Gao

After Dogon, we were back in Mopti for just long enough to convince Susan that she needed to cross Gao off “the list,” so it was the five of us that headed out for a night trip “up north”. This is the furthest east town you would really ever want to go to in Mali. That is, until you get there and then you realize that you probably passed the most eastern town you would ever want to go hundreds of miles back to the west (maybe it was Mopti or Segou, could be Bamako or was it Dakar or Philadelphia, hard to be sure) and just didn’t know it at the time.

There is little to draw one to Gao except for the bragging rights of saying you have gone all the way out there. Sites and activities are slightly limited per square mile. We actually had to pass through Timbuktu Region on our way there and back, stopping on the return leg during a horrific sandstorm followed immediately by a rainstorm during which it arguably rained harder inside the bus than outside (but only on one side of the bus, the side that Mark and Sam happened to be sitting on).


There is a sweet view from the Rose Dune which involves a great pirogue ride out to it, during which Mike did a nice little photo essay of the dead animals we passed on the riverside.







There is another World Heritage Site at Askia’s Tomb and there is the unlabeled marker of the prime meridian which, of course, can actually be enjoyed much closer to civilization (but when it is out in the Sahara that’s pretty cool).





Which brings us to a hilarious topic of conversation during our travels - the notion of tourist vs. traveler. We often had a good laugh when we would come across other toubabs (white people) because more often than not they would simply ignore us, trying not to make eye contact or in any way acknowledge that there might be another toubab present. This amused the hell out of us. If you really want to go to Africa and think you are the first and only white person to ever have been to the region go ahead, just know that you are an idiot. We spent a good bit of our time ridiculing each other in the manner of the “real travelers” who sneer at mere “tourists” and are put off their lunch even knowing they have to share the planet with such posers. These are the folks who define their personal worth by how long they’ve been out (whatever they think is longer than you have been), how many places they’ve been that no one else has (zero) and how much more they can endure than anybody else (usually just the insufferable pissing contests that are each others’ conversations). It would have been so great to see one of these “real travelers” as we descended the Rose Dune outside of Gao and tell them, “Golly, that’s a whopper of a view up there! What a great picnic spot.” Of course we did not see any of these hardcores since “real travelers” wouldn’t be caught dead on the Rose Dune, that’s for tourists...


(pictured: tourists on the Rose Dune)