One of the best things you can do in Mali is take a hiking trek along the Bandiagara Escarpment. Depending on your time, budget, and level of fitness you can do anything from a one-day to an eight-day trek along the cliff face. Guides are not essential but will make the going easier as they can negotiate prices for staying overnight in the villages and point out the right tracks to follow. A river trip down the Niger is also a must. Again the extent of the trip is entirely flexible and can last as long as the river, or as short as the time it takes you to get hot and bothered over the less-than-luxurious conditions.

Taking a camel ride out to the Tuareg camps in Timbuktu might be a bit of a cliché and cause involuntary humming of the theme song from Lawrence of Arabia, but if you've arrived in Timbuktu by boat or plane it will give you a taste of desert life. You might add a bit of spice to the excursion by staying overnight in a Tuareg camp and experiencing the desert by moonlight. Staying overnight is officially illegal for security reasons but can be achieved with a bit of discretion.

The most captivating event on the Mali calendar is the crossing of the cattle at Diafarabé. Every year during December, in a tradition that goes back 160 years, Diafarabé gears up to cope with a sudden influx of cattle and herders as they converge on the river bank. It's a time for celebrations and festivities as herders are reunited with friends and family after several long months in the desert. Local chiefs and elders meet before the big event and the order of the crossing is decided by the processes of fair play and democracy. The cattle are then led to the grass that is (both proverbially and literally) always greener on the other side.

The Dogons are famous for their masks and during the five-day Fête des Masques in April many of them are used in ritual ceremonies that go back more than 1000 years. The most famous of these ceremonies is the Sigui, which only occurs once every 60 years, and is probably connected to the Dogon agrarian calendar. This calendar has an eerie Twilight Zone mystique to it: it's thought to be based on the orbital cycles of a white dwarf star that is invisible to the naked eye. It was only discovered in the 1960s by a high powered telescope, despite the fact that the Dogons had been using the star as a seasonal marker for more than a millennium.