We decided it may be a bit too much for us to plan on our own so we found an organized tour that was offering a two week tour of Mali prior to and after the festival. Turned out it was a great idea.
http://www.sagatours.com/essakane.html
(Sorry if neither of those links work)
We chose a flight that had an 18 hour layover in Casablanca, Morocco so we got the opportunity to explore. The airline (Royal Air Maroc) got us a hotel and shuttled us from and back to the airport.
We got to Bamako to begin our tour which took us from there to Djenne to Songho/Sangha/Sevare (Dogon Country) to Timbuktu, then on to the festival in an oasis area in the Sahara called Essakane, then back to Timbuktu to Mopti to Segou then back to Bamako. It was a total of about 1100 miles of driving on roads (paved and NOT paved), cliff-sides, on car ferries across the Bani and Niger Rivers and lots of sand dunes. We met lots of different people and tribes in these towns and along the way - Bambara, Bobo, Bozo, Dogon, Fulani, Songhay and Taureg.
(There were several hundred of these termite mounds on the road from Bamako to Djenne; this one was about 9 feet tall)
There were about 5000 attendees and roughly 20 music performances during the three days of the Festival au Desert.
You can begin the photo and video tour here…
Another reason for this post is that we HIGHLY recommend you visit Mali. The country is amazing.
chuck [email] said at 1:15 PM 02-12-2007: Here's when a large group of Tauregs arrived at the festival area. The Fulani flute and drummers in the background make it very surreal.
anthony [email] said at 8:12 PM 02-12-2007: Looks awesome. What was the climate like and are there any regrets you really have as far as planning or packing went?
chuck [email] said at 10:21 PM 02-12-2007: October through March is the dry season for that part of the world so there was dust and sand everywhere. In most places it was in the 70's-high 80's during the day and low 60's at night. When we were in Timbuktu and Essakane it was in the 90's around 1:00pm then it dropped to the 40's at night plus the wind was pretty strong and kicked-up lots of sand. Definitely the largest temperature drop I've experienced when staying in one place.
We packed pretty well and most everyone in our group had sleeping bags with hoods because our tents weren't covered in the front.
No real regrets except we both wished we had learned more french before going. The sand gets on everything so everyone had to clean their cameras afterwards. DO NOT wear contacts.
