Dogon Country
Saturday, March 24th, 2007Dogon Country has probably been the highlight of West Africa so far. We met a bunch of cool travellers in Djenne and were lucky enough to bump into most of them again in Bandiagarra for our three-night trek into Dogon Country. There were seven of us in all – the other five consisted of two other Aussies, two Dutch cyclists and a German.
We set out from Bandiagarra to walk to the escarpment that is so readily associated with the Dogon people and their villages. The escarpment is a 150 kilometre cliff that seems to rise from nowhere, and all the villages of the traditional Dogon people are either at the base of it or on top of it. We spent three days walking alongside the base of the escarpment, visiting some of the villages along the way. In all we walked about 70km in three days which was a pretty decent effort, I thought.
The scenery and the architecture of the villages were the highlights. The escarpment is especially magical at dawn when first light hits it, and this is the best time to be in a village as well. The Dogon houses are small, conical dwellings with thatched pyramidal roofs, but the best architecture in the villages are the buildings of the Tellem people, who lived in the area before the Dogon. They built clay houses and granary towers further up the escarpment than the Dogon in places that seem utterly inaccessible. The Dogon, apparently, think the Tellem knew how to fly and that’s how they were able to build their houses.
If this is all a bit too difficult to picture, I’ll hopefully be able to upload photos in about a week or so when we next get to a capital city with decent internet access.
Nick