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This is a natural and cultural landscape: a monumental sandstone escarpment rising some 500 metres above the plains of Dogon Country, its sheer rock face embedded with the ancient dwellings of the Tellem and Toloy peoples who once carved homes, granaries and burial chambers directly into the cliff. Stretching roughly 150 kilometres across Mali’s Mopti Region, the escarpment forms the backbone of a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape encompassing 289 villages spread across plateau, cliff and plain.

Seen from above, the panorama is staggering: ochre rock folds into ravines and rocky tunnels, punctuated by the geometric silhouettes of Togu Na meeting houses and mud-brick granaries clinging to impossible ledges. The Dogon, who succeeded the Tellem centuries ago, continue to inhabit these plains and plateaux, sustaining animist rites, mask ceremonies and cosmological traditions largely untouched by outside influence. Few places on Earth so vividly fuse geology, ancestral memory and living culture into a single, breathtaking vista.