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At last, the outskirts of Timbuktu, that desert city whose name has become synonymous with remoteness and isolation. It's no wonder that it has acquired that reputation for the tracks going out are just as bad as the one coming in which you have seen. The village of Kabara on the Niger can be reached by passenger boats when the river is high but that is 13 km from here.
In its heyday under the Askia Dynasty of the Songhai Empire (1468 - 1591), Timbuktu was a brilliant center of Islamic culture and an important market where gold and slaves from the South were traded for salt, cloth and horses from the North. Timbuktu never recovered from the Moroccan invasion in 1591 following which it lost control of the trade that had made it rich. Now the merchants have left and it is only an administrative center for the north, a region of secondary importance in today's Mali. The brilliant Islamic scholars have also left and have been replaced by the French secondary school shown here.
There are a number of historic sites to be seen but tourism is not overly developed considering the exotic remoteness of the place. There are only two hotels, the Bouctou shown here where I stayed for ten dollars of night, and the Azalaï which is about four times more expensive.
Timbuktu was founded around 1100 AD by Tuareg nomads who chose to camp here because of wells similar to this one seen from the roof of the Bouktou Hotel. A century later it was taken from the Tuareg by the Mali Empire and rapidly became a center for north-south commerce.
In the late 13th century, the Mali sultan Mansa Musa built the Djingereyber Mosque in the traditional sahelian dried-mud style. It has been rebuilt many times since and has this appearance today.
The Sidi Yahia Mosque was built around 1400 in the center of the city in a style foreign to the sahel region.
The Sankoré Mosque built a century later incorporates a sahelian tower with crenellated walls inspired by northern architecture.
Sun dried mud bricks are very short-lived so little is left of the original Timbuktu which had a population of a 100 000 in the 15th century. A small central section of the city has retained narrow streets and some atmosphere from the past but most of today's 15,000 people are housed in plain standard African streets like this one.
I have been told that the accommodations inside some of these modern compounds can be quite luxurious but I did not have the good fortune of meeting anyone who could show me. I would have loved to see the inside of this one.
When business is slow people get depressed... or crafty. Business was definitely slow when I was there around the end of February. There were very few tourists and the few I met which had not come with an organized tour were looking for transport to get back to civilization for a reasonable price.
An Australian couple Jane and Peter were also looking for transport to Mopti so we joined forces. The owners of 4X4s had apparently formed an association and chosen a dispatcher, Abraham Bourema, to limit price competition and allocate the available customers between them. They succeeded in fixing a floor price of 30 dollars for the trip to Mopti but left everyone free to scramble for customers that could be conned into paying more. I met a young American backpacker who paid 100 dollars and heard of Swiss lady who had reportedly paid 200 dollars to get out in time to catch a flight to Bamako!
Peter, Jane and I refused to be stampeded into such rash action and after waiting three or four days, Bourema arranged transport for us at the standard rate. It was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon when we left. A 4x4 like this one to took us to Kabara where we crossed the Niger on a pinasse and were met by another 4x4 that took us to Mopti. I was lucky and got a cabin seat.
This is the boat called pinasse. They come in various sizes but they all have the same elegant shape.
Traditional settlements like this one dot the shores of the Niger but they barely encroach upon the desert that lies behind.
I didn't bother to shave for five months and enjoyed it. Would my beard not be white, I might wear it all year-round but vanity gets the best of me and I shave it in Montreal because I think it makes me look older!
Peter is getting his bag out of the pinasse. We were the only westerners, the other dozen or so passengers were all local, most of them light skinned Tuaregs and a few black blacks. This time we has a Toyota Land Cruiser which is more powerful than a Land Rover. We drove on and on, stopping only for prayer at 7:00 pm until three a morning. The driver needed the rest so we all got out and slept on the ground under a roadside shelter not far from the village of Konna..
Nobody complained of insomnia. We all slept so well that we did not get up before 7:00! The last 50 kilometers were just a short ride on a good road and we booked into Mopti's Campement Hotel around 9:00.
Traditional huts in the outskirts of Mopti.
Mopti meant civilization with good roads and regular scheduled busses to other civilized places (things that we take for granted and do not appreciate until doing without). Mopti was a backward village in medieval times when Timbuktu and Djénné were great imperial cities. Now the situation is reversed and Mopti is an important port on the Niger halfway between Bamako and Goa.
This is only a small part of Mopti's colorful port which serves a large area.
Mopti is surrounded by low areas whose flooding during the wet season is controlled by an intricate system of causeways and dykes built by the French to transform swamps into usable agricultural land. It is a prosperous place with a population of almost 50,000, a big market and a beautiful Mosque.
Mopti is a beehive after sleepy Timbuktu as you can see from the brisk walk of these shoppers in the ironmonger's section of the market. It is also a tourist center where visits to the Dogon country can be arranged.
