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Correspondent Garrett Palm explores a river town in Mali, Africa
A pair of youngsters aboard their pirogue along the Niger River in Mali. ©BY GARRETT PALM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Click on the image to see a Flickr slideshow from Mali and the Festival in the Desert.
Mopti (marked in red), near the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert, in the heart of Mali.
Story and photos by Garrett Palm
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- Travel: Along the Niger River
On our way to Tombouctou to volunteer at the Festival in the Desert we stopped at Mopti. a port on the Niger River where goods and people are transferred from trucks and buses to penasses. There are no blacktop roads to Timbuktu. so the river is often the easiest way to continue north.
Penasse port in Mopti. ©BY GARRETT PALM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
We had an hour in Mopti to ourselves. Our security guards said the town was free of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) members, so they let us wander. Corbin and I teamed up to find something to do. We had just finished seeing the sights with the rest of the festival volunteers — the mud mosque, the port, and the marché. Up the river the sun set on a sandbar in the middle of the broad stream. We could see children playing soccer.
“What about that?” I asked. (more…)
Filed under: photography, tourism, Travel, world news | Tagged: Africa, Festival au Désert, Niger River, Timbuktu, Tourism, Travel | 2 Comments »
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