Well, so: Dogon country. Hmmh. What can I say about it? I hiked three days, Dourou to Telli. About, I don't know, 40k? not far. But up and down. It's beautiful, no doubt, but the Dogon did not strike me as particularly interesting or exotic. Their villages were ordinary -- not much different than any random Mossi or Morri village I saw in Burkina Faso. The Dogon people themselves didn't strike me as particularly friendly. They seemed, in fact, outright hostile to the hordes of us hiking through their villages. The experience has been I would say irreparably commodified, like nearly every experience of course, but it's strikingly empty, I felt, walking through this area of Mali. Almost certainly my experience of it was colored by the fact that it was high season, xmas, and the place was crawling with tour groups, Four-Wheel caravans, and more than a few loners like me, a guy (or a girl) and a guide.

When you tell people that you hiked Dogon Country and slept on the roofs of villagers, as I did today in a faculty meeting, people respond with a sort of awe, as if it is very exotic. But I found it mundane. The roofs we were sleeping on were made for travelers to sleep on. The camp grounds/villages you stay in are hotels. They have cold beer, water, fanta, whatever you want. You arrive with your guide, are shown to a table and fed a meal and then asked to look through a shop of carvings. Then the various groups get together, drink beer, exchange stories, sit around a fire or an oil lamp.

When I was in Po, there was an option to go down to Ghana and hike through villages, also on an escarpment, running toward Benin. I thought, maybe I'll do that instead of Dogon since I was suspecting all along it would be too over-run. But I thought I'd give Dogon a try. I believe I made the wrong decision. All I can say is if you go to Dogon, for the love of God, don't go at Christmas.