Hombori

If you are a mountaineer and love to explore the majestic mountains, the following place should be on your list of tourist destinations in Mali. Mount Hombori, a great escarpment of rock rising in an ochre-hued wall from the Sahelian wilds of south-central Mali, is West Africa's answer to Australia's Uluru.

Mount Hombori (Tondo Hombori) is a mountain in Mali's Mopti Region, close to the town of Hombori. It is Mali's highest point, standing at 1,155 meters. Mount Hombori is an important biodiversity hotspot in the Sahel, home to 150 different plant species as well as mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects on its two-square-kilometer plateau surface.

It looms above the horizon not far from the town of the same name, a place of creaking wagons, winding alleyways, and low-rise rock homes inhabited by the friendly Dogon peoples. The great bluff is undeniably the draw, and visitors now flock here to join daring 4X4 excursions into the sands, or to unearth the fascinating past being unearthed by archaeologists in the cave systems that carve their way deep into the mountain's subterrane.

• Location: Hombori, Malawi