Once West Africa's greatest merchant empire, Mali conjures up a spirit of adventure, of tiny villages and encounters with tribal peoples. Visit the fabled oasis of Timbuktu, once a famous centre on the lucrative trans-Saharan caravan route, wealthy from trade in cargoes of gold and salt. Explore the Dogon country, a wilderness of rock, shrub and barren sands, with its typical villages, where characteristic flat-topped and cone-roofed houses are stacked tightly together in tower-like constructions, below the great yellow sandstone cliffs of the Bandiagara Escarpment. The Dogons are ruled by the supernatural and magic, which is perhaps best seen in funeral celebrations and spectacular masked dances. Wonder through the narrow alleyways and mud-brick Afro-Arab architecture of the old trading port of Djenne. The Grand Mosque here is the tallest dried-earth building in the world.