Ris­ing in a wall of ochre-hued stone from the midst of the Sahe­lian wilds of south-cen­­tral Mali, the great escarp­ment of rock known as Mount Hom­bori is like West Africa’s answer to Australia’s Ulu­ru.

It hulks above the hori­zon just a short dis­tance from the town of the same name; a place of creak­ing wag­ons, wind­ing alley­ways and low-rise rock homes inhab­it­ed by the wel­com­ing Dogon peo­ples.

The biggest pull is cer­tain­ly the great bluff though, and trav­el­ers now flock here to join intre­pid 4X4 excur­sions into the sands, or to unearth the fas­ci­nat­ing past cur­rent­ly being uncov­ered by archae­ol­o­gists in the cave sys­tems that carve their way deep into the mountain’s sub­ter­rane.