I wrote an email to my dad last week with the subject header "Mali is bloody cold." Nobody had warned me about this. It's in the desert for god's sake.

Still, I have now revised this to parts of it, at certain times of year. I arrived about two weeks ago, but have spent most of the time in obscure villages on the edges of cliffs, or sleeping in the middle of the Sahara, or lying on the floor of a boat clutching my stomach in agony, in none of which places email was widely available, so all the time I spent on the few available (slow) connections was reserved for things like reassuring my hyperventilating parents and trying to find out about bizarre American passport regulations, but I realised that the longer I put off updating this, the worse it would be.

So, I'll try and keep it brief, cos there's nothing worse than 4 pages of name-dropping when you're trying to revise, but it has all been very random and exciting.

First, I went to the Dogon country, where I met a lovely French couple who allowed me to go with them, and we had a great time, walking between all the little villages and scrambling up and down the stunning escarpment. There was a rather unfortunate incident when I got something in my eye, and no-one could see it, so they told me to get a grip and dragged me up the cliff, and by the time we returned, whatever it was was well and truly embedded in my eye. We got back to the campement and I lay writhing on the bed, unable to open my eye, while five men sat secretly around in a circle, and then they came over, pinned me down and shoved a handful of something in my eye. I spent about five minutes crying and clutching onto Julia and Benoît until it was 'finished' and the men told me to sit up, yanked up my eyelid and wiped about thirty black seeds off my eyeball. Bear in mind that it freaks me out to watch other people put contact lenses in... Anyway, it worked, so I have faith in traditional remedies, but, yeah, it was fairly horrific.

After the Dogon country we came to Mopti, a very touristy town on the Niger, which was very pretty but rather full of people trying to sell us necklaces. I did succumb to the temptation to buy 2.5m of gorgeous purple scarf-ness, which is extremely pretty, but transferred a lot of purple dye onto most of my neck and face the following day. It was nice to see a proper toilet again, but we left for Timbuktu the next day... which was possibly the most horrendous journey I have ever made in my life. Except, perhaps, for the trip back from Timbuktu. Basically, we spent ten hours in the back of a jeep with two more people than there were 'seats' and, well, there isn't really a road...

We were quite glad to get there, and had the amazing good fortune to meet the most interesting guy in the world on our first morning. (The guy you recommended, Sarah. Completely by accident. He's fab.) He lives in the northernmost house in Timbuktu, and you really get the feeling you could walk in a straight line north and not see much more than a few tents and camels till you get, well, to the north of Algeria. His wife is a former Peace Corps volunteer and they looked after us very well. Julia and Benoît went home after 2 nights, cos they had no more money, but I stayed an extra couple of days, went on a camel trip into the desert (it was FREEZING at night) and gatecrashed a guided tour of the town with some kindly Dutch people. He also organised my boat ride back, but that was slightly less magical. Obviously, the scenery was amazing, and looking back it's going to be a good anecdote, but certain aspects of it were rather unpleasant. Namely, it is quite difficult to spend three days on a boat, more so when none of the other passengers speaks French, let alone English. Furthermore, well, I was doing quite well with the whole fish thing (I once ordered tuna on pasta and don't mind barracuda) but, well, being in the middle of the river, there are quite a lot of fish, so three meals a day was rice with slimy fish gravy, and I think we're back to square one. In fact, I'm not sure I even want to eat rice again for some time. Also, I was eating with my hands, and washing in the river, and got covered in grease every time I went to the toilet (it was a hole in the back of the boat and involved climbing over the engine), and, obviously, the more unhygienic it got, the more I needed to go to the toilet (not to be too specific) so it was a sort of vicious cycle and I was kind of glad to disembark and sprinted off the boat before anyone could serve me dinner.

I went to a town called Sévaré not too far from Mopti (where the boat went to) and arrived at my hotel, which was run by this American guy, who didn't mind that I hadn't reserved, and I walked into a room full of Canadian medical students eating tortillas, and having people I could talk to (in a choice of languages) and food I could eat was rather a shock to the system, but a very welcome one, and there was even a hot shower. And the next day the medical students were replaced by cynical Americans (who were helpful about visa problems) and Norwegian missionaries. And there was even a pool. And pancakes for breakfast. It was heaven.

And today I am in Djenné, which has a fantastic market and mosque, and I just bought too many blankets, so I now have hardly any money, so am going to hurry along the rest of the trip to get to the bit where I get to stay with people sooner. (Have replanned route to go to stay with new-best-friends, partly cos they're lovely and partly cos they owe me a tenner.) I also had an email from my mum saying 'your father's found you some nuns in Bolgatanga' which is not a sentence you come across very often. (Unless, I suppose, your father has some sort of network of nuns who are prepared to let smelly students crash on their floor. But that is highly unlikely.)

So, yeah, only three weeks to lug my blankets round and then it's back to the boring business of real life and earning money. Meh. And this internet café was quite a trek from town (get 100 m from the market and tourist hotels and this is the most peaceful place in Mali) so I'd better email the boy to tell him when to come and meet me at the airport (armed with warm clothes) and head back hotel-wards before it gets dark and try and find someone to have dinner with. And maybe a beer, if my stomach can tolerate it.