That pitiful situation Mali is facing now has led me to show my pictures of this wonderful country. These pics I shot on a travel through Togo, Benin, Niger, Mali an Senegal way back in 1997 with my dear friend Arthur who died in 2003.
The pics' quality is poor compared to nowadays - slides, mostly on Fuji Velvia, scanned as pcd's; Canon EOS 5 and 100 with Sigma lenses.
We entered Mali in south-east between Ayorou (Niger) and Ansongo (Mali) and rode in our bus alongside the river Niger which comes here straight from north right out of the desert. You can find it with a littke effort on the google maps added.
Easier to see how big Mali is. We soon reached Gao the northest point of ou journey. We didn't enter Timbuktu. The whole area was unsettled at least since 1992. This was the year when Arthur and me tried a Transsahara-Tour from Niger to Tunisia. But there was a Touaregh uprise in Air Mountains and we had to turn-over in Agadez. We tried another route via Mali, Gao to be exact. We were bound to be accompanied by a Mali army convoy, but this didn't work.
This time, in 1997, Gao was no detour but our aim and after that the Hombori Hills, the Dogons' Falaise de Bandiagara, Mopti, Djenné, Segou, Bamako and Kayes in north-western Sahel of Mali where the river senegal crosses the border to the country of its own name.
But now let's get startet in Ansongo ...continue on http://www.matthiasgehrickephoto.de/Mali/Mali/27739561_BhFn2G