<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>washingtonpost.com - Mali</title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</link><description>Mali</description><language>en-us</language><ttl>15</ttl><image><title>washingtonpost.com</title><width>140</width><height>20</height><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com</link><url>http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/image/wp_web.gif</url></image><item><title><![CDATA[The Tomes of Timbuktu]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45889-2005Feb23.html?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45889-2005Feb23.html?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</guid><pubDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2005 16:03:43 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[A dusty haze mutes the horizon in Timbuktu during the dry season, so on this mid-December evening the sun simply fades away without setting. Dusk settles upon the wide, sandy streets and mud-bricked alleys, and the city, without streetlights, descends into the darkness of the desert. Silhouettes drift past lamp-lit windows, and the fires of street-side clay ovens send shadows dancing up the walls. Children materialize from the darkness, run up and clasp the hands of strangers, then disappear. The sky is soon dense with stars, and meteorites streak by so often and seemingly so close that I actually swing my head when one appears to shoot like a bottle rocket toward the street below.]]></description><author> Alan Huffman</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Road to Timbuktu]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16564-2003Jun20.html?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16564-2003Jun20.html?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</guid><pubDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2005 16:03:43 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I nearly killed a man to reach Timbuktu, but only after he made me dig our truck out of the sand with a stolen butter knife. Not that getting home was much easier. Once we finally made it to the fabled city, I left my driver tethered to an intravenous drip at a local hospital. Two days later, I had to hitch a ride on the cockpit floor of an overloaded Russian turboprop for the first leg of my trip back to New York.]]></description><author> Christopher Reardon</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Seeing Mali]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45559-2001May18.html?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45559-2001May18.html?nav=rss_travel/archive/abroad/africa/mali</guid><pubDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2005 16:03:43 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[There had been some suggestion  that I might be met at Mali's Bamako-Senou airport, but I had slim hopes and was bracing for another solitary attack on another Third World city, this time in the fourth-poorest country in the world.]]></description><author> John Auchard</author></item></channel></rss>