmac starts. Lovely. We can buy a visum for Niger at the border post. It was one of our concnerns as we did nog have a visum yet, but no problems here. Two days later we reach the capital Niamey, being smaller and easier than Bamako, we like it a lot more. Here we purchase the visa for Nigeria and Chad without problems or bribes.